Busy Couple of Weeks

Our lazy days of winter break wound down and we worked to get geared up for the new semester, which was set to start on January 20. Our schools ended up getting back into having classes only on Monday, January 24, however, because there were some necessary meetings and discussions about changes our schools would be undergoing this semester and next year.

Georgia’s Ministry of Education has been unveiling a number of different changes and reforms, many of which have been extremely positive and productive, some of which are well intentioned but maybe not entirely thought-out before being implemented, and a small number that have been difficult for us and our local counterparts to understand the reasoning behind. On average, they seem to do a pretty remarkable job bringing up the standards of Georgian schools after nearly two decades of education being underfunded (or non-funded), underdeveloped and overall under-prioritized. That said, there is often a lot of feeling that their reforms and changes are really ambitious but lacking some of the follow-through or direction to make them entirely successful.

My school held an all-hands teachers meeting on January 20 where a lot of the newest reforms were discussed, argued and complained about and railed against. The main difference this semester has to do with a fairly complex funding system that Georgia uses. This has led to a cut in funds for many schools, which school directors are supposed to manage to make sure that students still have all the required classes. There wasn’t, it seems, really a lot of direction from the Ministry, however, on how to “make it work.” What my school did to match the gap in funds was fire teachers and staff (about 20 people lost their jobs) and combine classes (we went from having classes of about 20-25 to having some classes with up to 48 students). Sam’s school managed not to lay off as many (or possibly any) teachers, but cut down the number of hours that all the teachers have (and thus cutting the pay for all of the teachers, instead of having a few lose out entirely). His classes have gotten larger as well.

Everyone was really upset about these changes, understandably, and the semester started off on a sour note. Adding to the troubles is a change in the rule about students that lack Georgian citizenship. Previously, these kids could study at Georgian schools alongside Georgian citizens. Now, however, children with foreign citizenship are supposed to pay a pretty hefty fee to continue studying at Georgian public schools. At my school in this minority region, about 10% of the student body has foreign citizenship. This is causing a huge problem. Lots of families are being forced to make the tough decision of sending their children with Russian or Armenian citizenship to live with aunts or uncles or family members in Russia or Armenia to finish school or trying to come up with a sum that is equivalent to about 4 months’ of a schoolteacher’s salary per child.

All these factors have combined with the cold, wintry weather to make going back to school pretty rough. As the administration of my school tries to clarify details and get exceptions and exemptions to make things more bearable, we’re still without a permanent schedule for classes (this three weeks into the spring semester). It’s going to be a bit of a slog as they work everything out, but I’m hopeful that things will be made a little pleasanter soon.

We got a nice break from all of these school bureaucracy problems this week thanks to two back-to-back Peace Corps trainings. The first training was one that I helped work on and coordinate as part of my work with PC Georgia’s Life Skills Committee (a PC-wide initiative committee that works on health-related topics, and specifically on HIV/AIDS issues). We held a two-day Training of Trainers for any PC Georgia volunteers and their counterparts to discuss ways to introduce and teach healthy living topics in the classroom or in after-school clubs or community organizations. The other committee members and I (funnily enough, the four of us are all married volunteers; one of our PC staff members refers to us as the “married wives committee”) had been working hard on getting things together for this training. It’s a nice feeling of relief to been done with this initiative, especially since we’ve got a lot of other projects that we’ve been working on. One big project done!

After the ToT, all of the Education volunteers and their teaching counterparts had two more days of training to work through issues of how to team teach more effectively and efficiently. It was another very helpful training and nice to see how the other volunteers have worked out strategies to have good working relationships with their counterparts. We’re all very fortunate to have a lot of dedicated, hard-working, patient counterparts, and it was really nice to have some chances to think about ways to make our working relationships that much better.

The trainings were also a huge success on the room-and-board front. We stayed in a pretty swanky training facility in Bazaleti, about an hour north of Tbilisi. Our rooms had tvs with BBC news in English! The facility “restaurant” served lots of tasty food, too, too much of which was eaten on a regular basis. But I just couldn’t pass up the chance to have coffee with milk and bliny and cheese and yogurt and salad and lots more delicious. Who knew that PC service would have so many luxuries?!

Just prior to the trainings, Sam went to Tbilisi for an extra day. He had an interview to be a cross-cultural trainer for outgoing high school exchange students from Georgia to the US as part of the FLEX program. He’s hopeful that he’ll be selected, not the least because his training for the program if chosen would include a week-long trip to Ukraine. Several other volunteers applied, though, so he’ll have to wait to hear back once they’ve reviewed all the applications.

And even though we spend almost all of our time together, while Sam was away (we were apart for slightly over 24 hours), we were given some reminders of why we’re better together. Sam spent a cold night in Tbilisi at the guest house because he didn’t realize there was a blanket in the room. He says that if I had been there, the blanket probably would have been found. I, on the other hand, was tasked with turning off the light to go to bed on the night Sam was away (his side of the bed is closer to the light switch and usually he’s the one reading so he’s the one who’s in charge of turning it off). I hadn’t realized just how ridiculous this was until Sam was away and I, in making my extra lap around the bed after turning off the light, kicked a chair with all my might in the dark. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten the right language training to say the words I really wanted to say at that point. I figured I’d be fine by the next morning, but instead I had a black-and-blue, swollen, painful toe. It was still bothering me some when I went in for the trainings, so I talked with one of the PC doctors (our doctors are amazing!), who gave me lots of goodies to take care of my toe and got me an appointment for an x-ray after the training if my toe was still bothering me. Luckily my toe is on the mend so I didn’t have to get any x-rays, but I’m still supposed to take it easy for another week (no running for two weeks! I think I might go crazy). Sam was extremely sympathetic when we met up in Tbilisi just before the training, remarking that we really will be one of those old married couples who dies at just about the same time. Not because we’ll be so heartbroken that the other is gone, just because we’ll forget to eat or electrocute ourselves or something similarly stupid without the other there to remind us.

So with all these stories and way too much text and no pictures as yet to reward you for slogging through my way-too-long blog post (I could never do twitter), I’ll leave you with two videos of what has become my new favorite pastime: watching our host sister, Lilit, trying to walk around in my slippers.