We’re now into our third week of school with seven weeks to go until the March break.  The plan is to meet up with Tanya in Phuket, Thailand, and have two weeks of doing not much but having my teeth repaired. The only thing that would be better would be if my whole family were there as well, especially little grand-daughter Keeley. In the mean time there’s a parent-teacher night or two to think about.

On another thought line, just wondering whether this is our school or not. 

leighs-baku-apt

I’m marking my kids’ writing on their first understanding of immigration.  They are doing very well so far.  The Unit of Inquiry is: “Humans, goods and ideas move from place to place and cause change.”

(When I preview this it’s in large text with no explanation.  Sorry!)

This started as a belated response to blogger Suz01 from one of my posts a while back.  I figured I would post it here as well as it was one of those obvious, yet not so obvious ‘Ah-ha’ moments.

We’ve started a new year here and have a Grade 5 class that just didn’t know what to do when put into unfamiliar groups. They were given a task but everyone was intimidated by the simple task. We
* set up a fish-bowl (one group in the middle that volunteered to demonstrate interaction)
* gave some simple directions
* coached intensively, encouraged, supported and …

… failure. They were still intimidated.

Next, Michael, my co-grade-teacher, joined the fish bowl and started asking questions about what they had to do. We let it run for 4-5 minutes…

… success. The groups went away and immediately started talking about what they had to do. They needed the modelling to understand.

The task was simply a pre-assessment task that required them to brainstorm what they already knew about the unit of inquiry.

The difference was astounding.

The majority of both Sunni and Shi’a Muslim jurists consider dogs to be ritually unclean, … Muhammad didn’t like dogs according to Sunni tradition, and most practicing Muslims do not have dogs as pets…However, outside their ritual uncleanness, Islamic fatwas, or rulings, enjoin that dogs be treated kindly or else be freed. Muslims generally cast dogs in a negative light because of their ritual impurity. …  It is said that angels do not enter a house which contains a dog. Though dogs are not allowed for pets, they are allowed to be kept if used for work, such as guarding your house or farm, or when used for hunting purposes.

One story in Istanbul is that many years ago they rounded up all the street dogs and put them on an island out in the Sea of Marmara to let them die. I guess actually wielding the knife would make them guilty of not treating dogs kindly. Now, in Istanbul, there are programs to innoculate the dogs before releasing them to the streets again.

On Thursday Michael found himself watching a dog die, presumably poisoned,  while he was outside the school gate getting some “fresh air”.  I noticed the body was still there Friday afternoon in the summer sun.

Trucks continue to remove many more tons of soil from the building site.  It’s been enough to raise the land by a couple of metres a 200x 30m section of land between the school and the valley.   We don’t know how long the work will continue, given that the Director has signalled that there isn’t sufficient money to complete the project at this stage.

More photos from my walk to school.

At this stage I’m about 13 mins from school. The bulding exteriors are sad but the homes are probably fine inside.

It’s nothing for people to light a little fire and throw plastic onto it which then fills the neighbourhood with acrid smoke.

Each apartment originally had a verandah but they’ve all been converted to extra rooms, hence the patchwork finish.

Now begins the 10 minute walk along the valley to school, which is the white buildings below the highrises top left, .  People throw their rubbish on the edge of the valley and every now and again someone puts a match to it.  Consequently on still mornings the valley fills with blue smoke and levels off at approximately 20m up.  It makes walking the last km a little more hazardous.

One of the residences along the valley.  The slabs up against the bus are lifted cow dung from a barn .

Now for the next few photos of my walk to school on Thursday.

This soccer court, on university grounds, looks like it hasn’t been touched since Soviet days and is typical of much of Baku.

There are piles of rubbish everywhere, which makes it similar to Turkey.  There are only small rubbish bins throughout the city in public places and people usually just drop whatever trash they have onto the ground. I think this may change in coming years as the government is starting a company to keep the city clean.  I wonder if that will include a public education program to change people’s habits.  While they’re at it perhaps they can bring up the habit of spitting on footpaths and in stairwells.

