Dear Friends and Family,

Today was the last day of regular school, and the "Last Bell" for the graduating 12th graders.   So I thought I would send you a description of that ceremony and some year-end thoughts and observations.

During the first class period the 11th graders were busy getting things ready.  They created a bell-shaped flower arrangement in the school courtyard, set up a microphone on the school steps, and organized the various elements of the ceremony.  After the first period, the students from the primary and secondary schools assembled in the courtyard, all except the 12th graders ("leavers" for short, since they are leaving school).  They were at the "old school," the baron's mansion that is now the primary school.  This building is about 500 yards from the secondary school, reached by the road or by a walkway that passes through the trees and gardens of the school park.   The leavers assembled at the old school, where their own schooling began, and walked in procession to the secondary school courtyard.  They were carrying a banner and flowers.  Some were dressed up and wearing paper flowers.

The leavers stood in a row facing the assembled students.  The headmistress gave the opening remarks, then the 11th graders read a speech and a poem.  Then representatives of various classes came up to the microphone and offered their congratulations and good wishes to the leavers.  Then members of that class who had a relative or special friend leaver would give them flowers.  Representatives of the school leavers spoke, giving their thanks to the teachers who had worked with them over the years.  Then the leavers went in to the audience to give flowers and a card to each teacher.  (This practice of people leaving a stage or the front of an assembly to give flowers to people in the audience is common in Latvia.)  Finally it was time for the last bell. Four 1st graders, two boys and two girls, did the honors.  They stood in pairs, and one child in each pair rang and old-fashioned hand-held bell.  Then they went in procession down to where the leavers stood, still ringing their bells.  As the assembly broke up and the 9th graders went back into the school, they were applauded as the incoming secondary school class.

The ceremony only lasted about a half hour, but it provided a meaningful way for the 12th graders to mark the occasion of their last day at secondary school.  I do not know about other Latvian schools--I assume that much of what we do at our school is common at other schools--but here in Mazsalaca recognition of events, transitions, and milestones is a significant part of life.  This usually involves a ceremony of some kind, with a variety of activities that might include a concert, poetry reading, dance performance, speeches, certificates or awards, songs, and, always, giving flowers.  During the winter the flowers are store-bought, but now that summer is here the flowers are from people's gardens.  It can be one flower or several, and they are usually just held loosely or tied with a ribbon, not in fancy arrangments.  The only requirement is that you give an odd number of flowers--an even number is for when someone dies.

The day was a milestone for me as well, although I was the only one who realized it.  It marked the end of my first year of teaching here in Mazsalaca.  The week has been a bit anticlimactic.  I was looking forward to having fun in my final lessons with my various classes, but as it turned out I had almost no regular lessons this week, so I wasn't able to have the kind of closure I had hoped for.  The end of the school year here is a bit chaotic.  During the past two weeks, the 12th graders have taken national exams in several different subjects, including the English exam on May 15th.  These exams typically take most of the day, and the students have special preparation lessons instead of regular classes during the days beforehand.  So I haven't seen my 12 Profils class for almost two weeks now.  The 9th graders have national exams too, and since the English exam was this week, I haven't seen them either.  Then, my own participation in administering and correcting the exams yesterday and today meant that I didn't teach my regular classes. So it has been a crazy week.

Actually, because of the grading procedures here "real" school work actually ended more than a week ago.  Unlike in the U.S. (at least the schools I went to), where you get your grades in the mail a few weeks after school is over, students here get their grades by the last day of school.  We actually had to have our grades in last Tuesday.  By "in" I mean they had to be written in the class journal that is kept for each homeroom.  In this book is the record of the year's work for each student.  Each subject teacher has pages for classwork and homework, where we have to write attendance, what the topic was for each lesson, grades for tests and homework, and final grades.  The homeroom teacher ("class teacher"), then has to check everything and write a report which is presented at a big meeting.  I went to the mid-year meeting, but opted out of the year-end meeting yesterday--luckily, since it was 4 hours long.  During these meetings, each teacher presents the results for the class, including which students performed above average or poorly.  There are discussions about problem students, and general problems and issues at school.  Since I don't understand much of what is said, I decided that my time would be better spent correcting exams. The result of having to have grades in before the school year is actually over is that not much serious work happens in the final weeks of school. Agita and I dubbed these final weeks "lame-duck days."  Now that I know how things are done, I'll be better able to plan for next year's end.

