19 September

It was 3 nights ago that I lay in bed, unsure how I was supposed to sleep, what I was supposed to think, unsure what to expect the next morning (Monday). It’s been 3 years since the last time I had a school night, a sense that I needed to get a decent night’s sleep to open my mind to the world of academia the next morning, made all the important that this time I would be the imparting knowledge, rather than merely staring blankly from the audience, desperate for the 15 minutes of classroom time that constitutes syllabus week is over. The age old questions ran through my head; who will be in my classes? Will I enjoy the schedule that I am given? Will everyone like me? Who will I eat lunch with? (A question that I had never needed to ask, as Georgian schools do not come with lunch breaks.) As it turns out, Bowling For Soup might have been on to something – High school never ends.

Monday was a general clusterfuck of Georgian administration, school starting strictly at 9 am, the bells shrilling through the hallways more indicative of an air strike or prison riot than then melodic start to information absorption. As the students continued to wander through the front gates of the school at 9:23, I stared at my iPod wondering what the hell was happening, happy with the Temple Run app my younger brother installed to occupy my time, as staring at the students, teachers, and students staring at me had worn thin after about 10 minutes. Occasionally one of the students or parents, urged on through social pressure by their peers that had amassed into respective gossip circles, would tip toe up to me, the idea of stealth traded for mutual eye contact through their daring journey towards the American teacher, mutter hello, only to be completely disarmed by my wide smile and loud proclamation of “Hello! DILA MISHVIDOBISA!!,” meant more for everyone than just the social martyr. Georgians, one of the friendliest and least abashed people I have been thrust to, are constantly unaware to someone meeting their extroversion.

Finally some semblance of procedure is under way, hundreds of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and hot shot government officials forming an unconvincing semicircle around the front stoops of the school for the director’s welcoming speech. Pictures were taken, hands were shaken, computers delivered, certificates awarded, pleasantries cast off as though they had stockpiled to alarming rates over the summer. Pomp and circumstance ruled, complete with the high school’s jazz band and adorable 4 year olds screeching through a national anthem as the flag is raised. I had no idea what was being said, but it was an amazing moment to be a part of, my position of ‘teacher’ a posting of barely earned merit, forged into reality by my status as American. Before I realized that my presence had become the main topic of speech, I was urged onstage, dragged by the surprisingly stallworth grasp of my director’s stubby fingers, and pushed from behind by my traitorous co-teachers, none of whom warned me I was about to be made spectacle of. I was then urged to give an impromptu speech, foreign words strung into improvised sentences and tossed into the eager but unabsorbing faces of my future students, current bosses, glowing neighbors, and politicians with ambiguous stares of nonchalant coolness shaded by their Roy Ban sunglasses (no, that is not a typo). I was originally going to muddle through a slur of ridiculous puns, song lyrics, and allusions to the Declaration of Independence with quotes from the Gettysburg Address, but something told me that my coteacher (who was serving as translator) would eventually catch on. Either way, my coteacher is a 50 year grandmother who has been teaching under the Soviet occupation for 25 years, and her tenuous grasp of the English undoubtedly skewed what I was trying to say to the masses; God knows what my translated self actually said. Either way, I was carried off stage by unwavering support and applause, and the 32 teeth smiles and flashbulbs blinded me and carried straight through the front gates. My first day as a teacher had gone before I even realized it was there.

Day two was much more indicative of what my life will be like for the next few months. My schedule is ideal, starting at 9, 930 or 1015 every day, and over at 12 or 1 every day, with the exception of Friday which entertains me for one 45 minute period from 1015 to 11. College me is staring out at me from the jealous world of “There was so much that could have been done in college with such a ridiculous lackluster schedule.” I teach 6 different grades a few times each over the course of the week, 3 classes with Nani, a nearly octogenarian Russian immigrant, and 3 with Dika, a cute-ish 25 year old second year teacher who has been saved for me to marry, successfully securing my future in this rural Georgian town for the next 75 years and 3 generations. Even though it has been a while that I have seen attractive females my age, snow blindness is hardly shocking enough to white out the lack of modern day appliances and animal excrement that have encased the dress shoes I wasted money on to come out here. Either way, everyone is genuinely excited for me to be here, and their hospitality and generosity in time and resources are nearly overwhelming, which is saying something considering the dietic status I have been living in for the past 6 weeks (holy crap, I left Connecticut going on 6 weeks ago).

