Today was the busiest day I've had as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and it feels good. I feel like I'm adjusting to actually being a volunteer and making decisions about what being in the Peace Corps means for me. In August, I was settling in, adjusting to life in my permanent site, the town where I'll be living for the next two years. Maya, my counterpart, organized a condensed day camp for about two hours in the mornings Mondays through Thursdays where we did English-language activities and went on walks with kids in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Maya and I also went on a few day trips to towns in the surrounding area so I could get to know the region. Maya is always very eager to share and to encourage others to explore. It's the end of the first almost full week of school (Wednesday was Bulgarian Independence Day, so there were no classes). My schedule still isn't quite complete and I'm working out my role in the classroom with the two English teachers with whom I'm team teaching.
This morning I taught a 6th grade class with one of my partner teachers. We reviewed the outline of the lesson just before class--a reading section and vocabulary. Once in class, my partner teacher let me be in control of the lesson, more or less. I work with this 6th grade class for two of their three hours of English instruction each week. I had the students take turns reading, which I think they liked, but the vocab section ended up being boring. I can't say I blame them--really, what is the difference between "rented rooms" and "bed and breakfast?"
So far the biggest challenge in the classroom is how to get students to pay attention to what I'm saying. I want them to see that I'm speaking in English to try to communicate with them, not to test them or confuse them. When kids don't understand what's going on or what's expected of them, they talk or act out. Sometimes I think my partner teachers see me as a tool to measure their students' progress, to measure how accurate the students are. But they're very open to any ideas that I might have for lessons, they said. Another challenge is that the kids aren't used to being taught English in English. In Bulgaria, it seems that the emphasis is on language as an academic subject, not on language as a tool for communication. The students are taught English in Bulgarian. One of my colleagues told me that she knew the grammar hands down, but in terms of speaking in English, she didn't feel very confident at all.
After class, I ran around with Maya and a few students setting up for an event that we organized for the EU-designated European Day of Languages, which is on the 26th of September each year. Nikola Vaptsarov usually observes this day. Maya and I organized a poetry reading in different languages--not all of them European. Students read two pieces in English, "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" by Dickenson, and a Native American legend about the origin of rainbows. There was also a Russian poem by Pushkin called "I Remember a Wonderful Moment." I read a Spanish poem by Neruda called "When I See the Sea Again." A student from 9th grade read "Allons Enfants de la Patrie." The students read very well. Maya and I had met with the two who read the English-language pieces a few days before to go over any words they couldn't pronounce. There's a lot of talent at this school--some of the students who read can talk very fluently in English.
I had made a power point to accompany the reading that had the text of each piece along with a Bulgarian translation. My idea came from an international poetry event that takes place at my college each year. Having a translation helped me to appreciate what the international students were saying as they read poetry or other works from their home countries. Unfortunately, there was a lot of light in the room where the reading took place making it hard to read the power point. This was really frustrating because some of the students would have gotten more out of the event if they could at least see what was being read.
After the reading, about 20-30 minutes, an 11th or 12th grade student who I recognized approached Maya and said that he was upset that he hadn't gotten a chance to read something. It made me really happy to see that some students actually were interested in these kinds of projects. Sometimes it's hard to gauge interest. We had organized this reading only about a week before the fact, so we chose students very fast--a few of the English teachers suggested students by name who they thought would be good readers.
I went home for lunch and to have a break before my next class--one of the two 60-minute blocks I have each week for the teacher's course. Only two students came to class and we reviewed the alphabet and went over transcriptions. Monday's class had seven students, which was a nice size. Next class everyone should have their textbook and we can start reading short dialogues and covering grammar.
After class, I caught a bus to Burgas to meet another volunteer. She and I are on the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and HIV Volunteer Committee, an interest group for volunteers who want to do projects in their communities related to A-TIP and HIV. Human trafficking is a problem in Bulgaria. Sometimes young people here follow dubious advertisements for jobs abroad and up laboring for next to nothing or for nothing with no means to get home. Sometimes they end up in forced prostitution with no means to get home. Bulgaria is also a transit country with persons coming through bound for other destinations in Europe.
The volunteer had finally managed to get a meeting with someone who worked for the Burgas branch of the Bulgarian National Anti-Trafficking Commission. We met up and then had to find the office, which she knew was in a big youth center in Burgas. The office itself was small, and seemed to have only one staff person. The walls had pictures of trafficked persons and awareness posters. We were looking for stories of Bulgarians who had been trafficked for an interactive game that the A-TIP/HIV Committee is making about trafficking. The staff person gave us the story of one person and some general information about trafficking in Bulgaria. She also asked us about October 18th, the European Day Against Trafficking in Human Beings, and whether we had any plans. In Burgas, she was putting together an education campaign and gave us posters and booklets with statistics.
It was nice to be involved in different types of work in a single day, although it made for a long one. Tomorrow I'm going hiking with two other volunteers in a nearby village.
