When I first arrived here back in September, I was met at the airport by Mr Ab from the school, who had driven the school minibus to pick me up.  Most obliging (although it is in the contract), as it was 3-30am.  He spoke very good English: probably better than mine was at that time, being somewhat disorientated after a long flight into an unknown world, at some ungodly hour.

I had no idea what Mr Ab did, as I never saw him around school.  He did turn up  on the teacher trip in October – as described in Teacher outing Part 1: The Long and Winding Road and Teacher outing: Part Deux – but which tiny cog in the administration wheel was his area, remained a mystery.

His excellent command of the English language should have been a clue: it turns out that his job was to make sure that “communications” are sent out in all three languages (Kazakh, Russian and English), as per the stated school policy.  Let’s just say that his taxi-driver skills have been more evident than his communicator ones.

Knowing about, and understanding what is going on here is extremely difficult. And it is not because we lack sufficient Russian. Snotograms are occasionally fired off by someone important in school, reminding staff that all communal e-mails should be translated into three languages; very rarely is it followed, and ironically, these e-mails themselves aren’t always in three languages either.  As a matter of principle, some amongst the Internationals delete any e-mail that comes in if not in English.  I am nosy (and often without anything better to do), so I stick anything that looks interesting through Google translate (other translation facilities are available…..).  Usually it is not interesting, but the computerised translations sometimes add some levity to otherwise boring official communiques.

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I like organising, I’m good at it.  My family teased me about it relentlessly over the years: a mummy without a list is a poorly mummy, according to my children.  They were less critical however, when they were in the right place at the right time, with the right things.  Complicated holidays got booked (we never did packages), large gatherings at home got catered for, stuff just happened.

This in turn drives some people crazy.  They like to think of themselves as free-flowing spirits, ready to go as the moment takes them.  Great, lovely, as long as it doesn’t result in missing an anticipated (but not organised) event, or having to deviate so much from the original intention that it makes you wonder if they were committed to doing it, or anything remotely similar, in the first instance.

But it takes all sorts:  I will always be irritated and irritating in matters of organisation, but I have become a deal more “lasissez-faire” in my old age.

Kazakhstan was never going to be a good match for me, organisationally speaking.  Previous musings have documented the sheer ineptitude inherent in the system here.  Culturally Kazakhs tend to have a “whenever/whatever” approach to life, which goes a long way to explaining why they also function on “Indian time” i.e. a start time is more of a general indication than something that should be adhered to.  These two factors are a perfect storm for inducing the inner fury, and on occasion outwards bursts of unkindly comments, known only to those who gain emotional solace from having a listed plan.

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Aah, summer school.  From a parents’ view in the UK, hip-hip hooray, two more weeks of free childcare.  From a teacher’s point of view, two more weeks till you clock off for a break, but at least you can do round-the-subject activities, showing the more interesting  and practical elements after what has usually been a joyless curriculum under severe time constraints.

The summer school for students aged 11 to 14 was also running at the same time as a summer school for junior school children, aged 6 to 8.  The “babies” were led by the Junior department,  following a pre-described list of (English) language-based themed days, issued by Astana. As native-english speakers, we were all required to assist the local teachers.  A meeting  was held to explain what was going on – a major step forward administratively because at least there was a meeting.  I noticed that in a few instances, I was required on both schedules at the same time; the question had to be asked.  Silly me, I expected this to be interpreted as a matter of logistics, not one of  my implied “lack of co-operation” or “being difficult” about not being in two places at one time.  Apparently the knee-huggers were to take priority, resulting in a certain amount of juggling with staffing in the maths activities.

And so it was that I spent a few hours over the two week period cutting and sticking, dishing out pencils, and removing hoverboards from the classroom floor so they did not become a trip hazard.  A very laissez-faire attitude to these pre-cursors to life as described in the film Wall-E: the children were allowed to use these them up and down in the corridors between lessons.  Going outside to not burn off any excess energy by standing on them was not encouraged, as the students might get too many UVA/UVB rays (???), so running over other students and staff indoors was the endorsed break time activity.  How about not allowing the wretched things in school at all…….?

