Lessons

As I write this entry hail is pounding furiously against the windows of my room (and on anyone/thing unlucky enough to be caught outside). I think I now know exactly what it would be like to live inside a rainstick. Every few minutes a bolt of lightning contributes its lagged crash to the cacophony. So much for going to the pool today...

We (the students from Swarthmore and William & Mary) just wrapped up our weekly check-in meeting with Sezam. We use these meetings to talk about what's going well, share any problems we're encountering, and collectively some up with possible solutions. The general consensus was that things are going well and a lot of the kinks from the first two weeks have been smoothed out. As for me, I am happy with how the students and I are getting to know each other better. Andrew and I have a great time talking with the kids both in and outside of school, and we have gotten better at predicting how our three classes will respond to different activities.

The kids are much more likely to try on their own to communicate in English than they were three weeks ago. This may just be because we no longer have translators in the classrooms, but I would like to believe that it is also because they are more confident. Truly, after watching us Americans struggle with Bosnian, they could not fail to feel better about their own proficiency in English. Their new favorite word to tease me with is tvrđava (fortress). Yes, that would be four consonants in a row. And no, not one of them is silent.

The only really serious problem we have run into with the kids is an increase in the amount of teasing going on, especially in our oldest classes. Since the majority, if not all, of this has been across genders rather than within, Andrew and I split up the class (guy group and girl group) at the end of the day on Tuesday to talk about it. After the discussions we asked them to write down their opinions of the class so far, what activities they liked and didn't like, and any suggestions they had. Our students "like when we lern new words", "hate to play football", "love play foodball", "like pizza", "hate when boys teez girls", "want to do more music" and most of all "HATE the game Honey I Love You". So, Andrew and I have started to do more music and activities that involve running around (but aren't football). Since the discussions and subsequent reformatting of our lessons, the classroom atmosphere has gotten a lot better. Musical chairs and a Scavenger Hunt were big hits, and could be used as incentives to complete a less intrinsically fun task (like translating song lyrics). If they knew that a Scavenger Hunt was coming up after a creative writing exercise, they spent less time resisting us and teasing each other.

Last weekend we all traveled to Mostar, a city about 3 1/2 hours south of Zenica. I was blown away by how beautiful it was. Cobblestone streets, white stone buildings and lots of lovely bridges over the Neretva river. And so old! A fortress in the nearby town Počitelj was built in the 1300s. Very very cool.

I wish I had some very very cool pictures to go along with this, but I stupidly did not bring a camera with me. So that's lesson #247 I've learned on this trip: always bring a camera. It's right up there with #6: some bathrooms are BYOTP, and #51: it is physically impossible to go through a full day of teaching without getting a) chalk, b) glue, c) glitter, d) marker, or e) all of the above... all over one's pants. Live and learn, right?

Happy 4th Everyone; I hope your fireworks don't get interrupted by a hailstorm.