Independence

I have been building up my independence in small increments. The first stage in this process was discovering how little independence I really had, at the start. When I went for a walk in the fields and was gone for not much more than an hour, Paata and one of the neighbors came looking for me, worried that I had gotten lost. And when I mentioned for the first time that I might like to go into town, it turned into a group expedition that included a neighboring household as well as our own (and didn’t end up going until evening, after all the stores were already closed).

So, I thought, I’ll have to start small. When Paata had to stay at school for a meeting after our last class one day, I suggested that I could walk home myself. Well, sure, why not? Then, when he was going into town last Saturday morning, I asked if I could come along, just to wander around and see the city in the daytime, and maybe get on the internet. We took the marshutka (minibus) together both going and coming, but other than that I was on my own. Incidentally, it was on this trip that I got my hands on a deck of playing cards, with which we have been teaching each other Georgian and American card games at home.

Finally, on Thursday, I was able to make an entirely independent trip into town. Fortunately, since we live on the main road connecting Zugdidi with most of the rest of the country, almost any passing marshutka will be going the right way. My only real hitch had to do with the Georgian concept of time. For the return trip, I bought a ticket for a marshutka that I was told (in German, which has actually come in handy several times in communicating with strangers) would leave in half an hour. I returned promptly at the appointed time, got on, and then sat for almost another half an hour while the driver waited for more customers to fill the bus. Still, I suppose it’s always better to be early and have to wait than to be late, though I suspect that many Georgians would hesitate to agree with me.

I should probably explain why independence, and particularly the ability to get into town when I want to, is so important. Tsaishi is a lovely village in many respects, but aside from houses and the school, there’s very little here. There used to be a sort of village center, with stores, a barbershop, and a few other small businesses, but these were all completely destroyed in fighting in the early ‘90s, and none of them have been rebuilt (the same is true of a hotel that was built for people coming to visit the local hot springs). This part of the village is full of crumbling foundations, and feels almost like a ghost town. The closest thing the village has to stores is the occasional shack by the side of the road, no bigger than the size of an outhouse, with an old woman sitting inside who sells bread, rice, canned foods, and a couple household products. In addition, no one I know has internet, and there’s none at the school (the school doesn’t even have water at the moment, though I think that this, along with the lack of light bulbs, is due to the summer renovations and may eventually change). All things considered, then, if I ever want to buy something, use the internet, eat out, use an actual toilet (not really a priority, but I figured I’d include it in the list), or meet up with a fellow native English speaker, Zugdidi is the place to go.

Now while I’m writing, I should also say something about teaching, since that is primarily what I’m here to do, after all. I have 21 45-minute class periods each week, in all the grades from 3^rd to 12^th, and I’m dividing my time working with Paata and with the other English teacher, Sopho. Once a week I’ll go help in a 3^rd grade class in Tsatskhvi, the next village over.

The classes, and the students in them, are a real mixed bag. The 10^th grade, for example, is probably the best in terms of their engagement in learning, while the 11^th grade is probably the worst. Within each class, there is a very wide range of competence, which makes it difficult to teach at an appropriate level for all the students. Some students are significantly behind the majority of their classmates, but because everyone in any given grade has to study the curriculum for that grade, these students seem destined to fall farther and farther behind every year, unless they get the kind of extra help that the school really isn’t in a position to give. Some of them clearly have learning disabilities and other special needs, but the system is completely incapable of giving them the accommodations they need. Unfortunately, this isn’t my area of expertise, and there’s really not much that I can do, so I’m following the other teachers’ lead in basically letting them fail and focusing on the students who can actually do the work and learn the material that they’re supposed to. I have to invest my time and energy where I actually have a chance of making a difference.

In each class, we mostly follow the textbook, making changes where we see fit (or where, for example, we can’t do a listening exercise because we don’t have the tape, and we don’t know where the teacher’s book is that has the transcript). Some of the textbook material is pretty good, but there are a number of pieces I’ve found that seemed too artificial or contrived to be of much use, and I’ve tried to skip over these whenever possible. Once I get a little more familiar with the structure of the classes and have a better idea of what parts of the curriculum are actually required, I hope to be able to introduce some more activities that encourage the students to be creative and spontaneous, especially in speaking. I know that this will be an uphill battle, though, since for most of the students speaking is one of the things that they find most difficult in English. Given that most of them have never even met a native English speaker, I’m actually impressed that some of them can speak as well as they do (and I’m very impressed by teachers like Paata and Sopho, who have had very little contact themselves with native speakers).

I think I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’ll certainly write more about how my classroom adventures proceed in the weeks and months ahead.

P.S. I've finally gotten my pictures to be visible to everyone (look over on the right)! You can also see them here.