The Beginning of Goodbye

Today I am finally admitting that the massive allergies I've had lately have just devolved into a cold.  I am stating my apologies in advance if I am not the most coherent as my head is a bit cloudy.  However, as I have just three weeks left in Peace Corps, I feel that I should blog as much as I can while I am still here. 

In English class I discovered that three of the mothers in my Monday class are also sick so something must be going around.  I detest starting summer out with a cold, but it seems that I have no choice.  After having lots of rainy and cold days it's finally turned hot and each day seems to be getting steadily hotter.  Over the weekend temps were in the low 90's. It feels wrong to be sitting in my apartment sipping tea, but I am hoping if I lay low I will recover faster!

Doamna Horonica calls roll for 12D for the last time

Last Friday was the last official day of school for the 12th graders.  This week they start their Baccalaureate exams.  Friday morning, my school had a promotion ceremony, closing four years of classes for the form teachers with their classes.  It's quite a sweet ceremony. Awards are given to top students and each form teacher gives a short speech and then calls attendance from their catalog for the last time.  One teacher couldn't even make it through her whole class list, she got so emotional.   After all the attendance is called, the president of the 12th grade hands the key of the school over to the 11th grade class president.  All the students are then wished lots of luck on their exams and  everyone drinks a glass champagne.

The interesting thing is that I only saw a handful of parents at this event (this is the closest thing to graduation in Romanian high schools).  While this event is on a work day morning, to me, this emphasizes the strong bond between form teachers and their classes.  It was sweet to see form teachers have this moment with their classes.  This also got me thinking about the closing of my time in Romania.  I have already said goodbye to 2/3 of my classes and while I have not been emotional at all, I imagine on my final day I might be.

The interesting thing about my role here is that I have such a tiny amount of interaction with my students each week.  To them, I am just someone they see one hour a week, one of eighteen different teachers they have.  However for me, my students have been my world for two years.  They have consumed my thoughts and been the cause of great joy, overwhelming sadness and frustration.  In the end, I wish I could have had more time with them and that I felt like a made a difference to them.

Trying to Complete the Cirle

As I mentioned in previous posts, I am coming to the end of the school year.  It feels odd to be winding down the school year with still a month left of service.  Next week my remaining classes will be taking tests so I won't be meeting with them.  I will have one final week with my 10th graders the following week and then I'll be done.  I am trying to make each day count and do a few new things with my students.  

A few weeks ago I assigned a project to one of my 10th grade classes.  I still needed to check their reading and speaking skills before giving them their final grades and I decided to try to be creative about the manner in which I would do this.  Over the course of my time here I have collected quite a few postcards to surround the United States map in my classroom (thank you to Mom and Dad, Aunt Ginny, Simone, Elizabeth, Vicki, Ona and everyone else for sending them). I let all my students choose one of those postcards and then asked them to prepare posters to present to the class about the subject of their postcard.

The class did a great job sharing a little bit about the US cities and states on their cards.  My favorite was the Chicago poster with drawings of hot dogs and deep-dish pizza on it.

So my classroom is now adorned with some lovely posters that I can enjoy for at least another week, but only after I assured them that I would give them back at the end of the year because they wanted to keep their postcards as an amintire, keepsake, of me. They kill me with their sweetness.

Wednesday

Now that regular classes are over for the 12th graders my Wednesdays are different.  I teach a class of 10th graders at 9:00am and then now have a giant window in my schedule where I used to teach three classes of 12th graders.  

Today I spent a couple more hours in my classroom after teaching to finish grading the final English quiz for two of my 11th grade classes and figuring out their final grades. Next week is last week of regular classes for 11th graders before they start practicum (a month of classes in their profile subject) so next week will mean more goodbyes for me.  For the final question on the quiz I asked students to share some of what they learned in my classes during the past two years. Here are some of the responses I got:

"...she learned us to be quiet and to speack English."
"She gave me a lot of homeworks and this helped me to improve my English writing and reading."
"She is fool of life."
That last one is full of life, I swear.

After finishing averaging grades, I came home and made salsa to bring to some of the mothers at the Foundation.  A few weeks ago I gifted extra seeds that I had left over from planting herbs on my balcony to one of the mothers.  One of the seed packets was cilantro and she asked me what it could be used for so I made salsa to show one use.  Romanian food is not at all spicy so I warned everyone before I shared it.  The responses were pretty awesome.  Everyone generally liked it, but they were a bit overwhelmed by what, for Americans, was very, very mild salsa.  Angela told me she might make it in the winter to warm up instead of making a fire in the fireplace.