Summer school for years 7-9 has been running for many years, and is departmentally themed. Physics looked fun: they were going to be spending their two weeks making various homegrown contraptions showing basic physics; a hand-held suction device made from a plastic bottle (Blue Peter badges abound) for example.

Chemistry was going to be making soap: from what I could gather from Mr G, the simple approach (and one used in most places that do this activity), could be stretched out to 3 days, especially if they spent a lot of time making the pretty presentation boxes.  This is what they had done for several years previously. However, this year there was to be a change: in keeping with the school philosophy regarding study (harder and deeper – probably not the most appropriate description for a school, as it conjures up porno images), they were going to undertake extremely complicated university-level methods, doomed to failure with our school-level kit.  He wisely declared to the local chemistry teachers that he was having no part of it, and absented himself to the next room, busying himself with his laptop.

Biology also ran the tried-and-tested summer school project: building a model of an eco-house.  Mr W’s beef with this was that the learning element was to understand the effects on natural resources of the average family (power consumption, waste production and management etc), by using real-life data, gathered by the students.   It transpired that this bit was to be skipped, and students were given some dull data, and played with Excel for a couple of days.  After that, they spent their time making a house out of plasticine and coloured paper – very pretty, but more akin to an art project.  He too voted with his feet, and was available in the staffroom if needed.

From what I can gather, the English department worked hard with their students on a variety of activities, all of which were of benefit to the students.  One group of year 11 boys decided to write a short story, which I read.  The level of language use, grammatical structures, descriptive writing and story structure was outstanding for native-speakers, yet alone from those using a second language.  However, being 16 year old boys their choice of topic was entirely dismal – death and destruction involving dragons, very goth.

And what of maths? For “Summer School”, read “School when it’s hot and sunny outside”.  I had to stifle semi-hysterical laughter when we were presented, with much pride, the schedule of what we would be doing for the next two weeks.  For groups of year 7 and 8’s, we would be doing three hours each day, full-on with “The Beauty of Functions”.  On careful reading of the topics, my mind did wander to one sort of body function as a way of describing the total lack of anything fun or interesting described therein.  It was basically doing most of the local year 10 and some of our A level function stuff.

Apparently this is a new course, written by one of my co-teachers, submitted to Astana for approval.  They loved it so much, it is now the mandatory year 7/8 maths summer school activity across all 23 NIS schools – so I had to be careful to feign admiration and keen anticipation in delivering it.

Mr N, myself, and two local teachers were assigned for the duration of summer school. We had a planning meeting, where I tried vainly to suggest that we could concentrate on the (few) core practical aspects of the course, to make sure the students were competent in the basic practical skills of plotting and understanding all manner of algebraic graphs (which incidentally are what we expect UK students to do well, by year 9/10).  Kazakh students are genuinely rubbish at this BECAUSE they never get to practice.  I was shouted down by the local teachers who insisted that we stick to the scheme no matter what, and that the summer school was the ideal opportunity for students to be exposed to “harder and deeper” – more porn.  Errr, no.  Au contraire: if they’d read the preamble to the course overview, it clearly stated that the students  repeatedly did poorly in exams on the practical aspects, and needed to have more opportunity to improve.  Well, I tried to inject some form of fun for the students, but failed miserably.  I stood no chance in the wake of two ex-university maths lecturers who saw summer school as an opportunity to drone on to the kids about some highly obscure technical points which they felt were sadly lacking from the Kazakh year 8 syllabus.

