Work & Play: Young Teachers Competition and Women's Day

The past couple of weeks have been busy here in Kazakhstan. So here are a few pictures chronicling the goings-on. 

First up, The Young English Teacher's Competition. Myself and 6 other volunteers watched and participated in this competition between 12 teachers in the Kokshetau area. Their first task was to do a presentation introduction of themselves in Russian, Kazakh and English. Next, they did a short "tour guide" segment where they acted as though they were a tour guide for various places in Kazakhstan and around the world such as Madame Tussuad's museum in the UK, the historical museum in Astana, and Hollywood. Then they each showed a video segment of them teaching a lesson. Finally, the last task was to prepare an activity, on the spot - with one of the volunteers, and do it with some students that had been pulled out of class for this. It was simple for me, because both of the teachers that I was paired with already had their activities chosen and planned out. Some of the other volunteers had to be creative and come up with something quick and easy. But, that's pretty much the story of out lives here, so it was no problem. 

Volunteers and teachers

All the contestants

The jury

Presenting with contestant No. 12

The boys looking all spiffy and ready to work. Garret, Scott, Roshan, Trevor and Myles

Gulnara (a woman from Kokshetau who run an English center called Globus. She also comes to our Women's Club, and is helping with a girls leadership camp that Hannah (and I) are going to do this Summer. She's fantastic.

Then the top teacher was awarded with books and flowers (sorry, no pictures of that. They did the awarding in Kazakh, so I kinda missed when they announced who won) and we were escorted out to have a nice tea with all the teachers. It was fantastic. 


And of course, no event is complete without a Kazakh dance and other bits of entertainment - like a puppet show about a turnip or a short play with students dressed as M&Ms and Mrs. Goodbar.

A very fun short play.

Later that evening Hannah and I had our weekly Women's club. We invited Scott, who was already in town for the teacher's competition, to do a lesson on self-defense. I'm not sure if the girls really "got it," but we all had a lot fun!

Next up was class presentations at my school. It was optional to participate, and I think we had 7 presentations total from grades 5-9. They were given the option to choose from three topics to present on: Healthy Lifestyles, School of the Future, or A Clean Environment. My counterpart is the Classmaster for 5v, and they did a fun little presentation about living healthy lives, but they didn't win and were very disappointed. 

Cute little Alibek presenting

With my 6th grade Kazakh class. I swear, they were smiling seconds before this picture was taken!

And then it was Women's Day! Ludmilla helped the boys in 5v put together a little presentation for the girls. Each of the boys had to do a task (such as introduce yourself, give a "toast" to the girls, tell what you would give as a gift if you had all the money in the world, etc.) and the girls gave each of the boys a grade and then tallied them up and chose one boy as the nicest boy in the class. He then handed out the gifts to each of the girls. Super cute. AND THEN, the best part, they did a break-dance for the girls. It was super funny to watch them fling themselves around the room. 

The jury of girls

Ruslan riding a motorcycle

I just loved their "costumes"

The boys getting ready to dance

Later that night we had a party at school with the teachers. It was a typical Kazakh party - eat, drink, dance, repeat. I don't have pictures from that yet, because my co-worker Maria was going crazy with picture taking, so I decided to let my camera rest and I'll get the pictures from her. Soon. Hopefully. 

And one last little bit of awesomeness. We've been working on modal verbs in 7th grade, and we had a little time to kill at the end of our last lesson, so we had them make posters about things you should/shouldn't do. This is what Kamil and Nikita came up with:

"If you do it you will died!"

And on that note, see ya later!