Today is my last day in Ganja. I am excited to explore Baku some more, but I will defintitely miss the quiantness of this smaller city. After one week I feel very comfortable walking around Ganja, I even showed my friend Aynur who to get to Halima's office yesterday. Yesterday and today I spent visiting classes. Today I was able to model a lesson for teachers at School #24. It was with the group of students I have seen the most since I have been here, but this time the two boys in the class actually showed up. These two boys, like many boys in schools all over the world, completely threw off the class dynamics. So today was the first time since I have been here that I had to get into "real" teacher mode and beef up my classroom management. It was fun. I am leaving Ganja filled with ideas about what I want to do with my students, how I want to improve as a teacher and where I want my careers as an educator to go. This has been like a mini sebatical for me, an experience I wish all teachers could have. I especially appreciate the international perspecitive towards education I have recieved during my time here. I believe that teachers here are fortunte to have visitors from the US and other parts of the world, mainly Europe visit their schools and provide workshops. They are looking to countries around the world with seemingly "good" education and asking for ways to improve their teachers, schools and overall education. I wish the US or DCPS would invite teacher trainers from Finland or Japan or Singapore to run professional development courses. Why are we not learning from the best? While there would be some cultural adjustments needed to be made for anytype of PD for US teachers, I guarantee US teachers would learn a lot or at least it would broaden their perspective of education.
Today is my last day in Ganja. I am excited to explore Baku some more, but I will defintitely miss the quiantness of this smaller city. After one week I feel very comfortable walking around Ganja, I even showed my friend Aynur who to get to Halima's office yesterday. Yesterday and today I spent visiting classes. Today I was able to model a lesson for teachers at School #24. It was with the group of students I have seen the most since I have been here, but this time the two boys in the class actually showed up. These two boys, like many boys in schools all over the world, completely threw off the class dynamics. So today was the first time since I have been here that I had to get into "real" teacher mode and beef up my classroom management. It was fun. I am leaving Ganja filled with ideas about what I want to do with my students, how I want to improve as a teacher and where I want my careers as an educator to go. This has been like a mini sebatical for me, an experience I wish all teachers could have. I especially appreciate the international perspecitive towards education I have recieved during my time here. I believe that teachers here are fortunte to have visitors from the US and other parts of the world, mainly Europe visit their schools and provide workshops. They are looking to countries around the world with seemingly "good" education and asking for ways to improve their teachers, schools and overall education. I wish the US or DCPS would invite teacher trainers from Finland or Japan or Singapore to run professional development courses. Why are we not learning from the best? While there would be some cultural adjustments needed to be made for anytype of PD for US teachers, I guarantee US teachers would learn a lot or at least it would broaden their perspective of education. 
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