The PST Behemoth

Reminiscing about early summer in Kvishkheti~

Hello! Sorry I forgot about my August post, I'll try to make it up for you by posting a little more often in September. This particular post is for my most dedicated readers (<3 u mom) and for potential Georgia trainees who want to know what pre-service training (PST) is all about... in depth.

PST was not alll about Sunday day-off hikes, but they were a lovely time.

I talked about the first half of PST earlier, but I left out a few details that I will mention here. First, PST is always centered around a city not far from Tbilisi. This year it was outside of Khashuri, but I believe the last few years before this one it was outside of Gori (a city famous for being Stalin's hometown that you can read about here). The trainees are divided into clusters of 5 or 6, and the clusters are distributed in the city or surrounding villages, with at most two clusters in any town or village. My cluster  and another were in Kvishkheti (read more here), a resort town about 20 minutes from Khashuri.  During the first month or so of PST we spent the mornings in the Kvishkheti school studying Georgian, ate lunch at a host family's house in Kvishkheti, and then went to Khashuri by Peace Corps (PC) marshutka for English Education project (EE) technical training. I am an English Education volunteer, so this post is about the training I went through specifically, the Individual and Organizational Development (IOD) volunteers go through a very similar process but with different content. The technical sessions took place at a public school in Khashuri and covered topics including classroom management, how to teach grammar, teaching multi-level classes, monitoring and evaluation, PC data collection tools, and numerous other boring but very useful topics. About once a week we had a "Hub Day" where the IOD and EE trainees all came together and we were trained on PC-wide topics, including medical, safety and security, policies and procedures, PC committees and secondary projects, and more. We also were the recipients of a classic PC Georgia combo: the vaccine-coffee break.

Our school in the summer, so much greener than when we arrived.

During the next part of PST we had practicum, which consisted of teaching practice lessons at the school we had been studying at. During these three or four weeks we taught in the mornings, took an hour for lunch, and then came back to the school for our language classes. Eight or nine hours a day in the same building made the days seem very long. I enjoyed having two clusters in Kvishkheti because it was nice to have ten people to spend 12 hours a day with 6 days a week instead of just five, but when it came to coordinating lesson planning and timing with the three counterparts we were working with, having that many people was a logistical nightmare. We were supposed to teach as often as possible with the counterpart teachers, but because there were so many of us we often paired up and never taught more than once a day. The pairing was a bad thing because we were also paired with the counterpart and then there were three people teaching one 45-minute lesson, which was far too many people. There are worse things than a trial-by-fire lesson planning PST experience though, because it has been so nice working one-on-one with my counterpart now, having that to compare it to.

For many people in our group, myself included, this was our first real English teaching experience. I was an apprentice English teacher at an English-as-a-Second-Language summer school for recently arrived refugees and immigrants in Oakland during the summer before coming here, but that was more of a teacher's assistant role than a teaching one, and I had taught classes to refugees at an internship, but nothing like actually teaching a classroom full of students. the students were generally pretty excited to have us there (except for 8th grade but I think there's a universal lack of excitement in 8th grade) and were sweet but talkative. I didn't think the teaching was that bad, but one of my observors told me that I should work on my confidence and maybe try practicing in front of a mirror :/. It was a good opportunity to see how Goergian classes are taught, what the English textbooks are like, and to experiment with techniques and activities before we got to the school we would be at permanently. I think the main goal of PST is to have us make all of our bad or weird or awkward first impressions and learn from them before we get to permanent site, and I think it works.

It was also all of our first time working with a Georgian partner, and some people in our group struggled with that element more than the teaching part. I found that saying hello to all of the teachers every day and being fairly assertive (standing up when it was the time we agreed I would teach, reaching out to the teachers regularly and repeatedly) solved most of my problems. It's hard to work with people without building relationships with them and all ten of us mostly inexperienced teacher-trainees were kind of thrown at these three teachers for a whirlwind three weeks of lesson planning and lessons three or four days a week, so I can understand why they weren't always excited to work with us. We had nothing to do but lesson plan and study Georgian, but the teachers we worked with had children and grandchildren and entire farms to attend to after school as well. Eventually they warmed up to us, and one of my favorite moments with a counterpart was one day when a group of us was taking an after-school walk we saw one of the teachers tending her grapes and she came over to chat. We received a brief lecture on the history of the town and heard about her son that she doesn't think works hard enough in his office job, and I realized that I didn't know anything about these women outside of what was directly related to teaching and that I wanted to do much, much better with my permanent site counterpart.

Our summer camp, chaotic but a good learning experience.