While the mothers and I were tasting salsa my dear students were teaching the kids English class in the other room.  Adelina and Oana took over my English kids classes in April and have been going steady since!  They are doing a great job and as you can see the kids love them.

Sustain

The dictionary defines the word sustain in three ways: 1) to give support or relief to, 2) to supply with sustenance: nourish, 3) keep up, prolong. As my time in Romania grows short I have started to think more about how the work I have started can continue. I don't worry about my students in the high school; their English education will continue. However, I am trying to figure out how to sustain my work with the foundation. This is especially significant as the Peace Corps presence in Romania comes to an end and there will be no more Peace Corps volunteers in my community.

I have been working on a plan to transition my classes at the foundation to some of my high school students. I want to encourage the spirit of volunteering in my community. While I am still in Romania, I can share information and help them practice lesson creating and teaching. Next year the program would become their own, in the hope that they may help it grow and flourish.

Today we held an additional meeting with my students and Angela and Saskia, who run the foundation, to discuss this plan. My students observed part of my class with the younger kids.  Everyone is on board to start this project. Next week I'll meet with my students and we will create a lesson to teach together. I will also start to transition some of my teaching resources to them. After Easter vacation, while I am at my Peace Corps 'Close of Service Conference,' my students will have an opportunity to teach on their own. After I return from the conference we can continue to work together until they feel comfortable teaching on their own.

While this plan is still in its infancy, I feel excited about the possibility of it working.  I hope to spending the next three months working to get this plan to come into fruition for the benefit of the foundation and my students, both in high school and at the center.

Breaking My Rules

As a teacher, I have been conscious of playing favorites.  When I was a student, I remember being acutely aware of teachers who had favorites.  I have been on both sides of that equation; I had teachers that I knew liked me and other teachers that I knew didn't like me.  I can remember being in elementary school in class with a teacher that didn't like me and trying so hard to try to figure what I could do to change that.  Becoming a teacher, I have really tried to make sure that all my students feel that I like them.  I think it's human nature to have favorites.  I definitely have some favorite classes and students, but I try to be fair in the classroom. I give grades based on ability and effort, nothing more. Trying not to have favorites has effected how I do things, I haven't done many activities with my students outside of class because I can't quite be fair about it.  About 70% of my students commute to school and have to take buses or trains right after school so I haven't thought it fair to make activities that not everyone could attend.  

However, this weekend I made an exception to my rule.  I have a number of students who live in the dorms at my school from the Republic of Moldova. While I have a lot of students who stay in the dorms Sunday night to Friday morning, students from Moldova don't have the ability to go home on the weekend (it's too far away).  Our school cafeteria also isn't open on the weekend so they have to cook on a hot pot in their room. Thus I decided they needed some warm baked goods. Also, a few weeks ago there was a schedule change in school so I had to stop teaching one of my twelfth grade classes so technically I am not their teacher anymore!

I was excited to have the girls over for a mini-tea party, but we actually had an amazingly beautiful day so at the last minute I made ginger lemonade instead.  I had made scones and banana bread ahead of time and together we made chocolate chip cookies.  We had a great afternoon sharing recipes, favorite music, and plans for the future.  Also, I sent them home with a giant packet of goodies to share with the other students when they return back to the dorms tonight.

Carolina and Doina

My Life: Report, Party, Report

I haven't had too much to blog about recently.  Last weekend I spent a lot of time writing the report for the Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) Annual Survey.  Each year the co-chairs of the committee send a survey out to all the volunteers in the country to get feedback about their service.  This information is then presented to Peace Corps Romania staff at one of the VAC meetings.  This year, as one of the co-chairs, I have been weighing through the data and making all sort of bar graphs and pie charts.  To be honest, I enjoy being able to deal with easy things like number and percentages.  I love having definitive answers unlike teaching, where it seems there is never a clear-cut answer.

After finishing the report I then looked to the week ahead which included Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day I had parties in the three 11th grade classes I teach on Tuesdays.  I especially enjoyed the parties in 11A and 11B as this is the second year I am teaching those classes and I have gotten to know them quite well.

