Euro-Club: an English Week Karaoke Talent Show

Last Friday, I went to my friend Whitney's school in Kharkiv to attend their karaoke show. Whitney is a TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps Volunteer like myself, and she organized this karaoke talent show as the culmination of her school's English week, and it was certainly an impressive show! The school's auditorium was all decorated professionally and the event was called Euro-Club, complete with MCs, a jury panel, and a projector screen of music videos and lyrics.

Whitney with a few of the English teachers from around her district and fellow PCVs - Sally, Ty, Sam and myself.

We kicked off the show by singing the Glee version of Bill Wither's "Lean on Me". Students from the 5th through 11th forms participated in this event, complete with costumes and choreographed backup dancers. They all memorized their songs and sang very well in English, I was really impressed! I tried to sing a song in Russian called "Pozvenee" by Tatyana Bulanova and was horribly embarassed because I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to see the screen with the lyrics from on stage. Here are a few highlights from the show:

The 7th graders sang a song called "Valentine".

These 5th graders were adorable, they stole everyone's heart while singing a Marilyn Monroe song.

Several of the 8th graders performed Bob Marley's "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

A girl from the 9th form sang Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved".

A group of girls from the 11th form sang and danced to Shakira's "Waka Waka: Time for Africa"

The MCs sang a song in French!

These 5th graders were super cute while singing Aqua's "Barbie Girl".

Overall, I think that a karaoke talent show was a great idea. I might even try to plan an event like this during my school's English week next year :D Sam and I were the only two PCVs that participated as contestants, the others were judges. The panel of judges each held up pieces of paper to give marks from 1 through 10 to each contestant, like American Idol style. After all 14 groups/contestants went, the jury went out to debate and selected the top 3 winners based on their marks and criteria like vocals, pronunciation, overall performance, etc. All of the participants received a little certificate ("gramota" in Russian/Ukrainian) printed in color on glossy photo paper with their names on it. Ukrainians are crazy about certificates like these and all the students were excited to have them. Prizes were given out for the top 3 participants and each participant also received a box of chocolates!

Sam (my sitemate) gave his own rendition of Celo Green's "Forget You".

We were also featured in the Euro-Club's official blog. I am not quite sure what Euro-Club is, but from what I understand, it is about sharing cultures among European countries and it is quite popular among secondary schools in Kharkiv. I will have to research some more information about it... maybe my school will be interested in participating!

Living Libraries: An Oral History Project

Last Thursday and Friday, my sitemate Sam and I organized a project called Living Libraries at our respective schools. We invited a handful of other Peace Corps Volunteers to come visit our town and help us out with the project. More information about the Living Libraries project can be found at this website, provided by a returned PCV from the Zaporizhzhya Oblast. The project is called Living Libraries because the PCV's are supposed to serve as books and provide a bit of oral history on their backgrounds. The students "check out" the books and talk to each PCV for a set number of minutes, then the PCVs rotate around the room (like speed dating style). In the past, other PCVs have done this project at the university/college level and this was the first time that this project has been done at the secondary school level.

Sasha, Rich, Chris and Sam with their biographies posted on the first floor of my school.

At my school, we organized two different sessions in the activity hall/auditorium - one for the two 11th form classes, and one for the three 8th form classes. We divided the students up into 6 groups of about 8-12 students each and had them sit in different corners of the room. Our classes at school are 45 minutes long, so the students were able to talk to each PCV for only about 7 or 8 minutes. We encouraged each of the PCVs to bring a "prop" to help encourage conversation - most of them brought a few photos from home, and Sam brought his American football.

Sam talking to some 11th form guys about how to play American football.

Sasha showing some of her postcards from home.

Chris answering some of the 8th formers' questions.

Rich talking to a bunch of the 8th form girls.

After school, we hung out in the school gym and tried to teach the students how to play football. We had about 25 students show up, ranging from 5th to 10th form. We started out by teaching them how to place their hands on the laces and throw the ball. A few of them figured out how to get the ball to fly in a spiral, but most of them threw it like a dodgeball. The rules of football were too intimidating to explain all in Russian, so we ended up just splitting into 3 teams and basically just playing Ultimate Frisbee with a football.

One of the 8th form boys throws the ball.

The students loved running around the gym and passing the ball to each other to try to score "touchdowns".

Playing football was great because many students could play and interact with the PCVs, along with learning a new game. They thought it was really interesting how the football didn't bounce up and down like a normal ball. After we were all exhausted from running around the gym for an hour, we ended the games and took a few team pictures.

Team Salo with students from the 8th-10th forms, me and my PCV friends Alison and Rich.

Team Apple with Sasha, Chris, and students from the 6-8th forms.