First day of tediosity (yes it’s a word!) dawned, and we had two classes of 10 students registered.  Only half of them had turned up by the end of the first period – we found out later that the rest had been delayed in the playground participating in a “flash mob” organised by another department that no-one thought to mention.  We had, by this time, amalgamated two classes into one, so when the missing ones turned up, we were then too crowded in the one room and had to share seats and desks.  The planned and resourced activities, which had been hastily re-planned given the small numbers, had to be more hastily planned again now that the numbers had swelled. Gosh, how well that fitted my “plan and execute properly” psyche. We agreed on day two to go back to the original two groups as planned.

Mr N’s and my secret plan to get the kids to vote with their feet (I’m not going to summer school Mum, it’s sooooooooo boring) seemed to be working, as the next day we had one group of 5 and one group of 6.  Numbers dwindled during the week, and after two more days, we were down to nine students. We four teachers decided to go to one group again, which meant that we didn’t all need to teach every day.  Divvying up the topics over the remaining days allowed Mr N and I to skilfully rota ourselves to do the more interesting stuff (i.e. practical), leaving the obscure irrelevancies to the locals. As we started the second of two fun-packed weeks, and numbers continued to decline, we optimistically looked forward to the whole thing being abandoned…..awww, shame.

For goodness sake, maths is boring enough for many children in the first place.  We could have spent these two weeks doing practical maths outside, games and activities, investigations and anything else to engender an understanding of the fundamentals. Or even, heavens to Betsy, we could have even turned on the “interested” switch for one or two of the youngsters.  But no.

The course did drag on for the entire two weeks; we were down to only four students by the end. On the last day, it was our turn, and Mr N had created a Treasure Hunt outside, following clues and answering some maths stuff at the same time.  They all got chocolate as prizes, but for me it was more like a reward for sticking it out the entire time.

Tradition has it that the students display their work at the end of summer school in the gym.  Works well for those students who could display their wares, but the maths contingent was distinctly lacking.   There was some consolatory news to compensate for zero dislay output from the maths contingency.  Mr G told me that the production of soap didn’t really happen (as he had predicted), and that the soap that was on display actually came from melted down bars purchased at the local supermarket, melted down, re-coloured and re-moulded! (And beautifully packaged – well they had to do something to fill the time…..)

There were shampoos and some sort of perfumed oils on sale as well, so to support the students I bought some frightening-looking shampoo.  I think our labrador will be extremely grateful when I get home and beautify her….

 

After these two weeks of summer school for the NIS students, it had always been mooted that there would possibly be a further two weeks (right up to the last day, end of June) of us running another summer school for non-NIS students.  No details about what it should be about or it even happening came until the Wednesday before it was going to start on Monday.  I’m so used to such administrative incompetence now I barely raised an eyebrow when the news was officially announced.

For the next two weeks, we will be “educating” sixty local students, aged 11-14. These will be a wide-range of abilities, and crucially, are unlikely to speak much English.  That is why they have assigned the International staff only to deal with it – so no local staff with us to explain anything in Russian or Kazakh to the children as needed.  Which genius thought this up?

Planning activities has been interesting, since they cannot involve much in the way of verbal instructions; the lessons will be delivered in English and pointing.  To make it simple, there will be six groups of ten students, and as there are six teachers (some Internationals have left, or will be leaving imminently), we plan one lesson each, and deliver it to each group.  That should keep us going for the first six days.  If our own summer school is anything to go on, we will be down to possibly only two groups in fairly short-order, so we can re-plan at that point.

I spent several hours of searching for entertaining but language-limited activities to fill my 2-hour slot.  Could be great, could be rubbish.

I can’t decide if they are very smart or just bone-idle, but Mr T, Mr G and Mr W announced that their activities would be to combine their respective groups into one, and play volleyball with them every day.  As only one teacher would be needed, perhaps the other two could go off swimming…????  I mentioned that maybe they would need to make arrangements for students who couldn’t, or didn’t want to, play mixed volleyball for an hour and a half, but that only enhanced my (un)fair reputation for needing to be overly organised.  Oh, like my “organising” the students into six groups so that we only need to plan one (repeated) lesson each, kind of over-organising?