The teaching styles of my coteachers are going to be the main thing to deal with, the rusty shackles of the Soviet era still dictating the general air of the classroom, Nani being especially forceful of students’ respect demonstrated in standing upon my arrival, not sitting until I tell them to, standing to answer questions, and raising their hand by bending their arm at 90 degree angle, hand pointed straight into the air with the unraised arm a perpendicular line, opposite hand pointed right into the joint of the elbow of the raised hand. If only the kids were standing, alternating the arm that is raised while kicking their legs in time, it would be very similar to a traditional Georgian Folk dance. When a child is finally called on, they are never quick enough to stand for Nani’s liking, and she is more than willing to grasp the student’s from behind by the shoulders and drag them to their feet, squeezing them by the crook of the elbow as though applied pressure will assist in squirting out the correct answer in perfect British diction. Her air of prefect control is only shattered by her guttural pronunciation that does something to decimate the English language, and the separation in her insistent jarbling of words to be New England accent only serves to confuse the 3^rd and 4^th graders.

Dika stands at the front of the classroom with the controlling stare of a moth being sucked into a fluorescent lightbulb. She is genuinely sweet and joined teaching for the right reasons (to actually help students, inspire them to travel and excel to big universities, have summers off to travel), and her grasp of English is quickly improving through night school that the Ministry funds. The question of whether she should be instructing children in speaking and listening skills is hardly for me to determine.  However, she is far more willing to let me make an impact on the classroom, and soon the room was divided into 2 groups, one doing workbook exercises on the board as I worked with the other students on a dialogue about zoo animals and Boffy the Clown.

The students are an absolute charm, immediate justification that coming here and enough to serve as a realization of my future desire to be in a classroom. There is no definitive uniform, but the crisp black slacks and button up white dress shirts are further outdone by individual flares of style (presumably from the parents), argyle sweaters, cardigans, and suit vests covering ties and bowties, the girls opting for frilly skirts (some of uncomfortable shortness) and intricately patterned white dress shirts, there is, of course, the requisite Scarlet Letter of the classes, a short brunette chick in a tight skirt and a cheerleading outfit cut so the bra straps share an equal prominence across exposed shoulders. Everyone wonders where the girl’s parents are and when the eating disorder and inevitable drug addiction will take their toll. Or maybe I’m just the jaded American. Either way, the communal desire to learn, to better themselves in every area of school, is evident through their rapt attention, the multitudes of students who continue to sneak into my class to be taught by the ‘native speaker,’ and the cries of ‘Mas! Mas!!’ (short for the Georgian word for teacher) as the students tug on their necks (a sign language for please) and fly out of their seats, desperate to be the one to answer correctly. Days like this make me think back to days in Core English courses, when teachers’ answered fizzled out against the odious aroma of students’ hangovers and ambivalence, until a group of 2 or 3 students inevitably raised their hands to keep the class moving along. Over the past 3 days, I have managed to fall in love hundreds of times watching these kids jockey for academic position, as though sitting attentively was not enough to allow information to properly flow into their long term memories.

The MacMllian books that we use to tech (not that any of them have been delivered yet) teach using British English, which means I will soon develop a fluency in Cockney rhyming slang and can, come December call people ‘Guvnah’ and say ‘Cheers’ instead of ‘thank you’ with no sense of Hipster irony. On the other hand, this resulted in the first time an 8 year old boy asked me for a rubber. As my eyebrows jumped as though suddenly desperate to become simply ‘brows,’ and a quick blush flashed across my face, my teacher handed him an eraser and he sat back down to correct some mistake on his paper. Who would have thought such a language barrier existed between us and the Brits.