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  language lessons

I'm trying to learn Hungarian. But I'm not trying too hard. I'm just letting it slowly work it's way into my head. Maybe one day I'll take lessons or a class or something, but for now I'm learning from my friends, my students, my co-teachers, and movies. But this week in my efforts to use newly learned Hungarian, I did a couple silly things. Last week I was eating dinner with a friend. She ordered a coke. I wanted one too, so in my head I thought the English version, "Me too." and tried to translate it into Hungarian. In Hungarian, it would be, "Nekem ís." But I was stuck on the sound of the English "me", so instead I said, "Meeche naz." Which means "What are you doing?" So the conversation went like this (in Hungarian) Hello, can I get you something to Drink?" "Yes, I Coke please." "What are you doing?" Doh! But the waiter was very smooth. He just looked confused for a moment and then said, (In English) "Woah, I was expecting English, What did you say?" "I'd like a coke please"

Then yesterday I wanted to buy some corn. I went into the little store on the corner and the clerk asked me what I was looking for. I wanted to say corn. The Hungarian word for corn is "kukorica" but instead I said "cookorikoo" Which is the sound a rooster makes in Hungarian. They thought this was hilarious. But the clerk still figured out that I wanted corn. Good guy.

Posted by neal on Jan 28, 2002 at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

  One Week

Today I want to tell you about the Hungarian educational system. Some of it's good, some of it's bad, mostly it's just...Hungarian. We just ended the semester yesterday so all the craziness of figuring out end-of-semester grades is fresh on my mind. The biggest thing I notice about the educational system here is it's subjectivity. I remember my teachers in the US going to great lengths to explain the scientific grading systems they had developed. They would work so hard to prove to us that the grade we earned was completely objective and the teacher was an innocent bystander who simply handed out the grades we (the students) earned. Not here. It's all subjective. I can look at my grade book and say, "Tamás earned a 3 (by the way Hungarians don't use A - F, they use 5-1 where 5 is the best and 1 is the worst) but I like him so I'll give him a 4." Or, "He earned a 5, but he was insolent and lazy, so I'll give him a 4." It's completely accepted and not questioned. We are teachers and the teachers decide what grades the students get (sometimes without regard to what they actually earned). It's wild. Regular, daily homework grades are sometimes handed out with similar abandon; If a student is misbehaving, you can simply give them a bad grade in grade book Or if you like a student, you can just give them a good grade. Wild. Grades are also public knowledge. There are no secrets in Hungarian classes. Test grades are read to the whole class, and everything is recorded in a master grade book for each class. This very important book is called the Náplo. The Náplo holds strange and mystical powers over students. If I can get my hands on it ( because all the other teachers are also trying to get their hands on it too) and take it to class, they kids all cow-toe into line and behave. wild.

OK, so with that introduction, let me tell you about my week.

Monday: I started the week thinking the semester had 2 more weeks. The communication between the administration and the teachers isn't all that great. I generally have to learn about things (like holidays, convocations, class trips, and schedule changes) from my students, and apparently my students were confused too because some of them even thought there were two more weeks in the semester. So I have a 2 hour computer class Monday morning. I had planned to teach them 10 minutes of new material, then review for the rest of that hour, and in the second hour, give an end of semester test. Well, I went to class and no students came. So I just sat in the classroom and worked on other stuff. About 5 minutes into the second hour the students showed up (well, all the ones that hadn't snuck behind the utility shed to smoke). They had all gone to the dentist! Seriously! Apparently the headmaster had scheduled a group trip to the dentist several months ago and forgot to tell anyone. So when the students came to school, even they didn't know they were going. None of the teachers knew either. As the came into class they all said, "This is our last class, can we just play games?" "HUH!", exclaims Neal, "THIS is your last class? What about next week?" "Nope, this is our last class, can we *please* play games?" "No." I really needed one more grade for these kids, so I had to give the test. Not a real good test experience though, because the kids were all geared up to play games, class got started 10 minutes late, and the test included stuff that I had been planning to cover during the first hour of class that they didn't know yet. It was very chaotic, but we got though it, and most of the kids did fairly well.

So now I knew that the semester was ending this week, but as you will see later, all the implications of this must not have sunk completely into my head.

