Teaching English, and somewhat more, in Ukraine
by Roman Karpishka
PART I
"So where is Zalishchyky?'' I asked Oksana Trytjak, the Ukrainian National Association's; coordinator for English language teaching in Ukraine for the summer of 1995.
We had just concluded a weekend orientation seminar for English as a Second Language (ESL), and I was expecting to travel to Drohobych, Ukraine, where there is a well-known pedagogical institute. We presumed Stephanie, my wife, would be relaxing at the nearby Truskavets sulfur spas while I taught, but then Oksana let us know two more teachers were requested in Zalishchyky in southern Ternopil Oblast, near Bukovyna
Apparently, through the promotional efforts of Roman Mularchuk, the local Prosvita organizer, enough summer students had signed up to justify two more summer classes of English Stephanie would teach beginners, and I was to have the intermediate/advanced group; her students ranged in age from 13 to 16, mine from 15 to 22.
After more assurances from Ms Trytjak - who also informed me, a tomato-lover, that Zalishchyky is known for early ripening tomatoes - the decision was made to head for the borders of Bukovyna, to what for many years used to be a Riviera-type resort town, many years, where the Dnister River broadly wends its way towards the Khmelnytsky Oblast.
We arrived in Lviv late in the afternoon on Saturday, July 1, and immediately started to prepare for our Monday teaching duties. Since this was the first trip to Ukraine for both us, initial impressions were important to us as we started to acclimate for the month ahead. The clapping when our plane landed was even more pronounced than upon our stopover in Warsaw - perhaps understandably so, given the obvious braking power of our Boeing 737 on Lviv's not-too-lengthy runway. As we rolled up to the terminal, white-kerchiefed women waved to us, pausing from their raking of hay about 10 feet from the runway's edge.
Early Sunday morning we headed south/southeast, and experienced a time warp feeling, going back to Shevchenko's days of 150 years ago, as we say many roadside "pastukhy" (shepherds) usually older people tending to one cow or goat, sometimes two. This seemed a singularly inefficient style of cattle management, but has deep roots in Ukrainian traditions, probably comparable to cowboy round-ups in the American psyche.
The first town we stopped at, in driving from Lviv to Zalishchyky, was Rohatyn, known as the home of Roksolana (who, after Turkish raids and abduction, wed a sultan, who then spared Ukraine such attacks for some years).
Later that same day we stopped in the historic town of Halych, where we walked up to the old "zamok" (castle) ruins. There we were treated to the sweet scent of a blooming linden tree - whence the Ukrainian name for July. A local lad on a ladder was picking its flowers as these make a fine tea. This town gives its name to an area of Ukraine generally known as "Halychyna," being mainly the three oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivske and Ternopil. (These three provinces of Ukraine are also its nationalistic heartland, being the least Russified and voting most heavily for independence in the December 1991 referendum.)
From Halych we drove on towards Horodenkar and, on its outskirts, in Serafyntsiv, we saw one of the most beautiful little roadside chapels in Ukraine. Later our Prosvita mentor in Zalishchyky informed us the chapel was built after a local men from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) survived a German search party in the 1940s by hiding in a ditch at the spot where the chapel now stands, in gratitude for his salvation.
After setting down in Zalishchyky, at the household of the retired Dr. Topornytsky, we walked to our school building on Monday morning, all eager and ready to start our courses. Stephanie and I were both a bit apprehensive - this being our first day of formal teaching experience - but we tried to mask our anxiety with a lot of talking, at least to get the students used to our voices. By the end of the day we both had dry mouths; henceforth a bottle of mineral water accompanied us to school.
The first words I wrote on my blackboard (with good USA-made chalk; we left boxes of it for the school) were Taras Shevchenko's: "Learn, my brothers; think, and read; 'chuzhomy nauchaytes'; do not forsake your own." Having written this out in Ukrainian, I started a minor debate, in English whenever possible, to test the expressiveness of my more advanced students. (Despite the students' assurances of having completed up to six years of English study, I learned such study was relatively minimal, being only one hour a week.) My thesis was that by "chuzhomu" Shevchenko meant for us Ukrainians to express our pride in ourselves to foreigners (and not only - as sometimes the word "chuzhoho" is mistakenly by used - to learn foreign languages).
This first day with my secondary and post-secondary level students was off to a stimulating start; little did I realize how much this learning experience would be a two-way street, with the added satisfaction of having the opportunity to expound upon Ukrainian subjects in Ukraine - as much as possible, for the immediate benefit of our students, in English.
Stephanie and I both are fortunate to be fluent in Ukrainian, but we never got over the irony of telling our young charges to speak to us in English, when, as our own two sons were growing up, the words "po nashomu" often echoed through our home.
The second day of teaching being July 4 merited some deviation from the course outline to discuss American history. My class of mostly older teenagers had absolutely no knowledge of U.S. history and events of July 4, 1776, and I soon launched into a history lesson (in English) of the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, costumed Indians dumping tea into the Atlantic, etc. In the spirit of the moment I even sang the "Star Spangled Banner" (somewhat better than Roseanne). All along I kept subconsciously reminding myself that - as a Canadian-born French speaking "Quebecois," I was here to teach English, - never mind the irony of my role in the chosen subject of the day.