After we were done with practicum we had a summer camp to plan, another occasion where having ten people at the same school was kind of a mess. At this point both of our clusters realized that we hadn't done anything to build a relationship with the school's director, and now we needed to use the school after the school year had ended and didn't know how to contact her or feel comfortable doing so. Instead, we took the easy PST way out and our very kind (too kind) Language & Cross-Cultural Facilitators (LCFs aka Georgian language teachers) did the contacting and requesting for us. This was another situation that I was determined not to repeat at site, and one that I wouldn't be able to because my lovely LCF, Lela, would be off living her life and not constantly available to answer questions and translate and explain and do everything that she did for us in PST. We were given about three days to plan our camp, and then another day to incorporate feedback into our written plan before we started. We made posters and told children to come, and they did! Word travels fast in villages, and there isn't that much to do if you're at home during the summer. On the first day we learned about the importance of having back-up plans, as we flew through most of our games and activities in half the time we had allotted. Our management and leadership style was somewhat akin to some Anarchist collectives that I have known, but with the added stress of having 30 children running around you as you try to make decisions. The summer camp ultimately went pretty well despite some rough spots, and I learned a lot from it that I applied to my also mandatory summer camp at site. Working with ten minds does leave one with a wealth of ideas. During this period we were back to language in the morning, camp and technical in the afternoons, and occasional Hub Days.

Our site placement map, lovingly made out of masking tape by PC staff.

Me and my Peace Corps assigned "megobari" (friend), and now sitemate, Jenna.

After the summer camp we had our site placements, where we all stood around a masking tape map of Georgia and opened enveloped with our permanent site placements and then stood on the map. It was nice to visualize who we would be near, though alas most of my clustermates and close friends were far from me. It turns out that I am the G17 furthest from Tbilisi (and everywhere else except for Batumi). After that we went to Borjomi, a resort town known for bottling the Soviet Union's favorite mineral water (also called Borjomi), for the Supervisor's Conference, where we met our new directors and went to some sessions on working with people from other cultures and did get-to-know-you activities. It was at a beautiful hotel with a pool and sauna and I was torn between wanting to start my relationship with my director, Inga, off right and wanting to go to the pool. I think I managed to strike the right balance because Inga and I are on good terms and I got to go to the nice pool before budget cuts mean that our conferences have to be at less fancy establishments.

My director Inga and I after the conference, in a slightly over-full PC marshutka, headed to Khashuri so we could catch another marshutka onward.

The day after the conference we went with our directors to our sites for site visits. This was a three day visit where we met our host families and counterparts and got to see where we would be living and working for the next two years. The most important thing that I discovered was that I did not in fact live in the village that my school was in. Instead, I live about a kilometer down the road in a place at the intersection of villages with at least four possible names. To this day I am not 100% sure where I live, and I get the impression that my host siblings aren't sure either. The site visit was odd because I then went back to Kvishkheti and had two weeks left of PST where we covered final issues related to transitioning to permanent sites and working with teachers and final Georgian lessons, but the whole time I and almost everyone else was ready to just go and start what would be our lives for the nexxt two years. I adore my PST village and host family, but knowing that I would be living somewhere else and after two and a half months of training and months of application and interview and medical and legal clearance I was very ready to go. And then eventually we did, after a long journey to a long ceremony in a rainy Tbilisi my host mom, director, and I set off once again for site. We left Tbilisi at around 3 or 4 pm and got to my house at 1 am. I was asleep when we arrived and didn't say bye to my director, but she has forgiven me.

Saying goodbye to our LCFs with khatchapuri and tiramisu they made for us (we made them breakfast earlier)

A last toast to the Kvishkheti krew.

First glimpses of Batumi, the seaside city that I go through any time I want to leave Adjara (or go to anytime I want a wider variety of food or the beach).

My director and I stopped for about 20 minutes to stretch our legs and take pictures, after 4 hours of driving, with another hour and a half to go.

The Black Sea!

Batumi has a new and strange and lovely skyline.

I wonder what it will be like in the winter...

My new home! My room is on the far left of the second floor.

The approach to my new school.

The flag of the Adjaran Autonomous Republic painted on my school.

The road to my house, paved in 2017.

The view from my bedroom window.

The historical bridge that's the only thing that shows up when you Google my area.

My counterpart Nineli, an administrator Mzisa, and I on my first visit to the school.

A dead beetle. I hope to see more of these (but alive)!

This hammock was a joy to encounter.

This little porch jutting off from my family's yard and overlooking the river is one of my favorite spots.

My host family mostly grows food but there are some flowers too :)