First Week of School

We've been in Baku for over a month, but Colleen and I only just finished our first week of teaching.  The reason: not enough students signed up.  We had several false starts- days that we expected to begin, but then no children came.  There were 4 children signed up, and they were holding out until we had at least one semi-full class.  Apparently several parents had been calling to ask if the English language kindergarten had started yet and when told 'no' they hung up in disappointment.  I find it funny that that's the exact opposite of the reaction we would expect in America- the idea of signing the kids up in advance not occuring to them.  So finally the school decided that we would begin anyway and then those parents would hopefully bring their children as well.

This last Monday we were all set to begin, but 9:00 rolled around and still no kids.  We finally decided that they must have cancelled again for some reason, and we headed down to breakfast.  Enter a screaming four-year old, clinging to his mother's hand in the lobby and trying to pull her out the door as she is trying to pull him in. 

Ahh.  I think this one's for us. 

Indeed he was.  Our first and, for a few hours at least, only student.  He threw an absolute fit when his mother left him there, and kept it up for a good hour.  Even at the time, I remember thinking that it was almost comical- four white coated teachers huddling around one screaming little boy trying to figure out how on earth to get him to stop crying!  Eventually two other little boys, 5-year-old twin brothers, showed up and we started our first day activities.  Now we're on a roll.  Hopefully the rest will follow soon.

Or not.  The youngest one didn't come back after the first day (they live too far away) and for the rest of the week we only had the two brothers.  Some days it went well- they seemed to focus well and learned what we had to teach them.  Some days not so much.  But we're settling into a routine.  They know what's expected of them, whether or not they choose to actually do it. :)  And we're slowly figuring out what it is to be kindergarten teachers.  It's still pretty funny to me that we have a 2:1 teacher/student ratio.  Even dividing the day up between the teacher/assistant teams, we have one teacher per kid.  Their parents are sure getting their money's worth!

So as we go into our second week, we're hoping more students will join the class.  Maybe it's a blessing that we got to start figuring things out with just these two, before adding more kids.  We'll see.  I'll definitely keep you updated either way!



With our students at the end of the first day-
one teacher for each kid, and one to spare!

PS.  I updated the "Pictures" and "Requests" pages again, if you want to check them out :)