Our Turkish world visits us in Tennessee!

Last week, we had the privilege of hosting some of Justin's former teaching colleagues from Büyük Kolej at Justin's parents' home in Tennessee. A group of high schoolers competed in Destination Imagination's Global Finals in Knoxville. It was fun to host a group in a real American neighborhood so they could see houses and grassy yards (instead of apartments) in the suburbs.

The team competed in the Fine Arts Challenge and did a great job, finishing 17th out of 49 other international teams. Their skit was a play on Mario Bros., very well done!

We grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots of trimmings and dessert. (Along with hot tea afterwards, of course.) It was wonderful to speak and hear Turkish again and be able to repay some of the hospitality we had experienced from them.

Teaching English in Turkey

(Justin) Two weeks ago I finished my first semester teaching 2nd-4th graders here. I had a tearful goodbye with my colleagues, since our family made the decision to return to the U.S. to help Elias's progress with his special needs. Everyone commented that it felt like I'd worked there for years rather than just one semester-- it was such a good fit for everyone. Here are some fond memories. This was my view after arriving every morning (most days more sunny than this one):

You can just make out Anıtkabir in the center of this one.

On a bulletin board in the high school wing I was met with a daily reminder of where I'd come from:

Below are a couple of items I got from students during my time that I appreciated. The first is a set of Atatürk Turkish coffee cups that one of my students gave to me on Teacher's Day.

The second is a picture one of my 2nd graders drew for me for Christmas with a note from her in Turkish that she loves me and will never forget me.

Having read this book and talked to countless other veteran teachers here, I can say the complaints of Western teachers in Turkish classrooms are universal. It is tough. The schools are loud, discipline is weaker than at a typical American school. At my school, the acoustics of the rooms and corridors were akin to a racquetball court. During the 10-minute recess after each period, the shrill screams literally hurt your ears. This can shake you deep down to your nerves (signs written in Turkish on the walls pointing out the scientific hazards of "noise pollution" only make it worse). So, you strive for peace and quiet in your own classroom-- meaning you have to keep the kids busy at all times. 40 minutes have to come loaded with 10-minute activities, and any exciting games you have to play need to have strict rules/boundaries to keep kids quiet.

Kids are emotional. They are just as passionate about their football teams as their parents are. There is no age limit for crying to be unacceptable. Insults quickly lead to violence.

And the kids LOVE and want to be LOVED. The best teachers are mugged in the hallways by their students/former students who want to hug them. (Touching is very normal here, it often makes Westerners uncomfortable.) They are lavished with gifts on Teacher's Day. I never achieved that status. In part because I'm not the most teddy-bear kind of guy, it was my first time teaching little ones, and I also had the misfortune of preparing young students for their first Cambridge exams (and their first English speaking/listening exams in any case), which added a bit of seriousness and stress to what had previously been mostly speaking-English-for-fun class.

My advice to anyone wanting to teach in Turkey: Learn Turkish first. This will make you a better co-worker and allow you to understand problems in your classroom. You need to make friends outside of your department and it will be hard for you if few of your colleagues speak English well. You obviously don't want to use it in your classroom, but if I hadn't spoken Turkish, I wouldn't have been able to get help with issues from the homeroom teacher, principal, etc.

But here are a couple of native English speaking colleagues who made my time there go faster as well. I'm glad to have met Jim, a retired Royal Air Force man from Scotland, and Robin, a South African surfer. They helped me have fun. 

 

Here's to the toughest job I've had with the greatest colleagues and boss (Ayşen Hoca) in the world. 

Book Review: The Yogurt Man Cometh by Kevin Revolinski

Some friends of ours lent us a copy of The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey as it's a humorous read about an American's crash course in living in Ankara and teaching at the same school where Justin teaches. We highly recommend the book to anyone living in Ankara or coming here for the first time.

Ankara was Revolinski's first real foray outside the U.S., he has since become a travel blogger. He captures the hilly slopes, the perils of public transit, and the difficulties of trying to teach English to private school students very well. Kevin was able to make friends quickly and accomplished a lot of sightseeing in Turkey in just a year's time, despite getting seriously ill in the process. The experience takes place in 1997-1998 and it's interesting to see how much the city has grown and changed even in just 15 years.

The book is a quick read, it's like a series of blog posts. It's the book that will get you closest to what our lives look like in Ankara. Trust us, you'll enjoy it even if you never plan on visiting here.

Parent-Teacher Conferences and Other Meetings

(Justin) This past weekend I had a working Saturday; I had to be at school by 11am. I wish I had a picture of the freshly planted flowers in the front flowerbed, given that it gets below freezing every night now and these plants will be dead in less than a week. Why the urgency for a Saturday? It was Parent-Teacher Conference Day!

I survived my first veli toplantası, or parent-teacher meeting. For 90 minutes, parents queued up to talk to me about their kids. Most of them wanted to know if their 2-4th grader was speaking and pronouncing English properly. I wanted them to know more about their kids behavior, so that's what I focused on. Some parents were surprised that their child was naughty in my class, but most are used to hearing such things. This was the single best test I've had of my rapid-fire-mode Turkish, and it went well. Probably averaged something like 30 seconds per parent.

Much less fun have been the teacher meetings of recent weeks, including something called Şube Öğretmenler Kurulu (abbreviated ŞÖK, which sounds kind of like "SHOCK!" This is a teachers' meeting where every student in every grade is discussed individually by the homeroom teacher and all of the branch teachers, like myself. These averaged 2.5 hours for each grade, and are held three times a year(!). What's frustrating about meetings is that there is a lot of talk about problems without much hope of solutions.

Suppose there is a child who is violent, curses his teachers and classmates, gets his friends to behave naughtily, and destroys school property. Suppose also his parents think it's the teachers' job to teach the kids proper behavior and respect-- not the parents' job. In America, such a kid would be held outside of class in detention, sent home, or suspended in order to preserve the classroom environment for the rest of the students. In Turkey, that's illegal until at least 5th grade. Some schools do it if their administration is brave enough. Not ours. So, the solution to really problematic kids is often... to do nothing. "Sabırlı olmamız lazım," or "We need to be patient." I mentioned previously that there is no special education in the schools; for kids that are physically or mentally disabled, there is little to do other than love the kid and hope for the best. The school psychologists can help kids deal with anger and emotional issues, but can do little to help a kid with a disability. This can make for a very difficult classroom environment. 

So, ŞÖK serves more as a way for teachers to share information about the child's background. In many cases, I felt greater sympathy for the child. She cries because her dad is in jail, he is violent because his parents are divorcing, etc. But then you think, "We're going to meet three times a year to hear these stories again for as long as this kid is at the school. I've seen plenty of 10th graders who behave very badly and have been the subject of these meetings for 10 years without any change. This is depressing." 

In the end, it's mostly the good kids' parents who come speak to you. The really difficult children have neglectful parents or their parents just don't want to hear about their kid's behavior. I think every teacher reading this can nod their head and say, "Exactly."

I won't write about the "teacher's council" meetings we have with all teachers and the principal, but these are also interesting depending on the principal's way of running things. The "normal" way in Turkey is for it to be strictly controlled top-down with no speaking by subordinates. My principal, however, opens the floor to new ideas and thoughts, which sometimes create controversy leading to longer meetings...