Quaint stairs as I’m getting close to school.  At this point I’m starting to perspire.  The blackened patch is where rubbish has been burnt off. Sadly, the smell of burning plastics is quite common in Baku…

… and then around the bend your path is blocked with this. It’s obviously a rubbish collection point (and burning off point) but it’s in the middle of the footpath, if you can call it that.

Kişi Salonu (pron: Kishi Salonu)  – Men’s hairdresser.  Such quarters are all over the place – tiny little rooms that people eek a living from. Bərbər is close to English’s barber.

One of the new teachers commented that Baku will look very different in two years.  I also think that the city is changing rapidly, but it will surely take generations for the new oil wealth to filter down to people on the streets so that they can afford a better quality of life.

I would love it if you left a comment. Any encouragement is good encouragement.

Introductions and getting-to-know-you up at the Early Learning Centre. The design of the building is a little like the Aussie ABC sign with break-out rooms coming from each of the three spaces.  Very creative!  You can see that it’s a pleasant place be for males.  There’s also an increase in Aussies this year.

Arriving at The Mediterranean, where staff are already hard at enjoying themselves next to The Maiden Tower. The restaurant is under the perspex cover but we stayed out in the heat of the summer evening.

The Maiden Tower from The Mediterranean.  The band has visible heads (above the blue shirt).  Azeri music is a cause of significant pride here but it’s challenging for the Western ear to understand.  They played:

a kamancha, …

a Iranien Tar Lute (tar)

and a frame drum, possibly a ghaval. Here’s a photo of four musicians including someone playing an oud, but we didn’t have an oud last night.  Friend colleen has taken up the kamancha, maybe I need to take up the tar.

Just a view close to home on the way to school this morning.

Further up the road by 100m.

Does that name ring a bell?

Some language seems to be universal.

imperialismə yox – imperialism no

These last two were taken as I passed a university.

That’s enough of ordinary things.  I’ll impose the rest in days to come. In brief, it was good to catch up with many friends and start some dreaming for the year to come.  Nice to have meals provided for these first four days.  Morale is high at school, even amongst new staff who feel very welcome (they said so).  As expected, many of the ordered goods haven’t arrived.  Not even sure if library books will arrive by Christmas.

This is a crap photo but it shows something of the hoards sleeping on the floor in the long passage-way waiting for their flights to far-flung corners of the world. There are always many sub-continent people along with Africans.

I discovered what the United Arab Emirates do to websites that they consider undesirable.  This is what they think of Twitter.  Strange.

I met TISA teachers Arishana (ex Durban) and Heather (ex Melbourne) at Dubai International Airport.

Nice to see old friends for the last leg of the trip.  We had a morning drink and then went together to collect our boarding passes. I had a conversation with a Greek man while waiting in line.  I indicated I was reading a book about Sparta and he indicated that Greeks were confused and didn’t know whether their identity came from Ancient Greece, Byzantine Greece or Ottoman Greece – I think the distinction between the last two was that he was meaning Ottoman Greece was around 100 years ago.  He decided they mostly revered the Ottoman Greece days.  He shook his head in despair when I asked if there was any hope for Cyprus.

Heather heard that Azal Air now has e-tickets!  I’ll wait until I see it to get enthusiastic about that.

The airport is billed to be processing 60 million people by 2010.

The school is organised into three sections:

• The Baku Toddler Club (Age 2) – 35 children
• The Primary School (ages 3-10) – 350 students
• Secondary School (ages 11-18) – 200 students

Over 48 nationalities are represented in the total enrollment.

TISA has 63 full time faculty, representing the following countries: USA, UK, Canada, Spain, France, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Israel, South Africa, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Lebanon, Ireland, and Nepal.

The average class size for all Secondary School courses is 15, and 17 for Primary School classes.

This time next year another building will be opened, which will appear off-photo on the top-right.  It’s an auditorium/gymnasium.  That’s the last of the space used so any further dreams would have to be about another campus.  At this stage that’s not likely.