One week of classes remaining

One week to go and my first academic year as a Peace Corps Volunteer will conclude. Then I get to kick off a month of camp in June! That’s irony, not really excitement, by the way. Still, it’s another milestone in this interesting journey that I’m on.

What I’ve learned along the way so far:

I’m not much of a teacher. At least not when it comes to English. I suppose the students may have gleaned a nugget of knowledge from me on occasion, but I really don’t feel like I did all that much for them. Granted, sometimes that was due to being unable to control the circumstances, but it still stinks. I have a plan for what I’d like to try to do next year, and I hope it will be more successful. Rather, I hope it will feel more successful. Nothing makes you second guess yourself quite as much as watching all your students speak less and less English in class every day…and start speaking more and more Russian (in a Kazakh gymnasium!).

In spite of everything, I have had some recent successes. And those successes came in a most unanticipated form. All my recent successes in engaging students and encouraging them to speak English have come from Uno. Yes, Uno. That perennial favorite card game with a little Spanish language flavor. All my students (7-10 grade) love it. Absolutely love the game. We hit a slight snag early on where one of our school rules (no playing cards during school hours) threatened to torpedo the whole thing. However, when my reaction to said snag was nothing short of white-hot rage, the problem seemed to disappear in a hurry. Seriously, I’m normally pretty laid back. Being too laid back has probably been a bigger problem for me than anything here. But you even think about trying to stop the only thing that the students have responded to in the last six months and you just stepped between a bear cub and its very big, angry momma.

Speaking of mothers, I’m sure mine is reading this and freaking out a little bit about me losing my temper. Rest assured, mom, that it was quite controlled and I calmly stated my point of view in a very cool manner. Also, I learned that not all cultural differences are so bad. In this particular instance I could have totally flipped a switch and it would have been acceptable. Strange but true.

Another upside to all this is that I believe it shows that I’m finally integrating to the point that I understand the rules and know when it’s OK to talk loudly in a way that would be seen as anger in America. The downside is I’ll have to unlearn that before I go back!

So back to Uno, glorious Uno. The vocabulary you need to play the game is simple. There are a few new words that get added in, but all in all it’s not vocab intensive. Incidentally, the words that are new are both card game specific and always forgotten by the students. I don’t know how many times I’ve given the the verb “to shuffle” and the gerund “shuffling” – also surprised that I know what a gerund is now – only to have it forgotten and replace with the motion and attempts at shuffle sound effects. It’s pretty funny actually. None of them can shuffle and bridge the cards, either. They think it’s the coolest thing. I could probably do a whole lesson on shuffling cards!

The first time we played it was chaotic – lots of shouting in Kazakh and Russian and a ton of gesturing to go with it. That’s OK. Learn how to play first. Then comes the fun. New rule – if you speak in Kazakh or Russian you must draw a card. You’d be amazed how quickly the room got quiet. And equally amazed how quickly they started trying to speak in English. Then, my students are quite clever, they insisted that I play using a no speaking English rule. I can only speak Russian and Kazakh. How handy is that?

So there you have it. What could have been a year of horrible attempts at teaching has been saved at the last minute by a simple card game. This place is always full of surprises.