So how do I feel about my work during the past year?  Have I made a difference?  Has my presence been helpful?  It has certainly been a struggle with some of my classes, and I can only hope that the few students in those classes who actually wanted to learn were able to gain something amid the chaos created by their classmates.  And also, perhaps my general attitude of patience and openness and persistence made some impression.  Some students routinely baited me or were disruptive in some way, and I'm pleased to say that I was able to maintain a calm attitude almost all of the time.  It really is true that standing silently, waiting for their attention, is a much better way to get that attention that shouting at them.

In my three best classes, 12 Profils, 11 Profils, and 9d, I think all of us benefitted from our interaction.  I think I really made a difference in the students' willingness to speak, partly because I only spoke English in the classroom and they were forced to learn communication strategies that they might not otherwise have learned. But also because of the way I made speaking a routine in all of our activities. And I think 12 Profils appreciated and benefitted from the systematic way we prepared for the national exam, especially the writing and speaking parts.  I administered the speaking part of the 12th-form exam, and I was very proud of the girls.  They were so nervous--my heart went out to them--but they still managed to do quite well.  Mazsalaca is considered to be a normal rural school, not quite as good academically as the schools in places like Valmiera (which, not coincidentally, have much greater resources than we do).  So it was a great pleasure to hear the exam observer, an English teacher from Valmiera, say that our 12th graders spoke better than her students!

I think my presence has been good for the other English teachers: Agita, Inga, Lilija, and Anda.  Although we met weekly for an advanced English class, I think they benefitted more from speaking English with me on a routine basis.  Before I came they didn't speak English much outside the classroom, but we made it a rule that at school we would try to only speak English.  Then there was the benefit of all the new ideas I brought from my Peace Corps training, and the resources from the Peace Corps resource center that I could share.  So I think the school's English language teaching program benefitted from more than just my classroom teaching.

As far as what I have learned, where to start?  First, the essentials of teaching: planning, developing materials, classroom management, correcting, grading, working with textbooks, creating tests.  Then, teaching English: not only methodology, but also re-learning the rules of grammer so that I could teach them. Last summer at Pre-Service Training I didn't even bother to try when Randy asked us to write a sentence in the Present Continuous tense.  Today I could do that!  Then there are are all the cultural things: learning about how schools operate in Latvia, the traditions, policies, politics, and problems, both on a local and national level.  Finally, I learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses, and got a better idea of how I can be of use during my second year in Latvia.  That translated into a plan which I wrote a few months ago, and has now been approved by my school and my Peace Corps program manager.

So what will I be doing next year?   I will be doing less classroom teaching, and more work with teacher training and resource development. I will only teach one regular class, the 10th grade, and I will have full responsibility for them rather than co-teaching like I did with all my classes this year.  Then for the 11th and 12th grade I will develop a special curriculum which I will teach two lessons a week for each grade.  This curriculum will focus on writing, but will also include speaking, critical thinking, test taking, and other special skills.  The basic idea is to use English to teach certain things, rather than just teach English.  For the rest of the classes from grades 5-9, I will rotate through the classes during the year, spending a week (two lessons) with each class at a time, mainly focusing on U.S. culture through holidays, songs, and other activities (in English, of course!). And for grades 1-4 I will organize at least one activity per semester for each grade, probably related to a holiday or U.S. culture theme.

For teacher training, I will be doing weekly private consultation with each teacher, as well as continuing our advanced class and facilitating idea-sharing sessions.  I'll also be developing and presenting training sessions to regional teachers, with a special focus on outreach to teachers in other small rural schools.  This will include helping them improve their own language skills and also presenting teaching ideas and techniques, resource sharing, and other subjects.

My big project, which will be done with help from Agita, is to create a foreign language resource center in the school. This will be a place for students and teachers, and we hope to have audio, video, and computer resources as well as the traditional printed materials.  This is going to involve needs assessment, planning, and applying for grants, among other things.

