A Little Grand Adventure: The Daily Grind

So here’s my day to day. I work at School #1 in Neftchala. (School’s don’t have names like Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School or Berkeley Arts Magnet. They’re simply numbered.) My students are in the 5th to 9th form. I have five different counterparts (teachers that I work with) and teach 19 hours. I meet with each teacher once a week for an hour to lesson plan although most of the time everything’s sort of improvised due to unforeseen events. I have one main counterpart that I teach all her classes with. The others I teach with only two or three times a week which makes it a bit difficult because I’m not a constant presence for the kids. Teachers are the ones that move from class to class. When classes are too big they split it into two for some subjects and half of the students will go to another room. (They often split English classes.) My school has a little over 1,000 students and many students come from surrounding villages. I have a good school meaning that the director does not take bribes from teachers so that he will give them more classes. (The more classes you teach, the more you get paid.) And the teachers do not take bribes from students to get higher marks. Both of these are incredibly common practices. Like my host mom, Leyla said, “In America you pay to learn. Here, you pay NOT to learn.” It’s discouraging but there are people who don’t accept these kinds of bribes and my school is one of them. My school is also divided into two sections. One section teaches in Azerbaijani and the other section in Russian. There are two shifts: one in the morning for students between 5th and 11th form and the second for 1st to 4th forms. I only teach during the first shift which starts at 8 and ends around 2. The second shift starts around 1. I teach between three and five classes a day. I usually finish around one. Then I go home, wait for my host grandma to finish making lunch and my host sister and host mom to come home and eat around 1:45, have tea, then go to my conversation clubs at either 3 or 4. I have four conversation clubs: 5th form, 6th/7th form, 8th form, and 9th and up forms which meet for about two hours every week. Most of them we review and play games that will improve their English skills. I’m starting to evolve them into something else though. For example, I’m trying to make a movie with my 8th form kids and now that the weather is getting better, I’m taking my 5th form kids outside to play games. My little bit of glowing light are my 9th form and up kids. They make me feel like what I’m doing is worthwhile. They’re some good kids and have a lot of promise. It’s when I’m teaching them, I remember why I’m here and that yes, in time, I will (Inshallah- God willing) make a difference for someone.