End of January

So last week I was in Cairo, Egypt for the 14th Skills Conference at the American University in Cario. It was a great chance to get away and do some professinal development and see Cairo. The conference itself was a bit of a disappointment because so many of the scheduled presenters didn't show up. That left it up to the Fellows all 28 of us to kind of carry the three day conference. All the Fellows showed up and gave great workshops about quality English teaching practices. Personally my workshop was insane the classroom they put me in was designed for about 30 people but I must have had twice that many in the room. People were sitting all over the floor crushing eachother to get through the door. There were so many people trying to attend my workshop that I couldn't even walk to the blackbord. But my workshop went well, my 40 handouts were soon swallowed up and I felt like I should have made twice that many.

I also had the chance to go out and see the pyramids at Giza with Jean Lewis a Fellow from Kazakstan. See the below photo. It was very impressive and interesting seeing the pyramids. I also had the chance to visit the National Museum in Cario. So I got to see King Tut's mask and coffin and throne etc. The museum was huge and wonderful. I wandered around for 4 hours with Jean and we had guided tour too and we still didn't get to see it all. There were also a lot of ancient mumies in there. I had never seen a mummy before so it was a little spooky but also interesting. I was sick with a cold most of the time I was in Cario but I tried to make the most of it. The people were nice the food was great and in general it was a good trip.

When I got back to Khujand, Tajikistan examinations were in full swing. Right before I left for Cario I had given a test on grammar and 20 out of 29 students failed it. But for me less than 70% is failing. At my university they say that less than 50% is failing. Additionally students can re-take a test up to three times. So I arrived to Khujand about 6 pm Sunday night and on Monday morning I was trying to figure out how to give the make up test for the 20 students who failed the first time. Then after this on Monday I still had about 7 failing students so I had to give the test again on Wednesday and finally after the third time I only had two failing students and they really did deserve to fail. But remember some students passed with like 51%. I attribute the high failure rate to students not attending classes, not having the book and not studying. A lot of my students are married women and they just don't come to class regularly because they have babies or other domestic responsibilities. Most don't come about 1/3 of the time. The single women did much better on the test because they regularly came to classes.

In my other class (English Practice 211) I gave the standard university exam the grammar test I had devised myself. So for the 211 exam we gave students a short reading that they hadn't seen before and told them to read and remember it in 40 min. The readings were difficult but relatively short. Then they had to come to the teacher's desk and re-tell the story. Most did as good as could be expected. Then for the second part of the exam they were given a situation to speak about pertaining to the themes we studied from their book. For example maybe they had to talk about the interesting places for tourists to visit in Khujand because we studied interesting places in London you can visit. They had to speak on this given situation in front of us teachers while the other students were in their seats listening watching and preparing themselves. Then another teacher and I gave them their grades on the spot, informed the students of their marks and wrote it down on the official piece of paper. The students also have little test books that I had to sign with their grade. The whole exam process took about 3 hours in a cold classroom.