One reason that I am telling you all this in so much detail is that I am very interested in any ideas, pointers to resources or funding sources, or contributions of any kind that you might be able to make. If you are involved in teaching, or know someone who is, maybe you know of some good Web sites or books.  Or maybe your company has a used computer donation program. Or maybe you have some great ideas for how to motivate kids to study.  Or maybe you know a young person who would like to be a penpal (or keypal) with a student here in Latvia.  Or maybe you just cleaned out your garage and have a bunch of books or holiday decorations or games you want to get rid of.  These are just a few ideas--the point is, no idea is trivial.  If you think of something that might be of interest or use, please don't hesitate to write to me.  Next week we have our English day-camp, but after that I plan to start work on my home page, where I'll have a more detailed list of ways you can help.

Well, enough talk about work!  Tomorrow I'll go to Valmiera, to share some champagne with Valentina and celebrate my surviving the first year.  This weekend will be spent working in the garden and preparing for next week's English camp.  My garden is doing okay--the lettuce and spinach are about 3 inches tall now, and look like they will make it. Unfortunately, the arugula got chomped by little black bugs as soon as it sprouted.  My transplanted herbs are struggling:  I think the parsley and thyme will be okay, but the basil doesn't look good.  I have zucchini and cucumber seedlings ready to go out, as well as marjoram, sage, and borage.  I'll bring back some tomato plants from Valmiera and plant them, hoping for the best.  They say the summers are too cool here to grow tomatoes outside a greenhouse, but sometimes you can get a few. My garden is definitely a poor relation to the allotments surrounding it.  It is really a pleasure to stroll around and see how people have arranged their plots and greenhouses, with mixtures of flowers and vegetables and fruit bushes and trees.  I suppose if I had lived here for 10 years I would have a lovely garden too!  As it is, I'm just thankful to have a place to spend time outside and grow a few herbs and vegetables and flowers.

Although it has been cool, days in the 60s, it is definitely summer here.  The countryside is lush green, and the trees are fully leafed out.  Spring came and went very quickly--things seem to go at an accelerated pace at this latitude.  We are only 21 days from the Solstice, and the sun is now rising at 3:30am and setting at 9:00pm. Last night I looked out at midnight, and there was still some light in the sky at the northern horizon.  I also notice almost weekly how the position of the sun changes as it shines in the windows of my apartment.  It's easy to understand why Latvians are so eager to take advantage of the sun while they have it (for example, by gardening in skimpy swimwear--both women and men):  underlying the awareness of the speed with which things change is the knowledge that summer will pass quickly and winter is not far behind.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention--I'm typing this letter in my living room!  Huge thanks go to Lynne Angeloro (a friend and my manager when I worked at Sun) for sending me a laptop computer!  It's a Macintosh PowerBook 140, with a 30mg hard disk and 4mb RAM (+4mb with RAMDoubler).  Probably a dinosaur by today's standards, but to me it is wonderful!  I haven't got the software to log in from home yet, hope to get that set up in the coming weeks.  In the interim, it is great to be able to work at home and not have to bother Valda about using the computer in her office.  And with all the writing I will need to do this summer developing materials, it will be a great help.  Thank you Lynne!

Well, I guess that's all the news for today.  As always, I look forward to hearing from you.  And it would be great if you could send me photos, since all the photos I brought with me are at least a year old now.

Visu labu,

Sarah

p.s.  Here are some questions I have about American youth culture.  I'd be interested to hear your thoughts (or those of your children).

* Do students in the U.S. seem less willing to work at their studies these days than in years past?  I wonder if this is just a problem in Latvia, or if it is a wider problem, and what might be the causes.  For example, do students just come to class but not do the homework on a routine basis?  Do they expect the teacher to entertain them?  Do they think that the responsibility for their learning falls on the teacher, not on themselves?

* Do American girls wear platform shoes and mini-skirts to school?  What about see-through shirts with just a bra underneath?  Do American women's shoes in general have higher heels these days?  I am still not quite used to the sight of an 8th-grade girl in 4-inch platform sandals and a mini-skirt.  A lot of what girls here wear would have been considered sleazy in my school days.  I don't know if this is Latvian fashion, European fashion, or a larger trend.  A lot of the girls dress like women in techno music videos.

* Is Beverly Hills 90210 a popular T.V. show in the U.S.?  It is most of my students' favorite show, and forms the basis of their ideas about what America is like (argh).