This past Tuesday my counterpart Dinara and I held a teacher training seminar in our renovated classroom. The room looked great with lots of plants and, finally, the new window shades in place! Twelve English teachers from 3 different villages came, which was less than expected, but a nice group. The theme for the day was “student-centered teaching methods” and we covered topics such as lesson planning, incorporating activities and group work into the lesson, and using projects for assessment. Dinara and I took turns presenting along with 3 other volunteers who live nearby: Christa, Cuyler and Patrick. We also had a guest presenter from the US Embassy, the English Language Fellow who has been training teachers in Kyrgyzstan for the last 2 years.
My friend Jess brought her former teacher who was visiting from the States. She was a PC Volunteer in Sierra Leone and did a short presentation on teaching in Africa. My Kyrgyz teacher Anara from training was kind enough to translate for us to make sure we were all understanding each other.
We had a delicious lunch of “plov” (fried rice with carrots and mutton chunks) and fresh vegetable salads in the school cafeteria. Then at the end of the day, we gave out certificates signed by our school administration and a short English grammar guide (translated into Kyrgyz) that Dinara and I put together.
Overall, I think everyone had a fun time and the teachers gave us very positive feedback. Maybe they will have enjoyed it enough to start a tradition of training seminars at our school!
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