Back to School

I am now in Ganja after traveling for 6 hours with the Caucus mountains on my right  and a very friendly Azeri English teacher on my left.  I arrived in Ganja and finally met Halima and her family and today I accompanied her to school.  Like in many parts of the world, the students here go to school for half a day.  They begin around 8:30am and finish at 1:00pm, another group of students then study from 1:00pm-6:00pm.  Halima's school has around 1,000 students and includes grades 1-12.  She works with grades 6-12.  Students wear a uniform and enter the school in a far more orderally and quiet manner than the students at most American schools.  I am introduced to the Principal, a couple teachers and then we make our way to Halima's first class.  Her first class is small, only 8 students, all girls. I wondered if classes were gender segregated, but Halima informed me that there are two boys in this class but they are not here today.  We are in a history classroom so there are pictures of war heros from Azerbaijan's recent war with Armenia (early 1990's), along with historic artifacts like water jugs, spinning wheels etc.  The students stay in this classroom for all their classes and the teachers move from room to room. The students are in 9th grade, around 15-16 yrs old.  The have a very basic level of English which they have been learning using a book heavily focused on grammar and vocab.  I have brought a book of pictures about Washington, DC which I share with the class. I talk about monuments, important buildings and a little history.  They let me know they know of two US presidents, George Bush and Barack Obama. 
After my mini-presentation they begin to ask me very typical questions for 15 year old girls, "Are you married or single?", "Can we see pictures of your child?"  I was just happy they felt comfortable enough to ask me questions in English.  They promised me that the next time I come to their class they will tell me the history about Ganja.....and their favorite Brazilian soap opera (this was a randomn piece of information I found out during our 40 minutes together, they like to watch Brazilian soap operas, having just finished watching Caminho das Indias, I am intrigued by this).

The second class I visited was that of another English teacher who was preparing students from grades 1-7 to participate in an English presentation on Friday. The students will be reciting poems, singing and acting in front of the entire school.  I liked that these students were doing a mixed age/grade presentation. It made for an interesting dyanmic between the students and the material they were presenting.  I helped a couple girls with their pronunciation and watched all the students rehearse for their big show. 

I love how easy it is for a teacher to feel right at home in a school on the other side of a planet.  It is that inate desire to teach, share and learn that allow educators to work anywhere with any student.