ინგლისურის გაკვეთილები (English Lessons)

“Quand tu veux construire un bateau, ne commence pas par rassembler du bois, couper des planches et distribuer du travail, mais reveille au sein des hommes le desir de la mer grande et large."

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I started the club in October, because I had so many bright students and I wanted to be able to spend some more time with them, in a less formal setting than the regular lessons during school hours. However, my school, Tbilisi Public School 192, was huge, and I didn't know how many students would be interested. I asked for help from one of my co-teachers, Nana. She recommended I start the club with the students of class 6b, who were fairly well behaved and very enthusiastic about English.

So I started small. The first week, I wrote out the lyrics to a couple pop songs (The Beatles, Elvis, Rihanna), leaving blanks for them to try and guess what was being sung. I remembered this activity from my Spanish classes in high school, and remembered enjoying it. It's not as though Georgia doesn't import its fair share of English-language pop (although if the marshrutkas and cafes are any indication, there is an equal demand for Russian pop), but I had a hunch that these kids, bright that they may be, were like many Georgians, in that they weren't really listening to the music for the words. How else could Black Eyed Peas and Maroon 5 have become as popular as they were? I played each song a few times, to let them really get comfortable listening to the songs for the words. They all laughed a little nervously at the first song- Elvis, Hound Dog, classic- but by the third time I played it, I saw the boys sneakily shaking their hips and the girls bobbing their heads. Pop music... what better hook to get them coming back for more English club?

The next week, I decided to try something a little more challenging. I created a memory game based on what they were currently working on, the future tense by way of intention. Specifically, the phrase "going to..._______". I created a couple others, including one that paired adult animal names with the baby names (dog/puppy, cat/kitten, etc.) which was quite the hit. The thing about Georgian kids, in my experience, is that anytime you make it a game, their competitive spirit comes out and they unreservedly, unironically throw themselves into it. They're all in.

The core crew can be seen here, plus on the right, with the yellow headband, Tamari, and leaning over in the striped shirt, Esma.

By this point, I noticed that all of the boys and a few of the girls had fallen by the wayside. Sure, Serge (the lone boy, as much of an outsider as any Georgian kid is) still doggedly continued to show up, but otherwise a core group of about five girls had become the basis of my club. So I thought, as a twelve year old girl, what did I love to do? What was interested in? How did I entertain myself?

And then I remembered the origami fortune-tellers we used to make in droves, entertaining ourselves in study halls and sleepovers by creating little elaborately folded, flower-like harbingers of doom and joy, husbands and cars, jobs and children. MASH was complicated and would require excessive explanations, and these girls' English wasn't that good. But the fortune tellers? That I could sell them on.

 From left: Ani, Mari, Tekla, Qeti, and Nini.

The club usually met on Tuesdays, after the sixth grade's final lesson. The next time I was with class 6b was on Thursday, and when I walked into the class with Nana I noticed the fortune tellers immediately. They were... everywhere. All the students had one. The boys were competing by making progressively smaller and  smaller ones, seeing who could effectively fold the smallest piece of paper into the little four-sectioned puppet. All during class that day, and during the next week, I was confiscating the damn things. And the kicker? The kids had taken the concept and run with it... in Georgian. They were writing out the predictions in Georgian. It was doubtlessly a success, although more for the cultural cache than the appeal of the English language.

This semester flew by. It seemed as though the time between my first disjointed, fittingly Georgian day of school (disorganized, a great show of kindness and curiosity, hectic yet at times extremely boring) and my last was only a couple weeks. So in the second week of December, I decided it was time to make some Christmas cards. I requested English language cards, although a few girls begged to write the traditional Georgian holiday greeting (analogous to the English equivalent, which wishes a happy Christmas and New Year), "გილოცავთ შობა და ახალ წელს!" (Gilotsavt Shoba da Akhal Tsels!) 

(Esma, who skipped a bunch of the sessions in the middle of the semester, can be seen in the blue sweater in the back. She made me a lovely card that I will probably hold onto for a long, long time.)

 They're just too cute to say no to. I wish I could describe the joy on some of their faces when I told them they didn't have to give me their cards when they were done, and could in fact make the cards for their family members or even make, GASP, multiple cards!

Finally, UNO. We spent a fair amount of afternoons (about 3, I believe) playing UNO. The game of UNO was treated by these girls like a high-stakes poker game. They colluded, they shouted, they agonized over slights and delighted in triumphs. They took to it with their typical Georgian fervor and I could hardly say no when they begged to play again, week after week. And in my defense, they learned a lot of game playing terminology (my turn, whose is it?, what does this mean?, etc.) It was also decent review for colors and numbers, which although elementary lessons, they have a tendency to forget. UNO was so beloved it even brought back into the fold students I thought had abandoned me for good at the beginning of the semester.

These pictures are from our last game, played on my last day of school. UNO, an American game with a Spanish name, popular with these girls (and Serge) as much for the fun of playing as for watching me shuffle the deck, and endlessly fascinating activity that I tried every week to teach them how to do without success.

I'll miss these girls, and Dighomi Public School 192, and Tbilisi, in a way that's hard to describe eloquently. This has been a rough semester: for much of it I was ill, my commute was arduous and often inconvenient, there were a series of ups and downs while Kayla stayed with me and trying to figure out what would be my next adventure after Georgia. At the end however, I found myself sad to be leaving, and sure that I would some day look back on my time living in Tbilisi with nostalgia. It was a bittersweet emotion.

Clockwise from the sole boy in the club: Serge, Nino, Esma, Tekla, Nini, Mari, and Qeti.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

So says Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I can only hope that I taught these girls to long for the sea, as my best teachers did for me. Time will tell, I suppose.