Outside the Classroom

A few days ago, classes ended and I am finally on summer break. This is now an excellent time to sit back and ponder on my accomplishments as a teacher. Or not. This year has actually been only trial and error and if I were going home tomorrow, I would be a failure as a teacher. Instead, it would be better to talk about my main secondary project, which was completely successful—an English competition for Balkhash and the surrounding villages.

The idea for this project occurred in January when the two other Balkhash volunteers and I were sitting in a café, stressed out about how schools care less for the quality of education than their own prestige. Prestige, which is based on rewards and prizes, does not reflect the ability of students in Kazakhstan. So basically, the problem was how to make prestige of a school dependent on the strength of its students. Simultaneously, we were complaining about the recent Olympiad, which is an official competition that covers a range of subjects. As I cannot elaborate on my bitterest criticisms of the Olympiad in a public forum, let it suffice to say that it was not an honest competition. In addition, the material was extremely difficult (especially given the average English abilities at the secondary school level in Kazakhstan); was not broad enough to accurately assess English ability; and incorporated too few students to effectively motivate other students to improve their skills. We then realized that if we created our own competition, we would not only be able to rectify these problems, but encourage schools to seek prestige by having their students do well in an honest exam

From the start, we wanted the tests to include a slightly wider grade range and number of students than the Olympiad. We decided to include grades seven to eleven (the final year in Kazakhstan) and have five students from each grade from each school (25 students from each school; the Olympiad only allowed one person from each grade from each school). The test would have two rounds. The first round would be an hour long written exam that focused on English grammar and which would be mostly multiple choice with five fill-in the blanks and short answers. The finalists would then proceed to the second round, which would be a one on one interview with a native English speaker that would focus on conversational English. For the interview, grammar would be much less important than the ability to communicate ideas.

With these objectives, the first step in organizing the project was to gauge interest of local schools and then get them on board. Luckily for us, organizations here are rigidly top-down systems. Hence after only 15-minute meetings conducted in our poor Russian at each of the schools, directors signed a contract committing their schools’ participation. By mid-February, we had fourteen town and village schools on board and thus enough support to make this competition a reality. Over the next two months, we figured out logistics. We decided to hold the exam simultaneously at two different schools to ensure no one school was perceived as too “influential” over the outcome; make practice exams and theme lists for participating schools; and secure local government support. To fund the competition (paper, printing, prizes, certificates, etc), an official from the education department arranged a meeting for us with the head of the biggest bank in Balkhash. After we explained to him our idea and goals, he opened his wallet and on the spot gave us 50,000 tenge, which was enough to fund the entire project.

The first round occurred on April 25 with nearly 300 participating students. And in true Kazakhstani fashion, we commenced the event with a lavish opening ceremony that included a short military march, traditional Kazakh dances, speeches by us volunteers and distinguished guests, and the singing of the national anthem. Reporters from local newspapers were also there. Afterwards, students registered and the test began. It all went flawlessly! A lot of last minute problems of course occurred, but we dealt with them swiftly. That night we graded the tests, announced the finalists, and the second round occurred a few days later.

When we announced the winners at the beginning of May, there was a lot of excitement but also some criticism. Parents of some of the winners profusely thanked us for giving their children an opportunity to demonstrate their skills. Others were impressed that our students and friends didn’t get top places. For example, my host sister who is strong in English wasn’t a finalist. Many assumed she would be due to her relation to me. However, many of the winners did come from the richest and most influential families in the community and this caused suspicion. Yet this was because these students can afford private tutors and other resources, a problem that also exists in the United States.

Overall, the competition was a great success and hopefully it will be an annual event. Moreover, the exam gave us a mountain of data on the English abilities of local students. This summer, we plan on analyzing the data and then organizing a teachers’ workshop in August that will be tailored to the needs of the community.