I’ve been here for just about three weeks and I am still trying to find my place. It’s hard to arrive on site as a teacher when the school year is almost over, which is something that I hope the Peace Corps will consider in the future. School is over tomorrow, and there haven’t been formal classes for the last two weeks. The students come to school for a couple hours, help clean the school and organize the classrooms for next year, and then leave to go to the beach. While I’m waiting to be productive in my own sense of the word, I’ve taken time to introduce myself and continue meeting people. I smile a lot and am friendly… but not too friendly. Greeting people is very important here, so I make sure it take it seriously. It’s kind of funny because I haven’t done anything concrete here just yet, but people will tell me how nice and good I am. I don’t know how to handle that because compliments make me feel awkward, but I just say thank you. Also, my Albanian is getting good enough for me to start being as silly as I am in English, and I’ve really been making my host mom laugh these past two weeks.
I go to school every day, even though there isn’t any formal work for me. Last week, I spoke to the students of my school and the neighboring 9-year school about offering summer courses. At this point, I have over eighty students enrolled for my lessons. That might seem like a huge roster since there is only one of me, but many students will not show up or will stop coming. I’ve tried to break the students up into manageable groups, but it is not very easy. I’ve spoken with the English teachers of my school about the students on my roster to try and break them up into the appropriate levels. With the students of the 9-year school, I will have them all report to school next Tuesday, where I will administer a brief test to try and organize them by level. Even between the ages of 11 – 14, there are huge divides in linguistic ability. This is largely because some parents send their children to private English courses. Because of this, it’s impossible for me to organize 9-year students merely by age.
I’m interested to see how the students react to me. They have already been exposed to two Peace Corps volunteers that taught English, so they might know a little more about the methods. However, they were surprised to find out that the courses were free. When they could get past that, they were confused when I said there was no course book. I plan on doing lectures and activities completely through the use of the school’s technology: using overhead projectors, PowerPoint-based classes, pictures and sound and video clips. If I’m being giving complete control of the resources, I’d be silly not to use them.
Since last week, I’ve been really busy with lesson planning. I started by making a long-term plan of the topics I wanted to cover, organizing the groups of students and coming up with a schedule, and now I am working on the individual lessons. You have no idea how much work a teacher does until it’s you on the other side of the desk, until it’s you making the plans. Although it’s a bit taxing, I want to create lessons that will interest and encourage students.
Aside from teaching four days a week, from 8 – 11, I’ll spend the afternoons on the beach. My site is really beautiful, even for a person that doesn’t care much for the beach like me. I’ve been there twice this week. I remove my shoes and walk on the edge of the dark sand where the water is just barely touching. I watch the sunset, and am struck with such a sense of serenity as the orange sphere disappears from the pink-purple sky and its last rays disperse over the sea. I can’t stop staring. I love those final minutes of daylight. Aside from working on my tan (!), I’d like to do some traveling as well during the summer. I have friends dotting the country that I already miss terribly. The slow pace of summer work in Albania creates in me a sort of Sehnsucht nach der Ferne. I’ll be getting to know Tirana, since there’s a Fourth of July event at the embassy and a VAC meeting later on. I’ve been elected by the volunteers in my sector to represent them on a committee that works as a liaison between volunteers and the Peace Corps. It involves fielding complaints, working to resolve them and working on policies that effect volunteers. It’s a tremendous honor and I’m grateful that my peers chose me to represent them.
Summer is also a time to think about what I want to do in the long-term. I’d really like to involve the students in staging an adapted play, some music history courses and perhaps a film club once school returns in September. My colleagues and director have requested all kinds of materials for the school, so I will also explore grants and funding options. I’ve already secured a shipment of 30 pounds of donated books and I’d like to continue working on our school’s fledging foreign languages library. Borges, an author who has weighed so heavily on my mind these past months, would be pleased. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,” he wrote.
It’s been hard for some people to understand why I am here. “Why are you here?” is one of the most popular questions from Albanians besides whether or not I will marry and Albanian. I’d like to say it’s because I’m just here to help others, but that is only part of the truth. I’m here to help myself, too. There are things that I want to change about myself and things that I know that I need to improve on. I’ve always wanted nothing more in my life to learn and to work hard to become the best possible version of myself. Coming here was a way for me to have an adventure (since feeling bored with my life is my biggest fear) and learn more about myself in the process. Gone are some distractions that may have kept me in a permanent state of veering off the path. I want to experience so much personally and professionally over these next two years; I don’t just want to grow, I want to blossom.
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