April 25, 2012

More gray skies and light sprinkles as I walked to the UNESCO Building this morning wearing my resplendent silk dress that Maryam had sewn in such a hurry. Aziza was late again with the laptop so I busied myself putting together the handouts participants were to receive today and to tidy up the tables behind me. This group of teachers seemed to be up-to-date on what technology is as they had brought in laptops, digital cameras and even one camcorder not to mention the ubiquitous cell phone used to take even more photos. Since it was the last day, they were pairing up or forming groups with different people to insure they had photographs of everyone.

I went over the evaluations from the previous day and made the necessary announcements before yielding the floor to Ruth. She had made the same crappy, hard to read photocopies she had used at the American Corner even though I had offered to get better ones. The teachers could barely follow along since they could barely make out what was printed on the page. This crowd wasn’t as enthusiastic at the one at the AC and no one wanted to volunteer to lead the songs. Due to her age and weight, Ruth is not able to perform the actions the songs are requesting the students, children in this case, to do. Without a vivacious, energetic and charismatic leader, the songs fall flat. I tried them to get into doing the “Hokey Pokey” song with little better results. I distributed the booklet with children’s songs I had found online, and which Multikid had copied properly, along with the CD to accompany the songs. Hopefully, as I suggested, they could practice at home with their families before presenting the songs in the classroom so they’d feel more confident leading them.

It was then time for lunch next door as the sprinkles continued. Ruth had departed earlier to eat at the F1 Café as she distrusts the local eateries. Transportation to Gharm on Friday was confirmed and I now need to think of what we’ll be presenting there where we’ll have both teachers and students to cater to.

Once back from lunch, I had a PowerPoint presentation to remind them of the steps needed to write a proper lesson plan as they were expected to write one that incorporated the perceptual styles we had discussed and also include interactive activities similar to the ones we had engaged in. I learned from Latofat that teachers are required to write lesson plans for the entire year in the month of August thus making it a loathsome task. Some of the teachers had never received proper training on lesson planning until they went for their practicum or attended some professional development course offered by some NGO or another. I gave them a template to include the basic points of their lesson, the topic of which they had chosen from a list, and asked them to then transfer the information to flip chart paper so they could be displayed around the room as a visual gallery for everyone to peruse.

You’d have thought I’d asked them to write their dissertation in just one hour as they sat there practically paralyzed with what could be read as fear. Then came the barrage of questions about the different components of the lesson plan and what should be included or could be left out. I knew that many of them could barely read in English, but of course, their writing skills were even more dismal. Ruth offered help and I walked around too trying to nudge them to finish as quickly as possible so everyone had a chance to walk around the room and add comments and suggestions to their lesson plan. One of the best teachers in the class, in terms of fluency, used up three pages to create her lesson plan and was done very quickly while others were still writing the objective for theirs.

I needed to interrupt the lesson plan writing activity to insure they completed the evaluation for all three days of the conference. The women seemed to have advantage when it came to both reading and writing as Ruth and I had to provide them with little help, but the men were not even starting to write and instead focus on each word trying to divine its meaning without having to ask. When they were finally done and lessons were up on the walls, I asked them to write notes commenting on what was good, what could be improved or something they would add to make it better. Someone suggested that they used the post-it notes we had given them on the first day so as not to mar the plans. When I saw that the most common comment was “Good”, I interrupted to say that was a meaningless comment and not helpful to the writer in any manner.

We never got to complete the gallery walk as Tahmina came in with a box of Oxford Illustrated Dictionary to give to each participant and she first gave a short speech full of pronunciation mistakes and delivered in that flat, lifeless way she has of speaking as if she wished to be somewhere else. I was on the verge of collapsing from three days of standing on my feet for more than seven hours at a stretch and couldn’t wait to take the teachers to the new library and be done with my duties. Tahmina went on about the Fulbright program and I asked to be excused so I could get started.

Only a handful of the teachers decided to follow me and luckily we could all fit into the only elevator working at the brand new building which, although grand in design, lacks enough lighting, signage or warmth. We found the American Corner by purely guessing and saw Todjiddin and Mr. Sharipov, from Qurgonteppa and Khulob respectively, attending a workshop there for American Corner coordinators. I delivered the certificates to Bakhtyor, who wanted to know where I had been since ending the workshops in early March. He’d love to have me teach some classes there once the PedInst goes into recess for their tests. I promised to keep him informed.

I stopped to use the bathroom on my way out, but it was only a pit toilet with no toilet paper or water. I bought some flat bread to eat it with a chunk of cheese and some juice for dinner and collapsed on the sofa the minute I made it to my apartment. Elbek knocked on my door at five even though I had told him we’d not have any classes this week. I talked to him for a bit, but he realized I was practically out of it and left early.