Sunday, December 20, 2009

All about IST

Yesterday I returned to Batsumber after being gone for about a week. Peace Corps brought all of us English Teachers into UB for a week of "In Service Training (IST)." Each of us brought along one of our Mongolian Counterparts. We stayed at a nice resort that is just outside of UB for the week, and it was wonderful to not have to make fires or cook for myself for the whole week! Coming back to my freezing cold ger yesterday was a little rough... IST was awesome though. We did so much during the week that I'm having a hard time even trying to remember everything. Everyday was packed with different sessions led by Peace Corps. Some of the time we were in sessions with our counterparts and some of the time it was only volunteers while our counterparts went to other sessions. We had Mongolian language class for an hour every morning, so I have plenty of hand-outs to be studying for awhile. I also re-took my language test (didn't pass when I took it at the end of the summer). I was happy this time though because I did well and actually scored a step higher than the level Peace Corps said I needed to get. Then we had sessions dedicated to Cross-Culture topics, Medical topics, and lots of Teaching English topics. During these there was plenty of time to discuss things that are happening at site and to share with the other PCV's, while also getting input from our Mongolian counterparts. It was great to have the Peace Corps staff there for translation too. So all sessions where we were with our counterparts Peace Corps would translate everything being said. It amazes me how the Mongolians that work for Peace Corps can translate everything from Enlish to Mongolian, and Mongolian to English. Maybe someday I will come close to being able to do that a little bit!! As of right now though I am far from it! Anyway, one of the main things we did at IST was learn how to, with our counterparts, write out a future project that we want to do at site. Tamir and I wrote out goals and a plan for how I will go about teaching English to our other English teachers. And also how together we will teach English to all of the teachers at our school. I hope we can stick to our plan at site. At IST we had time to write out what we want to do, and had each others un-divided attention. This is not usually the case when we are at school. There are always a million things going on, and things always seem to change and get interrupted. So I hope our plans do actually happen, and I'm going to try hard to make sure they do. IST was a very motivating week. There is nothing like a week away from school (and a week that is completely dedicated to learning about teaching and everything in Mongolia) to make you want to go back to site and really do good work. I met some amazing people this past week and had a blast hanging out with all my American friends. So it's a little strange to be back all alone here in Batsumber! This week is also Christmas, which is going to be a little strange to just go into school and teach on Christmas... I think I'm going to dedicate this entire week of teaching to Christmas songs! At least if I teach about Christmas it will feel more like Christmas is what I'm thinking.