26 September 2013

26 September 2013

Today I had to get up even earlier than usual, as we had a meeting with at the local school at 8am. We all had to be dressed very professionally, as teachers are looked at as authority figures and need to dress as such. No overalls accepted. I had a breakfast of what I think was Kasha made with rice instead of oats. It was very good. Host-Mom left shortly before I did, as she was going to work. I added some finishing touches, and walked briskly to the meeting spot – just outside the TCF’s apartment. From there, we walked to the school. It’s a 5-10 minute walk.

There, we were met by 2 students, who took us on a tour of their school. We got to go into some of the classrooms, and even talked to the students of one English class. After our tour, we got to meet with some of the administration and some English teachers. We learned a lot about the education culture and system in Obukhiv. The teachers want us to set up an English club for their students, and want us to help them find/make/get some materials to teach English grammar. We learned about the requirements for students, teachers, parents, about how much the school costs, what types of schools and classes there are in Obukhiv, what types of career pathways there are at the various schools, and the tests needed to get into University.

We learned that the culture of education is very different in Ukraine. The grading scale means that a student can’t fail and be held back, because building blocks are what matters. There are no final exams every year. The students have to clean their classrooms, and make posters for the school. 90% of all students have had the same classmates their entire educational career. There is a very good vocational program, where a student who doesn’t want to go to University can start earlier than in the US, as they finish secondary school and have career training when they graduate. We learned that teachers are held responsible for what happens to students when they are at school – if a teacher lets a student out of class, and the student gets hurt, the teacher is responsible. Teachers have many responsibilities, more so than it seems in the US. There is a much more hierarchical structure to doing anything, even a field trip to the local museums. There are no set number of lessons a week for teachers. The norm is 18, but that number can go way up.

There are private schools in Ukraine, but they aren’t private in the way that I think of private – there isn’t really a tuition cost, but the books and resources will be more expensive. All schools are state run. Secondary education is compulsory, but where you take it is up to you – regular school, specialized school (basically a magnet school), or vocational school.

As secondary education PCVs, we will have 5th through 11th form (5th grade through 11th), with option of teaching some primary school. As said earlier, we will need to look very professional to be treated as teachers by our students. Education is a very female dominated section, so there are very few male teachers. Teachers aren’t well paid; they get about $150 USD a month.

After our meeting, debrief, and technical session, we walked back to V.’s, where we had a very short break, and then an hour of Russian. We went over today, tomorrow, and yesterday, and some minor conjugations for past tense. We also learned how to say “with so-and-so.” After that, we practiced trilling our Cyrillic “R”s. V. said that I was the best of the group, but I know I have a lot of room to improve. We then learned some more agreements and disagreements, as well as polite phrases to say in Russian.

We had a 40minute break for lunch. The whole group was hungry, as our school and technical sessions had gone over, and we were almost an hour late for lunch. During lunch, we talked about what we had learned, what happened at our host-families this week, and practiced trilling those Rs.

 After lunch, we went over our numbers, and practiced saying how old people were. We went over the Datum and nomative cases, which use different pronouns, which are different from possessive pronouns. We presented the paragraph we wrote about our American families, and were asked questions about each other’s families. After that, we started on conjugations. There two normal conjugations, each with two subsets, which depends on the infinitive, and the verb stem. There are exceptions to some of the rules, and we need to memorize some of the most common irregular verbs. We then wrote down some of them, and learned a few more rules. Class was over.

I had tutoring, but I was the second one, so I staying V.’s kitchen and was able to do not quite half of my homework. I wrote almost a full page of short and simple sentences about a family tree V. gave me. Each PCT has a different one. I also got about half of my hobby verbs conjugated. Most of them follow the patterns, which makes them easy to conjugate.

During my tutoring, V. taught me how to ask to be taught to hand wash some clothes, and to cook. We also went over some cultural things, and then worked on my pronunciation. We went over a list of Russian/Ukrainian/English cognates for jobs and hobbies. Then we worked on the hobbies themselves, and finally I had to conjugate the verbs. I’m not good at conjugating without writing, so it took me a bit. Some of the words were long and complicated in their infinitive, and (of course) those were the ones that had an odd root stem and conjugation. However, the verbs that I had already conjugated and written down, I did a good job on.

After tutoring, I walked back to the apartment, and was practically handed borsch. I was able to change into less formal clothes and get out the rest of my homework while the Ukrainian borsch heated. I finished my homework, and spent some time online, before I put in the rest of the information on a very complicated PC locator form. They want exact geographic coordinates, as well as very good directions. I drew my part of a community map that my cluster will be drawing tomorrow as a class. We all had to find something in our community, and draw it on the map. As well as where we live, and how to get to V.’s apartment from there.