I forgot this team's name but they have 8th and 9th formers with Vadim and Sam.

Me and my peer advisor Sasha with the football :)

At Sam's school, we organized two sessions in their lunchroom and used their tables to group the students together. This worked well since the students were oriented more in a circle than how they were seated by rows in my school's auditorium. One of the goals of this project was to have the students practice communicating in English with native speakers, but many of the students ended up asking their questions in Russian or Ukrainian. So at Sam's school, we worked with 9th-11th form students which was a little bit more manageable since the older students had a higher level of English.

Rich talking to some students about his hometown, New York City.

Me using a map to show the students the 5 different states that I have lived in.

Alison showing photos of Florida and making a bunch of new best friends with some of the younger girls.

Kyle's table was intrigued with his story, including Sam's counterpart Olena.

Tiago was hi-tech and showed photos to students from his iPod touch.

Sam's counterpart Olena with Sam, Chris, Kyle, me, Rich, Alison, Sasha and Tiago.

After we finished the project at Sam's school, we headed to the town's Culture House to play basketball in their sports gym with the students. However, we didn't plan for over 30 students to show up for basketball and the Culture House wasn't able to accommodate all of the students there without a Ukrainian teacher from one of our schools. So we went outside and played football on the muddy grass at the stadium instead... I unfortunately did not take any photos there since my camera battery died but I will try to find some pictures from my students!

Super Camp Weekend: Teaching about the Regions of America

The last few weeks have been really busy for me, I went to my friend (and wonderful peer advisor) Sasha's town to help her out at her weekend camp two weeks ago. Her camp was called "Super Camp" and the theme was Regions of America. She had about 6 other Peace Corps Volunteers travel to her town and help her teach lessons to students from 5th to 11th form over two days (Saturday and Sunday) at her school. Overall, I was very impressed with how active and excited her students were about coming to school for extra lessons on a weekend! Sasha did a great job of coordinating everything from the schedule to tea breaks with the M&M candy icebreaker and even having dodgeball for a little lesson in physical education. It was an action packed weekend and a great experience, I hope to run my own weekend camp at my school in the fall!

All of the PCVs with one of Sasha's English teachers during the lunch break.

Me and Sasha with one of her English teachers.

Jillian taught lessons about the West coast, which included her home state of Washington. She brought some cool props to teach the class with, including a calendar with scenic photos of Washington. During the lesson, she had the kids design their own state flags, which was a really creative idea :)

Margo taught about the Midwest and her home state of Nebraska. I was originally assigned to teach about the Midwest, but I was very thankful that Margo wanted to switch regions with me because I don't know very much about the Midwest, except that there are a lot of farms with corn haha.

We began the 2nd day (Sunday mornning) with teaching the students how to do the Cha-Cha slide. To do this, first we reviewed some verbs of motion like to jump, to stomp, to hop, and then we showed them how to cha-cha and how to do the Charlie Brown.

Samantha taught lessons about the northwest and New England, which included her home state of New York. Her lesson was really creative and she had all the names of the states written as leaves on a tree.

Erika taught lessons about the Mid-Atlantic, which is the states around Washington DC. She brought a few maps of the USA from her town to show the kids where her states were located.

I taught lessons about the South, which was great because we got to talk about the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, Coca-Cola, the Wright brothers, Florida oranges, Cajun food, and a strong tradition of high school and college/university football!

Teaching about traditional southern foods and some fun state facts with my flipcharts.

Ty taught about the Southwest, which included his home state of Texas. The kids had a lot of fun learning about how to use a lasso during his lesson, and then they got to give it a shot for themselves afterwards!

Ty teaching a student how to lasso some chairs.

At the end of the camp on Sunday afternoon, we handed out certificates to all of the students that attended the camp. They were all super excited to get certificates in English and sad to see us go.

Sasha announcing the names of students from the stage.

Ted, Jillian, Erika, Margo, Samantha, myself and Ty with two of Sasha's teachers.

After a full day of teaching lessons back-to-back at school on Saturday, we grilled shashlik (chunks of seasoned pork on long skewers with onions) outside in the evening. It was my first shashlik experience in Ukraine and it was absolutely delicious! Sasha had two bags of marshmellows that someone had mailed to her in a care package - they don't sell marshmellows here! We roasted marshmellows over the fire for dessert, which was messy but tons of fun :)

Relaxing with the girls before grilling out.

Starting the fire with pine needles!

Shashlik was juicy and delicious!

You can also check out an article with some more photos from the local town website here (but its in Ukrainian). The first photo is of me teaching the Hokey Pokey dance with Ty and Jillian on stage... you put your right foot in!