14th September

14^th September

“There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors” Dune

While I may not have great access to the internet, I am able to get enough of the news to know that the world isn’t getting much nicer while I am hiding away in Kazakhstan, although at least Libya seems to be nearing an end.

I am a rather frustrated man these days, and I really need to work out how to stop it. Between the Kazakh school system, my local teaching counterparts, and Peace Corps bureaucracy; it seems the world is trying to make my life more difficult.

We finally have a template for a time-table, and, well, look for yourselves.

		Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
8.00-8.45	1	5v 5v			9a 9a
8.50-9.35	2	10a					9b
9.40-10.25	3	9a 9a					11b
10.35-11.20	4	9b			5b 11b		5b
11.30-12.15	5			5v 5v	10b 10b		10b 10b 10a
12.20-13.05	6				11a 11a		11a 11a
13.30-14.15	1				7a 7a		6b/7v
14.20-15.05	2			6b/ 7v/ 7b	8a 8a		7a 7a
15.10-15.55	3			6a 6a
16.05-16.50	4			5a 5a			5a 5a/7b
17.00-17.45	5			8b 8b			8a 8a
17.50-18.35	6	6a 6a					8b 8b

The different colours show the 3 different English teachers and their classes, which as you can see are often split in two. In fact, the policy in Kazakhstan is that if the class is over 20 students, it gets split whenever possible. Which in theory is great, as there are small class sizes, even in public schools, however, the extra teacher time is usually wasted as the teachers just read out of the text book to the children. I think it’s a lazy attempt at boosting classroom discipline, but really, keeping 20 kids in order isn’t difficult if you are a good teacher who makes interesting lessons. For me, it also means that it’s far harder for me to teach all of the children in the age groups I want, currently being 5^th, 9^th, 11^th- 5^th because they are cute and all of them are still very excited by everything, 9^th as they have a big test at the end of the year involving English (GCSE style), and 11^th as, for some of them (currently standing at 3) they also have a big English test if they choose English (A-level style).

But the biggest problem with the time-table is that I don’t work on Saturdays. This is designed so that I can visit other volunteers in the area and help with teacher workshops or community projects. The school was made aware of this; indeed, Jason’s school has made it so that there are no English lessons on Saturday for him. This means that I now have 2 free days during the week, with seemingly nothing to do! I can do all of the English clubs and lesson planning sessions on Mondays and Thursdays, so I am left with this extra time. I will possibly try and work at the 3^rd school in the area, maybe for an hour or two on Tuesdays, and, just see what crops up I guess.

And this is where the frustration stems from I think. I set high expectations for myself and others, and when obstacles are thrown in the way, it presents things that are out of my control, and therefore are frustrating. Finding out how to gain more control from my situation here in my current task, as well as learning to make my targets for others slightly easier to attain, at least early on.

On a more upbeat note, I just came back from the school’s (possibly) weekly disco. 50tenge, about 30p gets students access to the sports hall, playing all of their favourite pop drivel. It was fun though, and alongside football, its my way of interacting with the kids outside of the classroom. Its my experience that the ‘bad’ kids are often the sporty ones, who are bored with school and have too much energy. Making the English lessons more interesting and hands-on is my primary goal in helping them, but if they feel more comfortable around me, that has got to help as well. So we will see how this goes. I won’t be going to the disco every time though, as the music is terrible!