The Nikola Karev Primary School

My first two weeks in a Macedonian primary school were marvelous. The Nicola Karev Primary School is one of two primary schools in Probistip. There are approximately 440 students in grades 1-9. Grade One is what we know as Kindergarten. There are 37 teachers. The facility itself is the largest school in Macedonia, tracing its construction back to 1986 during the mining boom days. It has a large gymnasium and boasts a small indoor swimming pool for teaching swimming. Sadly, the school doesn’t have the resources to maintain the infrastructure to the highest standards or to heat the pool in the colder months, but the staff does a wonderful job in making it a warm and friendly place for the children to learn with the resources they do have.

My counterpart, Alexandra, is one of three English teachers at the school. She was recruited and assigned to me by the Peace Corps. She is a highly motivated teacher who is anxious to learn everything there is to learn about teaching English. I will be working closely with her and the other English teachers in Probistip over the next two years (I will also be involved in other projects within the community). Alexandra grew up in Probistip and she seems to know everyone of the 10000 residents. She is married and has two young sons and she now lives in a village about a ten minute drive from Probistip. In her role as my counterpart, she has introduced me to the entire staff at the school, has taught me the ins and outs of the Macedonian educational system; has answered thousands of my questions; has taught me how to shop at the bazaar and the local shops; and has been my guardian angel (just like Violetta in Negotino).

Grades 1 -4 go to class from 7:30 til 11:30. They are in a self-contained classroom and have the same teacher for every subject except English. The classroom teacher teaches Macedonian, math, geography, social studies, nature, art, music and physical education. The English language teacher comes to their room for three 40 minute classes each week. Since the classroom teacher must also teach Physical Education, I understand that this doesn’t happen as often as it should. The students’ favorite after-school activities nowadays are watching television and playing computer games. So someone might want to look into this arrangement pretty soon of having untrained classroom teachers conduct unscheduled PE classes. The teachers in these grades are hired for their ability to teach everything and, since they get no breaks, for their superb bladder control.

The children and adolescents in Grades 5-9 go to class from 7:30 til 1:00. They have home room first thing on Monday morning with their home room teacher who stays with them as their home room teacher until they move on to the high school. The teachers have five years to get to know their students and the students’ parents. The homeroom class then stays together as a group for the rest of the day as they switch classes for the different subjects. Students the upper grades have Macedonian language, English, a required choice of either German or French, Physical Education (with a certified PE teacher), History, Math, Biology or Chemistry, Computer, Art, Crafts (Shop a s we know it).

The teachers keep all of the information about their home room students (grades, absences, misbehavior, and whatever) in a very formal and serious Big Red Book. The teacher picks up the book from its dedicated place in the Teacher’s Room at the beginning of the day. The book accompanies each class as they attend their different subjects and it is returned at the end of the day. It is considered a great honor to be the student who transports the Red Book from class to class.

Although this is supposed to change within the next year (the Ministry of Education will provide the books), students still have to purchase their books, workbooks, and school supplies for each class. They can buy individual sheets of paper from their teacher (a break even, non-profit pain for the teacher) for tests or projects. Some families cannot afford the books, so some students will attend class without them and sit in place while the others are doing exercises in their workbooks. Another problem that I mentioned before is that many students use hand-me-down work books with the answers filled in with ink. So when it’s time to practice a newly learned concept or to complete an exercise in the workbook for homework, the students with the previously owned books have “completed” the assignment before they even started. Obviously, they learn very little; they don’t reinforce any concepts taught that day; and they make it difficult for the teacher to verify that the students understood the lesson. This issue should be resolved next school year when, as I understand it, every student will receive schoolbooks from the Ministry.

The one undeniable similarity between the Nicloa Karev Primary School, the Straso Pindzur Primary School in Negotino, and Blanchard Memorial where I taught for 33 years is the children. They all have the same interests (computer games and TV); they like the same foods (pizza and pomme frits); they want to be famous actresses, actors or sport heroes when they grow up; and their smiles and laughter light up the room. So what else is new?

Much more on the schools later.

P.S. I just turned on my TV with the green lines and there’s an NFL night game on between the Cowboys and the Eagles. It’s Monday night (NFL on Fox) but it’s only 3:30in the States, so the action isn’t live. The commentary is in Macedonian (or Serbian?) so I am not sure when the game was played. The announcers keep talking about Arizona, Minnesota, New England, the Jets and Miami, so I am assuming this is a recent game . The best part is that there are few commercials, so after kickoffs, punt returns, time outs, TV time outs, field goals and touchdowns, the camera pans around the stadium and the team benches. So now I know what goes on at the stadium during the commercial breaks that I used to suffer through which tried to convince me to buy a beer I didn’t like, a car I couldn’t afford, or some medication I don’t need. When was the game played?