Teaching in Georgia

I spent a year and a half (2011-2012) teaching at a public school in Zugdidi, Georgia.  Today’s post is about that experience.  I would like to point out that what I am writing is purely based on my experience, I only know what I lived and saw and what I learned from fellow foreign teachers.

I’d like to start off by painting a picture of Georgian schools.  When I arrived in Georgia I had no expectation of what the country would look like, I had done absolutely no research and I never really thought about what a post-soviet country’s infrastructure would look like.  I now know: lots of box-like concrete buildings.  Schools, for example, are drab concrete boxes 2-3 stories tall.  The hallways are generally lifeless, colorless, and cold (the cold is a relief in the summer but dreadful in the winter).  The classrooms are similarly lifeless, though the color is a bit brighter and the temperature a bit warmer.   There is no child artwork decorating the walls but some classrooms have a few hanging posters, handmade by teachers.  Desks and chairs are usually made of a few painted boards nailed together and those nails are often jutting out, ready to be snagged.  Blackboards are boards painted black and there may or may not be chalk to use on them.  Some schools have broken windows and walls that are quite literally falling down.  It’s not an ideal learning environment but as the children and teachers don’t know anything different there is no complaining.  The country is in a process of renovating schools so some school buildings are being completely rebuilt and other schools are receiving new chalkboards or desks and chairs.  In my second school year, my English classroom received new chalkboards.

Students usually go to the same school from 1^st through 12^th grade, all 12 grades in the same building.  School lasts from 9am until 3pm, though the lower grades get out earlier.  For winter, there is no central heating that works so if your school doesn’t have wood burning stoves in the classrooms, like mine, the school often shortens lessons and school ends earlier.   To keep warm throughout the heatless winter months, students and teachers wear multiple layers of clothes under winter coats, along with scarfs, hats and gloves.  I do not miss seeing my breath while I teach (though Korean schools are not as warm as I hoped they would be).  There is no lunch break; rather, there is a 5-10 minute break between every lesson when students can run (literally) to the lunch lady and buy a khachapuri or hot dog or whatever quick and unhealthy snack food the lunch woman made that day.  Lastly, it is the teachers that do the moving, the students remain in the same dreary classroom all day (some schools have English classrooms, like mine, but all of the other teachers did the moving). 

Zugdidi Public School No. 11

Hallway

What about teaching?

While living in Georgia, I often went back and forth in my mind debating my usefulness as a teacher there (I still debate this).  The education system needs complete revamping, from improving the school buildings to improving the education of the teachers themselves and providing schools with resources.  When I stop to think about the amount of money spent on me by the Georgian government (thousands of dollars on me alone), I feel that there are obviously better uses for this money, such as providing students with free books.  However, on the other side of the argument, I know my usefulness was not only to help teach the students English but also to help teach the teachers.

In Georgia, teachers are not taught to be teachers; there is no teaching degree or qualification necessary to become a teacher.  In order to teach math, English, history, physics, or any other subject, you study that subject at university then you are ready to be a teacher.  I often felt more apt at teaching than my Georgian co-teacher simply because I was taught by trained teachers.  My education gave me instinctual knowledge on how to manage a classroom and how to motivate students.  My co-teacher was open to learning from me so I was able to pass on little bits of teaching wisdom (though not all teachers are willing to hear constructive criticism from a foreigner).  Moreover, many Georgian English teachers have a low level of fluency so we foreigners help to increase the fluency of the teachers while simultaneously teaching the students.  In this way, I can see the efficacy of importing foreigners to co-teach English.

Then there is the other side of the argument.  While the public schools in Georgia are completely free, books are not.  If a student comes from a poor family or a family that places little value on education, that student will not likely have books.  I have friends who described classrooms where twenty students shared two or three books and I never taught a class without at least a few bookless students.  This poses a problem not only in the classroom but also outside of the classroom, as there is no way for bookless students to complete homework or to study at home.  Moreover, in the USA a teacher would be able to photocopy important parts of the book if there were a bookless student, but in Georgia there is no such option.  Some schools have computers, other don’t.  Some have printers, other don’t.  No schools that I know of have a Xerox machine or paper that is free to be used.  Whenever I made worksheets or tests for students, I had to buy and use my own paper and hope that there was ink in the printer.  Because of this scarcity in teaching resources I can’t help but think that the money spent on me could be better spent on buying books for students or providing schools with paper.

Another incentive to having foreigners in Georgia is not related to education, but the economy.  Our advantageousness inside the classroom put aside, we foreigners help boost local economies by spending money.  The government pays foreign teachers a higher salary than local teachers but that money doesn’t leave the country; it supports local bars, cafes and restaurants.  Pretty much every cent of every month’s salary is put right back into the hands of Georgians.  Furthermore, our own money is also added to the economy; when our salaries are too low to support our drinking lifestyle we dip into savings from home.  Moreover, having foreigners in the country boosts tourism, an industry the country is trying desperately to exploit.  All of my friends and family now know that Georgia exists, where it is and that it is truly beautiful and worth visiting.  We foreigners act as living advertisements.  While I can name many downsides to the increased tourism, such as ruining beautiful mountain towns, the country needs the tourist dollars to continue improving.  So maybe we are beneficial.

Back to the schools…what about the students?

In high school there are two types of Georgian students, ones that pay attention and are self-motivated to learn and ones that have given up and just sit during class.  The latter is the more prevalent one, especially for boys.  The Georgian teachers label these uninterested students “lazy” and there are really no efforts made by teachers to instill motivation in them.  They generally don’t disrupt the classroom but it was painful to watch them be allowed to obviously not care about school.

In elementary school, where I spent most of my time teaching, students are eager to learn.  So eager, in fact, that when a question is asked you get twenty students leaping out of their chairs waving their hands in the air begging to answer the question.  Forget about the silent hand raising that you know from back home, in Georgia students shout “teacher! teacher!” as they frantically try to be the one you call on.  I tried so hard to stop this behavior in my classroom (can you imagine how annoying it is to hear teacher being shouted at you all day?) but it’s nearly impossible to stop because every other teacher in the school allows it (including your co-teacher).  Elementary students also have a habit of shouting “I have finished!” when they finish a given exercise; they are obviously competing with each other on who will finish first.  This habit was equally annoying and impossible to stop.  Oh well, they sure were adorable!

Teaching in Georgia was bittersweet.  I was allowed a lot more flexibility (taking days off just to travel) than I am here in Korea but the scarcity of resources made teaching more difficult.  Maybe next time I will have the best of both worlds.

My English classroom

Adorable 2nd graders