03 October 2013

03 October 2013

Today I got up early, had a breakfast of Kasha, and walked to School #5. The cluster was observing how a Ukrainian teacher teaches an English lesson. The lesson we observed was about plans and “to be going to.” There were differences between how our TCF taught Tuesday’s lesson (is tomorrow finally Friday?), as it was much more teacher centered and more traditional in approach. The students stood at the front of the room and recited a dialogue that they learned for homework. A few shy students were allowed to stand at their seats and read the dialogue. There was a lot of reading sentences from the workbook and manual, and little to no creation of new material. There was about 5 minutes of application of the new verb phrase, before the bell rang. This lesson was a great insight into how a Ukrainian teacher runs his/her class, and it helps to highlight one of the three goals of the PC’s mission in Ukraine for TEFL – to help the teachers as well as the students and the community.

After our lesson, we had a Tech session, about Product Development/Design and Management (PDM). There are 7 seven (main) stages for a successful, fun, sustainable, and adaptable community project. Each stage has its own set of steps to encourage flow, communication, and success. We learned how to write a goal, which is incredibly general, such as, our goal is to give an exemplary liberal-arts and humanities education to our students. The objectives are the detailed part of the plan, as they are specific to the project being undertaken. Our project is likely to help create a fun way to learn grammar. When we met with the teachers and administration (was that really only last Thursday?), the vice principal for the specialized students asked if we could help them with that. We think it could make a great community project.

After our Tech session, we had a meeting with our counterparts and the principal, who seemed very pleases to have us there. We introduced ourselves in Russian, and were told that we were doing very well. We gave our counterparts and the principal a box of chocolates, and then had to figure out who was our counterpart. I have a 30-something young woman, Y, who teaches the middle school forms, specifically 7th and 8th forms. I will be observing the 3rd and 4th lessons on Tuesday, and the 5th lesson on Thursday. This schedule (T: 3,4; R: 5) should hold for the rest of PST. I’m not sure right now how it will work, but I know that I have to observe 8 more lessons (minimum, can be anyone), and I have to teach a minimum of 15 classes during PST. I get my first lesson on Thursday. I will have to write my own lesson plan, which means that I will need to talk to Y on Tuesday, to know what she had planned for Thursday.

After our meeting, we walked back to V.’s apt, where we had a 40 minute lesson (“to be late,” possessive pronouns, practice of phrases, practice of hobbies, practice of conjugation, practice of one new phrase), before DT and IK. came by. DT is the Country Director for Peace Corps Ukraine, and IK is the PST Coordinator. Impressive guests. We had an hour coffee break/meeting with them, where we discussed how our first two weeks are going (it’s only been two weeks?!). We talked to them for a while, and learned some important things, like when we are getting our PC debit card and documents, as well as getting our passport back. I got an email from a Ukrainian bank the other day, which I asked about. It was a confirmation email that they have created an account for me, but that there is no money in it, yet. We got pictures with everyone before they had to leave.

After they had to leave, we had an hour of Russian, which went very quickly. We went over our vocab and phrases. Lunch was quick, as we went over time, again. Several cluster-mates went to the store/home, so we had a quiet lunch. We all had coffee/tea when we were done eating, and were hanging out finishing it when V. came into her kitchen to teach us more words, these kitchen/cooking related. We practiced them, then went back into our classroom to practice our bazaar dialogue. We were going on a field trip to the bazaar after Russian. We divided up what we needed to get for us to cook tomorrow (we’re making Borshch), and practiced our dialogue with the item we were buying.

After a lot of practice, we walked down to the bazaar. It was mainly a collection of “babushkas,” who were selling produce that they had grown. I bought a cabbage (the small one was 1kg). They ladies seemed to enjoy listening to us fumble over the language, as it’s possible that they’ve never spoken to an American before, much less an American who is making a point to conduct the sale in Russian. After we bought what produce we could from the babushkas, we went into the supermarket. I put the cabbage (in my little red pocket bag) in my purse, so I could go in. We got the rest of the ingredients, some things for lunch tomorrow, and went back to V.’s apt, where we put the food in the fridge, checked our schedules, and left.

I walked back to host-Mom’s apt, where the younger grandchild was taking a nap. I got to work on my homework. First, I finished last nights (it took about an hour, so I’m glad I didn’t so it then), wrote out another case’s endings, started tonight’s homework, and was able to get the recipe for borshch from my host-Mom. In Russian, but it was homework to get it in Russian. Dinner was borshch from yesterday (the one without beets), which I think is my favorite variant so far. I finished tonight’s homework, and then spent some time online. Tomorrow, my cluster has a joint lesson – Obukhiv 2 is coming in for the medical day, so we’re going to teach each other Russian/Ukrainian. After our medical day, my cluster and our LCF are going to cook our borshch, and then maybe watch a movie.