It’s that tired and grumpy time of year known by all teachers, so I need to let all this wash over me and not care at all.  My new mantra…..10 days and counting, 10 days and counting….

 

Although hardly a surprise, the end of term has come upon me.  This heralds my packing up and leaving Kazakhstan to return to Blighty.  There have been a few unexpected events here in the last week, although by now I should be well into the “expect the unexpected” mindset.

Firstly, there was “Last Bell” ceremony.  This is the formal ending of the academic year, and was held on a Thursday morning at the end of May.  The whole school was assembled outside in the blazing sun at 9:00 a.m.  Teachers were required to be booted and suited, and liberally plastered with factor 30, as any shade that was available was allocated to the students.

After the National Anthem, we were then subject to the inevitable speeches from various dignitaries: the Director, and two substantial ladies from NIS HQ.  Unable to translate, I guessed that it was the usual end of term speech along the lines of “you’ve all done very well” akin to “Are You Being Served” from the 70’s, and still favoured by headteachers the length and breadth of the teaching universe.  The International Teachers were actually acknowledged this time (in English, even), which is a rarity, despite the three-line whip to attend such events throughout the year.

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For the cosmetics and “products” industry, I am a lost cause.  I have never been one for make-up: too lazy to put all that stuff on each morning and then to be constantly topping it up through the day.  I will make an effort for an event, but otherwise I am found “au naturel” naturally.

The ladies here are generally low-key on the daily make-up: full-slap is rarely seen, although some of the more mature ladies must have left their glasses off when applying their bright-blue eye shadow.

The big thing here, in every sense of the expression, is hair.  Those of Kazakh descent have very dark brown/black, those of Russian descent mid brown to very blond. And my does it grow long.  Almost all of the girls at school have tresses which come to the middle of their back, some longer.  A couple of breakaway rebels have a short hair style, but generally not.

I have never seen so many identi-kit teenagers!  To vary it a bit, they are particularly good at complicated plaiting (braiding), which they regularly do for each other in the corridors outside classrooms. But mainly long and straight is the order of the day.

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School terms are different here: from January until late March, no holidays.  Then 4 days at the end of March (I went to Dubai), a 3-day weekend the first weekend in May (I went to Almaty), and then a 4-day weekend the following weekend.  Mr W, Mr G and I decided to go to Delhi – because it’s only three hours by plane. That’s the holidays done now until the end of summer term at school.

We left Taldykorgan on Friday evening, went to an IPL (Indian Premier League) cricket match on the Saturday, saw the sights of New Delhi, and experienced a little of the hubbub of the ancient delights of that region, returning Tuesday evening; a perfect short break.

Now, you should know that I have a real problem with insect bites; I pretty much always get bitten, no matter what concoctions I use, trousers and long sleeves I put on, and mosquito nets employed.  The worst part is the bites often go yucky, as my body really doesn’t like being nibbled by pesky little critters.  Anti-histamine helps somewhat, but holiday and itch  go together for me.  And so it was in Delhi (I am resigned to the inevitable on all such trips).  However, 48 countable calling cards from various insects was a little excessive, even for me.  Suspiciously none of them turned funny.

Thinking I had escaped lightly was a mistake.  In revenge for this optimism, on the morning we were leaving, my hands starting coming out in horrid pustulous lumps (sorry for the graphic description), which had rendered my hands banana-like by the time I got back to my flat in Taldykorgan.  An allergic reaction akin to James T Kirk in the first of the new Star Trek films is a pretty reasonable comparison.

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It would be very easy as an International teacher (in any location) to confine one’s experiences to those involving the safe environment of English speaking colleagues.  I have indeed had some great times with my partners in crime, but I also wanted to experience some “out of zone” activities.

