Russia Week (Six): Teaching ... and Learning

It's just within the realm of possibility that the kids at School No. 72 in Yemar Bay were not the most intelligent, talented, and perceptive kids in the universe. I'm willing to hear arguments. I suppose it's possible that I'm easily impressed. It's conceivable that kids at all schools around the world possess the same array of talents, skills, and smarts that these kids had, and I am (and was) simply unfamiliar with the phenomenon. But ... it's doubtful. 

The fact is every one of these kids impressed the shoes off me, and I was in awe of their talent, their curiosity, their charm. Even the badly-behaved kids that sat and cracked jokes in the back of the classroom, I thought, had a charisma, an energy, that I had never seen before. I liked those trouble-makers as much as I did those who sat attentively up front.

My awe came quickly. Indeed, I had only been in Yemar Bar — assigned to this beachfront community near the end of our training — for a couple weeks when, one late October evening in 1995, I was invited by the school's Literature teacher (teaching what we would have called "English," but it wasn't, there, called "Russian") to attend a special "Литературный вечер," or "Literary Evening," in her classroom. When I got there, around 7 pm, there were about 20 kids in the room, and several parents, and the room was lit only by candlelight. I think there were cookies and tea, and then we all sat. The theme of the evening was "Love," and all the kids had memorized poems and songs on the theme to present for the group. The winner, as I recall, was 5th grader Vlada, who recited a Pushkin poem from memory with an emotion and power far far beyond her years. It was powerful, magical stuff, by candlelight, in this Russian schoolroom on a cold fall evening, and I remember being incredibly grateful to have been invited, and thinking, "oh, I may be over my head here."

Because as much as I loved those kids — and I did, powerfully, each and every one of them — I was a terrible, terrible teacher, in constant fear that I was failing them. I think I managed to come out ahead at the end of the day because of my engagement in the community, because of my hosting, organizing, and participating in several special holidays and celebrations at the school (more on Halloween and Meet Americans Day another time), and simply by exposing everyone in Yemar to a living/breathing American. (Since for many of them their exposure to Americans had been limited to Hollywood and the pop music industry, I used to joke that, before me, they thought all Americans were intellectual, talented, and charismatic, and I did a good job at disabusing them of that).

Indeed, on the subject of them being exposed to an American in person ... I remember one evening being at a party in a teacher's apartment when a colleague started crying — crying — that she had grown up dreaming of meeting an American one day ... and now her son had one for a teacher. (Referring to me). Later, another teacher, Natalya, one of my best friends, told me that, when she was growing up in Siberia and only hearing stories about Americans landing on the moon or making remarkable scientific breakthroughs, she had thought of us as a race of super-men and women, and felt ... inferior, and sad. Again, meeting me cleared up her feelings of inferiority quickly. 

In any event, while I did okay as a cultural representative and member of the community, as a teacher I was terrible. I had had no real experience teaching before I went to Russia, and the "training" we received for a couple months in Artyom was less-than-entirely-helpful. Indeed, one day during training the Peace Corps' RFE second-in-command came for a visit and was horrified at what she saw. She gathered us in a group and read us the riot act, threatening to send us all home if we didn't improve. We sort of did — certainly nobody was sent home — but by the skin of our teeth. One day during training, for example, I had to lesson plan, knowing that the teacher-trainer would be sitting in on my lesson the next day, and somehow — somehow — I came up with a genuinely inspired lesson about moods and personalities (happy, sad, curious, etc.), complete with opportunities for the kids to draw on the board and everything you'd want for one 45-minute lesson. It was great. And when the teacher-trainer came to watch the lesson, he nodded, impressed, 15 minutes in, completely satisfied, and left. I had come up with nothing as creative for any lesson before that, and never (never!) did after that, but somehow, with the pressure ratcheted up, I was able to vomit up something satisfactory to eke past the moment.

During training, trying to understand this stupid language

In any event, we got almost no training in classroom management —the assumption seems to have been that kids would always sit patiently, quietly, while your boring lessons gave them nothing to work on. I wasn't taught how to create a curriculum (what, exactly, does one start with?), how to teach without books (we only had books for 5th graders my first year -- and nothing for the teenagers in my classes), how to create lessons that engaged those with limited language skills without boring those whose skills were much more advanced (and vice-versa), and so on and so on. 

As a result, during my two years in Yemar, I certainly felt I was letting those amazing kids (and their parents) down, jumping from one language skill one day to another the next, settling desperately for trying to pacify the kids far too often with games of hang-man, struggling to keep everyone on task and interested ... and coming home each and every day for two years a wreck.

One of the few saving graces is that I wasn't alone in my frustration. While some of my fellow volunteers, may have been better prepared (either technically or emotionally, or both) for this than I was, and able to achieve more, many weren't, and get-togethers with friends in that latter group were inevitably restorative. My friend Maria, for instance, among other challenges, had one large male student —she was short and small — who would get up in the middle of her class, walk up to the chalkboard as she was writing on it, and follow her, erasing everything she had just written. Her only available response was "please, Slava, don't do that," which ... did not really achieve much.

