After two amazing weeks in Cairo, during which I spent such a large amount of time eating or thinking about eating food that wasn’t pizza or pasta, coming back to Albania proved to be a bit of a bumpy emotional landing. In some ways, it’s really only the food that is the hardest thing for me. Albanian food is great—but severely lacking in creativity given the large amount of available ingredients. Steaks and sushi in Egypt were great boosts before coming back to another year of starch, salt and olive oil.
After taking about two weeks to get re-adjusted, I’m back to where I was before. Service is made up of peaks and valleys and all volunteers experience highs and lows. Part of what has snapped me out of the funk is the arrival of 50 new volunteers. I’ve met them a few times now and been able to deliver a few training sessions to them. I really like the group in general as well as the TEFLers I’ve gotten to know on closer levels.
But the more I look around, the more I start to feel bewildered by the politics that affect most facets of our everyday lives. It gets even worse when I know I’ll have to play these power games my whole life. But the egos are more off-putting than even the politics. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to deal with anyone because it’s hard to believe how seriously people take themselves and their own needs. I haven’t had a job where I’ve been able to notice this fact as much as I do now. Some of the things I’ve heard lately, from people being displeased with their future sitemates already (they haven’t even moved there yet!), to PCVs hoping their new sitemates aren’t so good that they steal some of their spotlight, down to people who want titles, power and their opinion to be know but refuse to put in the work that it takes to really deserve them…This is certainly an eye-opening experience on that level, but it also gives me the opportunity to work towards solutions as opposed to being someone who elevates the problem.
We have about two months left in the school year, and only a month is left for seniors. I’m still running my enrichment classes, but I’ve added two English test prep classes for seniors. In Albania, the college application process is really nothing like that in the United States. Seniors pick a few exams they will take in different subjects (I think it’s 3 or 4) and the tests are held close to the end of the school year. Their performance on these tests determines the likelihood of getting into the university they want for the subject they want. There’s some other mathematical stuff like the points on the tests being multiplied by a coefficient unique to their school, as established by the Ministry of Education, but that would just be getting too technical.
The problem with the English test is that a normal student’s education wouldn’t really prepare them for the test. Reading comprehension and writing assignments are two areas that aren’t handled much in Albanian English classrooms, but they both appear on the final exam for university. Why? I don’t think the years of English that students have should be done specifically with the intention of preparing them for the test. I think the test should be realistic and be grammar-centric, which is the backbone of English instruction here, or instruction should change to cover other aspects of language learning like reading and writing. As it stands now, the two things. Just. Don’t. Match. Up. So here I come, trying to help them learn new things that they most likely have very limited experience with so that they can perform well on a test that partly determines their university future. You don’t ever really “learn” anything at this point, a little more than a month before the test. The best you can do, or at least the best I can do, is try to stir up all that information in their brains that’s been collecting for years so that it can rise to the surface of their thoughts on test day. I know they know things but that it takes some practice to recall all that information. I’ve also been doing some test-taking strategies with them to hopefully help them utilize their time wisely and to be as relaxed as possible when it comes time to take the test. But I can’t help but feeling that what I’m really trying to do is compensate for all these areas that have been abandoned (reading, writing, critical thinking) and will now have to be re-visited on the test… and for what?
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