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I'm the thing that's not like the others.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Dec. 6 - Stop the world I wanna get off

The closer I get to going home, the less patience I have for the ridiculous things happening at school. Today, it was trying to hash out the next step of lessons for the gr. 10s. I want to work on letter sounds and pronounciation while I’m still here so they can learn what things are supposed to sound like. Co-teach thinks that they’ll learn that as they go. When I pointed out that many of our gr 9 and 12 students still can’t say things correctly, she caved. Then it was a battle to decide which sounds we should teach first. She wanted to start with combinations like ‘sh’ and ‘th’, while I thought it was more important to work on individual letter sounds.

Gr. 12 was a treat of its own. We’re working on composition and they don’t even know how to do an outline. In Georgian. So I go through the whole thing; topic sentence, main ideas, examples, while Co-teach translates. Then I gave them the topic and asked them to write an outline (in Georgian) and then their composition (in English). Many of them stared blankly and a couple started just writing in English. Co-teach asked me what I wanted, I said "Outline in Georgian, composition in English". I went through the instructions again, for the students, with Co-teach translating. Then they started writing their compositions in Georgian. So I went back to the board and showed them the outline. I told them this is what it should look like, it’s just NOTES! It’s not sentences. Then Co-teach says, "What are they writing in Georgian?" She didn’t understand what I wanted, but instead of asking, she just translated what she thought and we wasted the whole class with the kids doing the wrong thing. And you just know they’re not going to do the homework.

The power was still out when I got home. And the family was still out, too. Bebia’s been in Batumi since Saturday, so I had the house to myself. It would’ve been much more awsome if I’d had power. I used the last of my computer battery to check my e-mail, finished a book and had some food. The power came on just as the family got home.

I hung out downstairs with them, and helped HB1 with his English. HM wanted to try doing some veggies in the slow cooker, so I told her which ones and how to prep them. They came out really well, except that being Georgian, she had to cover them with coriander as soon as they were done. I’ve gotten really good at brushing excess leaves off of my food, so I enjoyed the veggies to their fullest.

Hammer called to chat. Since we were on the same flight here, we figure we’ll be on the same flight home. The name on her ticket is wrong too, so I gave her the name and number of the woman that I spoke to, to get it fixed. She also told me about something horrible that happened at her school, which is a frustratingly good example of typical Georgian apathy and lack of forethought. A gr 3 girl collapsed in the middle of class. Someone called the ambulance, which took 30 minutes to arrive. Upon arrival, the paramedics walked into the school and they had no equipment with them (even though they’d been told what happened) and on the way to the hospital, the girl died. Hammer’s really shaken up, with good reason. The girl had pre-existing heart problems, but still. If they’d just hurried, or been better prepared, she might not have died.

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