September 15: The First Day of School

September 15th is the first day of school for students in grades one through twelve all across Bulgaria, although teachers begin work on September 1st. Here are some photos of the ceremonies that took place at Nicola Vaptsarov Comprehensive School, where I work. The principal spoke, horo dancers did their thing, and a choras of primary schoolers sang along with a tape of other primary schoolers singing. The ceremonies on the first day of school are important; a lot of parents and staff go and all students should be there. For the first grade class, it's a celebration of their joining the school community and a milestone in their lives. At Vaptsarov, the ceremonies lasted around an hour. After that, all the students went to their home rooms to meet with the Bulgarian equivalent of home room teachers and get their schedules for the first few days of school. There was really good cake in the teacher's lounge (I think it had rum in it) and all the teachers and the director went out for lunch downtown.

The school year schedule isn't finished by the 15th, so students are given a schedule for the first few days or possibly the first week while the school finalizes the schedule. To complete it is a long process that ends with a formal presentation of the schedule to representatives from the Ministry of Education. The representatives can tell the school to revise their schedule and present it again to the Ministry at a later date.

There are a lot of different kinds of schools here. A comprehensive school is grades 1-12 in one building. School kids can decide to attend a special type of high school after they finish primary school, which is technically grades 1-8. There are language high schools for English, Russian, French, Spanish and other languages--I think English and Russian are the most common. There are also technical schools, sports schools, art schools and private high schools. Some comprehensive schools offer special "tracks" for students, i.e. the opportunity for students to take a specialization in a particular area. My school is thinking of creating an English track.

One of the young students from the games and walks that Maya and I organized during August gave me the flowers--that was really nice. The last two pictures are some of my colleagues. The woman two to my left is another English teacher who also helps as a translator in the English course I'm teaching for the faculty. She suggested I teach transcriptions first--something I'm really not enjoying that much so far--they're hard! A transcription is a symbol that represents a sound used in English--like the "th" sound in the word "through." But I can see that it will help down the road.