The Peace Corps commitment is for 27 months. My group, the MAK 13’s have now been here for 26 months and individuals have started to return to their home towns in the USA . The out-processing procedures limit the number of Volunteers who can depart to 4 or 5 a week, so the whole process of getting everyone out of Macedonia takes about six to seven weeks. Some Volunteers (I being one of them) choose to extend their time so they can complete projects that they are working on. At least eight Mak13’s have extended for various lengths of time (6 months to a year) which is an unusually high number of extendees. I chose to extend six months so I could complete several in-the work-projects and so that I could finish the school year with the students whom I have grown so fond of.
Meanwhile, the MAK14’s have almost completed their first year on site (plus three months training) and the MAK 15 Trainees will complete their training and be sworn in as Volunteers on Thanksgiving Day, the day after which they will head out to their new assignments in villages, towns and cities throughout the country.
The eight Trainees here in Probistip found out last week where they will call home for the next two years. They had a chance to visit and spend a day there, meeting their counterpart, getting a feel for their new village, town or city, and seeing their new digs. They all seemed very pleased.
Here at Nikola Karev, the computers that were installed 10 months ago in the our English classroom are now fully functional. We have the internet and the teacher can control and monitor each student’s computer, so that FaceBook and sports betting sites can be locked out. Alexandra has found various TEFL sites that enable her to work with different levels of students simultaneously and it throws a little variety into the usually mundane teaching strategies that teachers are forced to employ because of their limited resources. Alexandra has embraced this new technology but I am not sure if many of the other staff members who have this technology, have. Time will tell.
Alexandra conducted a brief workshop for the Trainees on using the computer network and monitoring the students’ work and I gave a presentation on a Model Classroom and on my lessons learned as a TEFL. Hopefully they gained a few insights into teaching in Macedonia but there was no test, so I don’t know how much of it they absorbed or found useful.
Speaking of useful, I finally found a use for all of the plastic bottle caps that I have been throwing into a kitchen drawer, caps I figured I would someday come in handy. I took 26 of them and wrote one letter of the alphabet on each cap so that I had the complete alphabet. I employed them as a manipulative at school when I worked with some of the students who were having a difficult time. It was so successful that we needed more sets so we had a contest to see which class could bring in the most plastic caps, with the winning class getting Michael’s (me) homemade cookies. The winning class brought in 1173 caps and we collected more than 2500 in one week ¬(Only the 5th and 6th Grades participated). We can now make all sorts of manipulatives to reinforce tenses, parts of speech, sentence structure, colors, sounds, etc. All for free!
Despite all of the good things happening in the classroom, there is still room for improvement. Time could be used more efficiently during the 40 minute class. Students’ study skills could be improved. Advanced students could be challenged more. Slower students could be more involved. Class discussions could be better managed. Parents could be more involved. Student accomplishments could be better recognized.
So each day we strive to sell the concept that I have written on a sheet of paper taped to the classroom wall – “Better is the Enemy of Good Enough”.
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