“Horizon,” the Theoretical Lyceum

Last week I went to a Turkish-English private school located in Ceadir-Lunga, not far from Comrat. I was asked to visit by Adem, one of the students from the Turkish student groups. He had been asking me to come for about a month, and it only just got organized last week.

I was fairly apprehensive when we were setting up a time to visit the school, because Adem started talking about me going there on “MondayS” and not just “Monday.” I was like, oh no, do they think I’m going to be teaching there every week?! I’m all about helping young Moldovans learn English, but I don’t really have time in my schedule to spend three and a half hours getting to and from Ceadir-Lunga and prepping for two lessons.

So I found Adem bright and early. Actually, it wasn’t bright at all--I don’t think I’ve seen the sun in four days here. Anyways, we took a taxi to Ceadir-Lunga and Adem started telling me all about the school. It seems pretty interesting: basically, it is a private boarding school founded by a rich Turkish lady. Instruction is in Russian and Romanian for the humanities and in English for the sciences. The students also learn Turkish. Many of the students are from Gagauzia, so Turkish is not that hard for them to learn, since they are both Turkic languages. Adem teaches Turkish to two students there on a weekly basis. Athough he attends university in Comrat, Adem actually commutes from Ceadir-Lunga everyday. I guess he likes living there better than living in Comrat.

My Turkish students are always complaining that Comrat is boring. I kind of see their point. After all, we don’t even have a movie theater. There isn’t much going on on weekends--just a few cafes are open. It’s a nice change for me to live here after going to school in Phoenix (after all, Phoenix is the fourth largest city in America, as I constantly tell everyone here), but I can see that coming from Turkey to here is pretty much a let-down for them.

Anyways, the students I met on the first day were somewhat awful in their general rambunctiousness and liberal use of profanity that they learn from rap and American movies. I’d like to mention first that I was NOT told that this was an all-boys school until I walked in to the classroom. “Hmm...there are no girls here. This must be an all-boys school. Thanks for the heads-up, Adem!” was my internal reaction.

It was quite the culture shock coming from the university, where all of my students are nice village girls. These boys were kind of insane...one kid was actually playing his PSP in class. Seriously, a PSP. I talked to Adem about it later (turns out he also is their dormitory monitor) and he told me that the students there have money because their parents work abroad. What they don’t have, unfortunately, is real parental figures. It’s the side of labor migration that we don’t really think about. All of these kids are at a boarding school with just the monitors and teachers for guidance. A lot of them haven’t seen their fathers or mothers in forever. Hence the brattiness. Unfortunately, Fulbright didn’t give me any training in classroom management.

This week, I visited again. This time I had class with two other groups as well. The first group was some fairly well-behaved eleventh graders. The second group was once again the crazy rambunctious kids. I actually had to call in their teacher because I wasn’t going to deal with the swearing and their complete unwillingness to listen. (I should say here that only 1/3 of the class is really bad. 1/3 is in the middle, and the other 1/3 yells at the other kids to shut up.) I guess their teacher got really mad because they sent me to another class for the final period. This, I guess, was supposed to be a chemistry class, but I got to take over.

The school apparently divides the twelfth grade into the good kids and the bad kids. These kids were like angels compared to the other class. First of all, two of the kids had been to America. They had qualified for this uber-prestigious State Department program administered by ACTR here. One was in Wisconsin and the other was in Hawaii. So their English was awesome. Actually, the other kids spoke pretty well, too. One kid was even making English language jokes. This kid was always running his mouth but he was entertaining. While another student was introducing himself, he was like, “He likes to box.” I asked the student in question if he actually liked boxing, and he said no. The kid then says, “I mean, he’s wearing boxers. No, actually, he sleeps in a box.” I was kind of floored by this, because I haven’t met many people here who could actually play around with English words, much less kids who are still in school.

After I left that class, the students from the bad class mobbed me in the hallway and were like, “Do you forgive us? If you forgive us, our teacher says we can have lessons with you the next time you come.” I am a softie. I forgave them. At any rate, if I can at least have one class with the nice kids it should be fine. I also have an ulterior motive--since I’m teaching for free, maybe I can convince the school to give me free Turkish lessons next semester. They already gave me a free mug. Maybe I will appeal to their sense of patriotism. Hmm, that shouldn’t be hard to do.

(The students from the rambunctious class have a YouTube video online, which they insisted that I watch, but as it is filled with heavily accented English profanity, I'm going to refrain from posting a link here. I can't be responsible for spreading this video around.)