11A

Dancing in 11A

11B giving Violeta a giant valentine they made he

Pingino!  (Yes, it's really the bunny hop)

Group hug!

As the week concluded I realized that in the midst of celebrating I had procrastinated on the Volunteer Report File which is due on Monday so I am headed back to the computer this weekend.  The Volunteer Report File is a document that each volunteer must fill out around the world each trimester showing their activities and how many host country nationals.  It can be a little daunting the first time as you count the number of students in each class and activity, but as I realize I only have a couple more to do I am feeling more hopeful.

Snow and School Celebrations

Snow finally started falling in Romania during our last week of school before winter break.   It was nice to get a little bit of white before the holidays set in.  Although, most afternoons it warmed up so that most of the snow melted away.  I did have a good view on my walk back from visiting the Catholic kindergarten last week. I cut through the park which was quite deserted.

snow in the park

During the final week of school, my school held their traditional carol (collinde) singing.  A few teachers get groups of students to perform.  This year's event was smaller than last year, we had just two groups sing and one group perform traditional dances.  As it was explained to me, carol sings are a traditional way for students to celebrate the start of the holiday season and to thank the teachers.

Group #1 - from 13th grade

Group #2

Four of the five boys in the dancing group are in one of my tenth grade classes and one of the girls in one of my eleventh grade classes. 

It was great to see some of my students performing traditional dances. I took a couple videos, but unfortunately I can only get one to upload to this post.  Here is a short clip of the goat dance.

My school has challenges when it comes to having events; we do not have anything close to an auditorium. We have a space that can maybe fit 1/5 of the school which has over 1,200 students and 100 staff members. Thus when events are held late in the afternoon; most students choose to leave rather than stay for events; some teachers also choose to leave.

 

the audience

To me, it's always depressing because very few people get to see our students perform; especially their peers.  I see so few opportunities to showcase their talents or passions.  I think of all the high school assemblies, concerts and events I attended growing up.  I loved seeing my peers perform and was always instilled with such pride with what my classmates could do.  I wish my students here could experience some of that.  This being said, I believe some Romanian schools do have lots of events, but industrial schools like mine do not.

This and That

the D building at school, where my classroom is

I am finding the second year of teaching a bit easier, but there are some moments that cause me to pause and think, "What on earth am I doing?" One of those moments happened today, at the end of a class of eleventh graders.  I am now in the second year of teaching this class.  At the end of the class, as the students filed out one of the girls looked at me and said, "Hello!" The worst part is she wasn't even being flippant, she really just thought she was saying "Goodbye!"  As they went out the door one of her friends explained the error to her and she seemed surprised.  Sigh.

This year I am teaching three new tenth grades.  I think I enjoy tenth graders the most even though they are the most challenging for me.  It strikes me that my tenth graders still have a little bit of child in them.  I have found that my eleventh and twelfth graders are more weighed down by the world.  In tenth grade, students are still willing to play games and quite frankly, still have fun. This year I decided to do something a little different in my tenth grade classes; I let all my students choose English names.  This is common in American foreign language classes, but not in Romania.  I told students that they could choose any English name, but that it was optional.  In my first class, the girls did not want names, but I loved the boys choices.  I didn't give the boys any ideas; these are their choices, in the order they chose them.

• Jimmy Carter
• Eminem
• Brad Pitt
• James Bond
• Jean-Claude Van Damme
• Bruce Lee

I love the eclectic nature.  Every time I start the class and ask if Jimmy Carter is here, I can't help but laugh.

Smaller

This year I have a new classroom which is smaller than my previous one.  I have much better seating for my students, the desks I had last year were terrible and not really built for high school students.  I moved all my "decor" from the previous room so it feels homey.  It was a little hard to try to get the whole room, but here are a couple snaps.

Sadly, the room also works better because all my classes have less students than last year.  Some students have quit school, others have transferred, while others have moved to join their parents in other countries.  As I created my grade books for this year it was sad to see all the students I have lost in less than a year.  One of the now 11th grade classes is down from 30 students last year to 24 students; a now 12th grade is down from 24 students to just 17 this year.  I hope to do what I can during the year to keep them engaged in my little bit of their school experience.  I only see each of my students for one hour a week, but it's a reminder to me to try to keep classes as enjoyable as possible for my students.