Mr A appeared in the staff room one day, and asked if anyone wanted to go to the local university and assist with the “English Club” they have.  Apparently it has been something that the International Staff have participated in previously.  This opportunity was at least a halfway house for me: the sanctity of persons who speak the mother-tongue, but also outwith the present company.  I volunteered, and phone contacts were issued.

A few days after commitment on my part, I discovered that it was held every other week at the local university, at the very inconvenient time of 3:30 pm on a Saturday.  Saturdays had, up until that point,  been spent skiing – see  Taking the piste – but the impending thaw softened the blow to my loss of weekend activities, especially since I wasn’t required for two weeks – we’d be into mega-slush by then, so skiing would be over.

I’ve never taught or participated in English language lessons for non-native speakers, so this was a great unknown. I phoned my contact, who assured me that I didn’t need to prepare anything, just turn up and speak with the students at general conversation level.  I conjured up in my head an eager band of students, who wanted to practice the mother-tongue; sounded like fun.

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The first weekend in May is a Bank Holiday here: this is after all, home of the “Labour Day”, when peasants traditionally had a day off from working in the collective farms to be allowed time to work on their own vegetable patch.

The options available in Taldykorgan (if there were any), were not promoted (such things never are), so I decided to go to Almaty for the weekend.  I wanted to see the rest of the town, and I needed to do some shopping for more upmarket reminders of my time here before I returned to the UK.

Having had a week of over 25 degree C weather (glorious sunshiny days), the long weekend approached, with a weather forecast of foreboding rain and cold weather (under 10 degrees).  Just like home then.

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Hallam Dictionary Definition:  abuse by domestic appliances to a person or their mental state, involving an inordinate amount of time and possibly being hazardous to health.

My apartment was sparsely equipped when I arrived; read Running Repairs for how it all was at the start of this year in Kazakhstan. Things have moved on since then, though not necessarily for the better.

Although the floppy bath panel has remained standing, the stuck down bits on the seal have failed to last the course. Lifting the up and wiping underneath, then replacing, have become part of the cleaning regime.  Why I do this I don’t know.  Maybe the smell of stagnant water and yuk growing underneath it if left spurs me on.  Equally the toilet seat, which lasted a couple of weeks, has come unattached once more.  It again requires a warning to be issued to unsuspecting guests, so that they do not fall off (or potentially into) the toilet bowl,  what with the seat slip-sliding all over the place.

The hoover got a new head, but sadly the whole hoover died a death: the unmistakable smell of burnt-out parts, some sad smoke, and that was the end of it.  My initial plan of “not bothering to hoover again till I leave” had a major flaw: this was some 4 months away, and even I can’t be that much of a sloven to think that this would be workable.  A new hoover was on the cards, so I asked Mr A to tell the landlord, and ask for a new hoover.

The initial reaction from Mr A was that the landlord would not replace the hoover.  My immediate reaction was that I will let the dust pile up then.

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The good news: since I’ve been doing yoga three times a week after school (see Bend and Stretchski), I am now considerably more flexible than when I started.  Yoga secret confession: it isn’t supposed to be competitive, but there is a certain amount of inner smugness when I can get into, or hold a bit longer, the latest contortion inflicted on us by the ever bendy and skinny Mne Mne,  to a greater degree than my fellow classmates.  I of course fail to notice when I am the first to collapse into a crumpled heap, and the rest carry on.

As a result of my efforts, I began to notice that my right knee wasn’t as co-operative as my left, and after a while, that it simply wouldn’t bend at all for some of the more complicated manoeuvres.  Oh no! Evidence of imperfection!  Leaving it a while didn’t improve matters, and so with great reluctance, I realised that there might actually be something not quite right with my knee.  Especially now it had started to hurt when I was walking around.

It is a rare for me to visit a doctor in the UK.  If they still had paper records, the receptionist would be blowing the dust off mine as she pulled them out for the doctor’s appointments for the day tray.  However, needs must, and I decided to avail myself of the “superior private health cover” lavishly promoted in my teacher package here.

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