I teach computer classes to 10D, 11D, 12D, & 13D. They are in the bilingual program, so as a part of this they get computer classes in English. There are no computer rooms that can hold all 34 kids in a class though, so they are split into 2 groups. I get half the kids for a semester while a Hungarian computer teacher has the other half. Then we swap kids in the middle of the year. About a month ago one of my classes told me that their class wasn't going to switch. This was a surprise to me. I had geared all the lessons to half a year. I had moved through many things faster that I really wanted to and glossed over some material in a desire to cover ground more quickly. Now they are telling me that I shouldn't have done that. Rats! But they weren't certain that they wouldn't switch, they just thought that. So I started asking around to see if anyone else knew. The headmaster didn't know. The other half of the class didn't know. The class' classmaster didn't know. None of the other teachers knew. Finally I found an assistant headmaster who had an answer. She said "The classes will not switch if the Hungarian teacher can speak English." OK, an answer. But this also throws all my other computer classes into jeopardy too. Have I taught them all wrong too? Are none of my classes switching? I don't know if my Hungarian counterparts for any of the classes can speak English. So I started asking the kids if the other teachers spoke English. They didn't know. Even the kids that were taking classes from those teachers didn't know if the teacher could speak English! So this has been going on for the last 3 or 4 weeks now. Now the semester is over, and I still don' know who I will teach next week. I think I'm still teaching in the same rooms, so I'll just make two lessons: one for continuing students and one for new students, then I'll go to my classroom and see who shows up. It'll be an adventure.

OK back to this week...Tuesday. There's not enough room in the school for one of the sections of the 9th grade bilingual students, so they meet at another building (called the Kollegium) about 10 minutes from school. This fall, the 9D.2 class met there, but 2 weeks ago, one of their main teachers got tired of walking there in the snow, so she convinced the headmaster to swap with the 9D.3 class. So now the 3s are meeting in the Kollegium and the the 2s are meeting in the rooms at school that the 3s used to meet in. Should be easy to swap like that. You'd think. But no. Somehow a classroom was lost in the shuffle. It happens to be when I teach them. I really don't know where it went. No one seems to know where the 3s used to meet before they moved and no one seems to know what I should do with the class of 2s that I have to teach. I've managed to eventually find rooms several other days, but Tuesday I just couldn't find an empty room. So after 20 frustrating minutes of wandering around the school looking for room, keys,and people to help translate my situation into Hungarian, I just gave up and sent the kids home. Oh well.

Wednesday (man this is getting long). All the seniors have to take a huge exam when they graduate. This test is a very big deal. So big that most of the classes their last 2 years of school are geared specifically to prepare them for this test. Because it's so big they also get a practice run at it. The practice test has been going on for the last three weeks (it's really big). The tests were during my class with 13D on Wednesday, so I learned Tuesday that that class was canceled. Which is sad because I really like those kids and that *might* be my last class with them. But anyway, since that class was canceled, my first (and only) class didn't start until 11:45. I came, I taught, and I was getting ready to leave, and the assistant headmaster came into our office and said, "why aren't your semester grades in the Náplo (that master grade book thing)?" "huh?" "They all need to be in by today!" "huh?!" (this is that connection that wasn't made when I learned that this week was the end of the semester) "Oh dear." I was nowhere near ready with my grades. I picked one class that I wasn't too far behind on and finished their stuff at school. Then I went home and graded until 5:30 in the morning (I was reeeeeeely far behind).

Thursday: Thursday was a nice reprieve. It was fairly normal.

Friday: Classes were cancelled on Friday becasue it's grading day. This whole day just blows my mind. During the day there is a meeting for each class. Every teacher that teaches a certain class is supposed to attend the class' grade meeting. The meetings are supposed to run from 8 to 5. I finished with the last class I teach at 5 and they were 2 hours behind schedule. In these meetings, the class sends a student representitive who gives a little summary of how the class is doing. They are suprisingly honest. They talk about who is smart, and who is struggling academically, they admit if they are lazy or have dicipline problems. Then after the studetns speak. The classmaster speaks about the class as a whole and any indivisdual students that are exceptionally good or bad. Then all the teachers get a chance to speak about the class as a whole or individual students. Inaddition to the "normal" grades that students earn in class, they get grades for diligance and behavior. The classmaster runs through the Náplo and reads out each student's name and grades. If the group agrees with the grades, then we keep silent. If somone disagrees though, then we all stop, discuss what the grade should be changed to, and then, get this, VOTE ON IT. We VOTE on the student's grade! It still blows my mind. It's all in Hungarian too, and though we have other teachers translating for us, it goes very fast and is hard to keep up. I think it's pretty cool that all the teachers spend the time to get together to evaluate the students, but it'll take me a while to adjust to voting on students' grades.

