I returned from Azerbaijan just in time to conduct end of the year assessments and write report cards. In this flurry of educational paper work in the forefront of brain, my experiences in Azerbaijan truly felt like a dream. But thanks to social networking and Azerbaijan winnining the Eurovision Song Competition I was able to keep my time in the Land of Fire fresh in my thoughts.
Since I returned from Azerbaijan I think often about my time in the schools there, my time with Halima and her mother and sister and all the interesting and eye opening experiences I had. I believe that my time in Ganja will influence my work, my students and my career by focusing on aspects of language learning that are essential to thinking and living in another language. This was something I saw that was lacking in the English classrooms I visited in public schools there, but something that flourished in the private lessons I observed with Halima. While understanding the language needs of my students is at the core of my profession, I believe my time spent with students learning English in Azerbaijan has refreshed my sense of purpose and understanding of meaningful pedagogy for language students.
A more specific result of my time in Azerbaijan has been a frustrating search for how to create a forum for exchange of ideas, experiences and langauge learning with Halimas students. This has been and continues to be a difficult task since both Halima and I have had unsuccessful bouts with pen pal programs. So we are now trying to collaborate on how to best get our students to connect and stay connected despite a large difference in access to technology and more importantly age......I teach elementary school and she works with middle and high school students. We have been thinking about a mix of letter writing, tweeting, skyping, journaling etc, but are trying to figure out the best way to deal with the age difference. This is a work in progress but I look to where we might go with this.