One day, late in the first year, fellow volunteer Lynda — the only other Peace Corps volunteer with me in Yemar — sat in on one of my classes (she was an ecologist, and thus spared the kind of day-to-day teaching horrors I endured). Midway through the lesson I became so frustrated and overwhelmed that I had to walk out of the class into the hallway to calm down. While I was out, Lynda started reading the kids the riot act, chastising them for being out of control and, among other things, repeatedly referring to me with the informal pronoun instead of the formal pronoun. By the time I came back in, the class was cowed and docile. How embarrassing!

And lesson-planning was a nightly source of stress. In this I felt so at sea, and so ill-prepared by the Peace Corps, that I spent most of the first year simply retreating into the books I had snagged from the Peace Corps library, from the time I got home at 2 pm until shortly bedtime at 10:30, often reading a good 7-8 books a week. (I kept a list, which I still have somewhere). Then I would try to rack my brain quickly to think of something to do the next day. 

Grading was a real problem too. How could I grade kids for their failure to pick up language skills I hadn't effectively taught? But I couldn't give them all 5s — that would be unfair to those kids who were paying attention, worked hard, and were eager to learn. 

I lived with a very real pit in my stomach for almost all of the two years I was there.

Things at one point got so bad that, after the first year ended, I went to the Peace Corps RFE administration and said they should send me home. I was doing a terrible job, I said, and failing everybody, and all the kids in Yemar would be better off if I were sent home. Director Ken Hill almost laughed at me (kindly), then pulled me aside and pointed out that the teaching volunteers had only been put in places where they would not be replacing anybody, so any positive impact I had would be better than none. More importantly, he said, the Peace Corps had three primary mission goals: The first was imparting technical skills — in my case, teaching English — but, he confided, that was by far the least important of the three. The second was to teach the host-country nationals (in this case, the Russians) about America. And the third was to take what I learned in that country, and take it back to America to share at home. Those latter two were the goals that really mattered, and there was no doubt I was doing just fine at them.

That actually did help, and as I continued to struggle in the second year I reminded myself of his explanation repeatedly. And, indeed, as I mentioned previously, I did a good job, I think, at not only organizing and participating in various school celebrations and activities that meant a great deal to the kids, but in fact actually helping a few kids with their English, here and there. Indeed, midway through the first year I was asked to help with the 5th grade "Gymnasium" English class that had been taught by Marina Kanunnikova, a university English instructor (whose daughter, Lyuba, was in the class). For the rest of that first year Marina would walk the kids through the activities in the textbook and drill them on new language skills, and I would pitch in here and there, and to add fun games and songs ("The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" was a smash, as was the English-language paper fortune teller). That class, because they all spoke good English, and because Marina was in the room to help with discipline, and because they had a textbook to follow, was wonderful. In the second year, Marina wasn't able to teach, and I took it over, and those 3-4 hours a week were ... well, they weren't even work. Those hours were a joy, a pleasure, both because those kids were freaking amazing, and because I was feeling ... useful.

Itsy-Bitsy-Spidering

5th/6th graders Irina and Sasha

Also 5th and 6th graders Vlada (the Literary Evening star), Katya, and Lyuba Kanunnikova.
Amazing kids, all of them

There my native language skills, natural enthusiasm, and joy at working with those kids were allowed to come into play, and I'm proud of what I achieved with them.

As for the other classes, with older kids .... I don't know. I've managed to stay in touch with an ever-shrinking number of them over the years, and they continue to insist that I was popular and successful. Certainly, I tried, but ... the guilt gnaws at me more with them, and I think I could have done better, for those talented, smart, perceptive kids. They deserved the best, and I don't think they got it from me. But maybe that's sort of a lesson of life, no? You do the best you can.

Olga, Katya, and Oksana. Bright and fun.

Sisters Lena and Olga. Smart as whips.

Goofing around at prom.

Preparing for a "Spektakl" at the school. They danced to "Wannabe" -- the first time I ever heard it, and I smugly rolled my eyes at the pop music that was popular in Russia and never anywhere else. (As always, teenagers are way ahead of their teachers in knowing what's hip). My good friend Natalya, their homeroom teacher, is on the left.

The older kids. Rock stars, each and every one of them.
Olga, in the middle, holding the grade book. 

So my formal successes at School 72 came primarily from that 5th-and-then-6th grade class, and the celebrations/holidays I organized at the school. There were also, I have no doubt, some informal successes based on my personality and availability, and the excitement I was able to convey at working with those astounding young men and women. It was an honor, and ... well, I've called my two years there the best and most important of my life, and I believe it.

On the other hand, the stress nightmares about me realizing at 7:30 in the morning that I have six hours of classes ahead of me and nothing planned, or discovering I still have 18 months of teaching left ahead of me, finally ended about five years after I got home. It was hard. 

Moral of the Story: I miss the kids, I miss my friends, and ... especially in the current situation, I can only hope they're all ok and ... that the day will come we can meet again. They were, are, and always will be special to me.

I mean, I didn't say I was unpopular.