Trying to stay positive

I have had classes for about two weeks now and there are some things that I have observed that make it very hard to teach.

First up, books. Students are responsible for purchasing their own books for school. A book runs about 15 lari ($10) new and probably about half to a third used. It is clear that some families just do not have the money for the books or that it is not a priority for them.

In class, this means that there are students that have no books. Even after three weeks of class. This then results in a few possibilities. One is that they completely space out and could care less about what is going on. Two, they try to participate and pay attention, but if the teacher is going over exercises in the book, the student will have no idea what is going on. Three, they have to share a desk with another student that does have the book. Four, the students have to copy the exercises out of someone else’s book so they can do the homework. No matter how you put it, not a great environment to try and learn in.

Staying with books, the teachers do not have the teacher’s editions of the books. They have the same ones the students have. This means that the teachers do not have the answer key or the CD that has all of the listening exercises on them Also, the teachers do not have the workbooks that contain all of the exercises. So when we go over the exercises in class, the teacher borrows a students book, which results in that student scrambling to find a way to follow along.

Still with the books, some of them are just horrid. I had to tell my teacher yesterday that the book she was using for 6th grade was too complicated. I was struggling with some of the exercises so there is no way a second year student is going to be able to do them. Now, to be fair, the entire book content is not garbage. But chunks of it definitely are.

Then there is the way that the content is presented to the students. Reading directly out of the book. Writing stuff on the board. Copying stuff off of the board. Woo-freaking-hoo. No activities. No group exercises. Usually just one student interacting with the teacher. I bought books for a couple of the classes this weekend so I can go through them to try and create some activities that will teach the students the same concepts.

As I mentioned before, there are students in the class that never get called on. There seem to be three possible reasons for this. The teacher has favorites and picks on them over and over and ignores the others. Or the student does not have any materials and clearly does not care about what is going on and the teacher does not want to try and engage them.

The last one is a hard one. The student is labeled as slow, shy or stupid (these are the words the students and/or teachers have told me) and so instead of teaching to them, they are ignored. This one really sucks for me for they are nice kids but because at some point they earned this label, they are an outcast. A lot of the kids treat them as outcasts, too. In one class, the shy kid was asked to move over and share the textbook with another the student. The other student protested and won. Back to your corner outcast.

I have talked to other volunteers and they have similar stories. One told me about her two 8th grade classes where one was excellent at English while the other could barely pronounce words. She asked why and was told that in first grade all of the smart students were grouped into one class and all of the rest were grouped into another class. They were then taught accordingly. Sigh.

What makes it worse is that they just sit there for the entire class and do nothing. Space out, watch me, play with their necklace, etc. Can you imagine that as your education? There were some hard times as a VISTA last year where I had nothing to do. I justified it by telling myself that at least I was getting paid. If it was my education, and not a job, I am not sure how I would feel about it. I sometimes think that the students would be better off staying at home and working with their parents or grandparents.

Classroom management does not exist. Period. There are no consequences if a student acts out other then being yelled at briefly by the teacher. Which, seems to be the reaction most of the students want for they seem to be craving attention. Most smile when they get yelled at. Some of the problem is due to the aforementioned book problem or lack of being called on. Some is because they are teenage boys. The problem seems to get worse starting in 7th grade and progressing to 9th. And only boys. The girls will talk, but still pay attention and do the work.

So what to do. Sometimes I just want to pull a Cartman and yell out “Respect my authoritah!” But if you need to tell people to respect you, it is not going to work. You have to earn it.

This is obviously not an easy task to deal with for there are many issues that are intertwined and related. One focus is going to be on trying to engage the students more, all of them, and creating interactive activities. The next focus is going to be to try and establish a reward system so if the class does well for the week we will do some kind of fun game for part of a class.

Of course, all of this hinges on my ability to try and explain my ideas to Kate, the English teacher, and getting her approval.

Deep breath. Ok, one more. Let’s begin.