The potential civic value and influential nature of our roles in teaching English became even more obvious as the courses went ahead, and we realized that, here in Ukraine, we were almost like old-time missionaries. We had come from the diaspora, but found unusual golden opportunities to re-plant the seeds of Ukrainian culture in Ukraine - in English! We got to realize that our students were not really immersed in "narodni" (folk) traditions until relatively recently, having lived most of their academic lives under the Soviet regime that was particularly unreceptive to things Ukrainian.
Having met its director, Vasyl Oliynyk, director of a small museum close to the school, we took our respective classes there during school hours for some appreciation of the artifacts uncovered at local archeological digs, as well as for an overview of Ukrainian history in that area of the Ternopil Oblast. This provided the opportunity to later quiz the students in English as to what they saw and learned about the history of Ukraine.
I was particularly pleased to have brought along a flyer about Trypillian culture (written in English by Americans from New Jersey - Marusia and Myron Bokalo - whom we often met at Ukrainian summer festivals in the U.S.A., and who create and sell beautiful Ukrainian Trypillian ceramics) as I realized that my students, in pursuit of their translation assignments, were both learning English and acquiring a better personal understanding of Ukrainian prehistory understanding art, and culture. This positive feeling was repeated when the students were requested to prepare answers for me (the proverbial "American tourist') about the local Zalishchyky museum and its panorama of Ukraine's historical leaders.
And so, here I was in Ukraine, time warped back to the 1950s and "Ridna Shkola," being told (in English) about Princes Oleh, Ihor and Volodymyr and Kniahynia Olha, through to the Kozak era and Hetmans Sahaidachny, Khmelnytsky and Mazepa.
The museum's offerings went up to the 20th century, including modern Ukraine's first president, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Symon Petliura, and then significantly jumped ahead to Leonid Kravchuk.
From my perspective I started to realize that, with all due respect to the ESL texts and program as set forth in our teaching manuals, these were not quite the ideal tools with which to teach English in Ukraine under contemporary circumstances A new more flexible and admittedly more nationalistically opportunistic approach could in effect kill two birds with one stone: namely, teach English, and inculcate and/or revive Ukrainian culture, history and traditions in the process.
At this point I started to engage in constructive criticism of the relevance of teaching English in this manner, by just focusing on U.S. phenomena over the years - e.g., fads such as hula hoops and flagpole sitting, or activities such as census-taking, cave-dwelling endurance records, biorhythms, etc. These activities are alien and irrelevant to young people in Ukraine who, as my wife and I found out, were more attuned to singing Beatles songs ("Yesterday") to improve their English skills reflecting the typical Ukrainian love of music) as well as to browsing through recent issues of Seventeen magazine. Another big hit was the Toys-R-Us mail order catalogue, and a timely July assignment was to prepare letters for mail-ordering ''Super Soaker" water cannons. (On our next trip to Ukraine, perhaps in two years, Stephanie and I have promise s ourselves to bring various summer toys and sporting goods, and, in particularly, baseball equipment.)
Employing baseball
The thought had occurred to us that perhaps to make the learning process more enjoyable we would organize a friendly sand-lot-style intramural baseball game.
The "baseball field" was first surveyed with Pan Mularchuk, in his capacity as course coordinator. We agreed that the goats would be no problem, being tethered at the far end of the overgrown soccer field near the school; the geese would have to beware and the base runners would also have to beware of the cows: remembrances of the field.
After temporarily dismantling a small shelf, we had a home plate and three bases available for our "boys and girls of summer." The only problem was a ball (settling upon an old smooth tennis ball dabbed white with liquid paper (from the U.S.) for contrast in the grass. As for a bat - nowhere in Ukraine did I see one.
Finally, the school director, Mr. Khomyshyn, found us a shapely wooden meter-long banister support split only at one end, which we sawed and whittled to form the new "Zalishchyky baseball bat" (reminding me of the bottle-bats we used to play with as kids). Our young students had to concentrate on our explanations of the game rules, in English of course. On the second afternoon of play Stephanie had to take over as l'd gotten a 24 hours stomach virus. The next day my students complained, in English, about come liberal rule variations my wife had introduced to the game as they had first understood it. I myself could be tolerant of a five-strike rule, but walking to first base after three foul balls seemed unduly generous. What really cured my stomach was my laughter upon hearing how "bases-loaded'' found five runners on the three shelf-bases.
After some apologies for confusion over the rules, our later games were played according to standard American rules. Even the scores moderated from the first 28-4 rout. Stephanie and I realized also that a little bit of righteous controversy drew out our students into excited conversation. Sometimes, if questioning, a particular result or score, their reaction was to argue in Ukrainian; we let them do that, then politely asked for it to be repeated, in English.
Roman Karpishka, a lawyer by profession, resides in Lachine, Quebec. He and his wife, Stephanie, were among the 50 volunteer instructors who taught 53 English language courses in Ukraine during the summer of 1995 as part of the Ukrainian National Association's Teaching English in Ukraine Program.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 21, 1996, No. 3, Vol. LXIV
| Home Page |