Whew. my fingers are tired of typing.

Ya' know. I hope this didn't sould too negative. I don't mean it to sould like complaining, because I really do like it here and I like what I'm doing. I just wanted to relate a particularly eventful week to you. So please don't think badly of Hungary or Trefort, just laugh along with me at the craziness of it all.

Posted by neal on Jan 26, 2002 at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)

  Normalcy

When I first moved here, I lived in a state of continual disbelief; "I can't believe I live in *Hungary*!" I would walk around the city, the school, and even my flat with my mouth agape. I would stop to take pictures of everything I saw. Now I am still surprised, but in a different way. I am used to living here. I am adjusted. It's beginning to feel like home, so now I am surprised that living here doesn't shock me any more. It's crazy that I live in Budapest! But it seems even crazier that it feels so normal. Woah.

Posted by neal on Jan 23, 2002 at 07:40 AM | Comments (0)

  It's a beautiful spring day today.

It's a beautiful spring day today. I know it's not really spring yet, but I can dream. The sun is out. The sky is a wonderful shade of pure blue (OK, it's a bit brown with all the pollution, but I'm trying to make the best of a beautiful day). It even smells like spring. That earthy smell that means green will start appearing soon. Everyone seems happier today too. It's been a few weeks since we saw the sun, so it's appreciated even more then normal.

Lemme tell you too...students do not want to be in class when it's nice outside. I'm sure all you teachers know this already. I had a hard time capturing my kids attention. Of course I wanted to be outside too, which didn't help anything. This makes me fear the real spring when it will be nice every day.

Interesting thing I've discovered recently. My hair is curly.. Long ago, in the days of my youth, I had curly hair, but it's been so short for so long that I didn't know if it still was. I thought it would be fun to not cut my hair for a while, so I haven't cut it since August now. Without any gel, mousse, combing, or other grooming assistance I get a natural 'fro. It's really quite spectacular. This amuses my students a lot. They were all a bit sad when I cut off the gigantic goatee, so this helps them cope. Plus it's fun for me. I don't think I've ever had hair this long. It's almost long enough to braid. Sometime soon I'll have some new pictures out here for you too look at and you can find my hair in some of them.

Posted by neal on Jan 22, 2002 at 07:41 AM | Comments (0)

  Intentionally

When I first got here, I had lots of free time. Well, it wasn't really free time, mostly just a lack of obligations, but at the end of the day I could usually count on some time to write e-mail or update this page. I didn't have to make any effort to find the time, the time just came to me. Recently, though, the time just hasn't fallen into my lap. I had no intention of slacking-off in my updates here, in fact I think about it often, but the time just doesn't come to me. As each day passed, I thought, "I should update that page. I'll do it when the time comes to me." But the time never 'came to me.' So I had to intentionally make time.

"Intentionally."

Another thing that made me think about living intentionally really caught me off guard. In my classes I noticed the students talking about things other teachers had said. The things the students we talking about were not important things. Not lessons, not homework, just mundane offhand comments or parts of conversations. They were paying attention. Those kids notice everything we do. They notice. They listen. They pay attention. Wow. I know that teachers are role models. I knew that coming oven here. I guess I just wasn't prepared to see it in action with real people. I certainly wasn't ready to see that everything we do or say makes an impression. It's not just the things we say during a lesson. It's everything we say and do in the classroom, in the hallway, in the bathroom, everywhere. Wow.

For much of my life I have simply let things come to me. I was content to simply take life as it happened. But seeing the way these kids watch us makes me want to do things differently. It makes me want to live "intentionally". I feel I need to get my priorities in order and really, overtly and intentionally, act on them.

Boy, this could involve a lot of effort and possibly some major change. I really don't know what this will involve yet, it's all a pretty new thought. I'd really appreciate it if somebody would ask me about this later and keep me accountable to it please. Thanks.

Posted by neal on Jan 18, 2002 at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)

  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It's the new year already. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Posted by neal on Jan 5, 2002 at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)