American Councils for International Education honors Ukraine's English teachers (05/19/02)

American Councils for International Education honors Ukraine's English teachers

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The American Councils for International Education on April 23 announced its finalists in the U.S.-Ukraine Excellence in Teaching English Awards, an annual competition that gives Ukrainian teachers who have shown outstanding ability in the field a chance to travel to the United States to meet and exchange views with American educators while receiving additional training.

In a competition that lasted four months and went through three stages, judges whittled down a list of 343 Ukrainian teachers of English who qualified for the contest to 20 finalists who will travel to the United States this summer for seminars and specialized training in Washington, South Carolina and Montana.

The American Councils, a not-for-profit education, training and consulting organization specializing in the countries of Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, oversees a host of programs in Ukraine, most directed at student and professional exchanges. The organization is entirely funded by the U.S. government, and received $7.3 million in 2002 for its various programs.

In January of this year American Councils celebrated its 10th anniversary in Ukraine, and while they have accomplished much in a decade, their work is far from done.

"Our desire and our hope is to work more closely with the Ukrainian educational institutions and to continue to help in the development of education here," explained Christina Pendzola-Vitovych, the country coordinator for American Councils' U.S.-Ukraine Excellence in Teaching English Awards.

This is the sixth year that the organization has held the teaching competition, which is widely publicized in schools and involves all the oblasts of Ukraine. The winners are far from a homogeneous lot. They vary in age, experience and in many other ways, but they all are similar in that they have proven they are top-notch educators with the needed skills and motivation to teach kids well.

While winner Liubov Lehetska of the Chernihiv Oblast is 60 years old and has spent 40 years as a teacher, 25-year-old Andrii Kirnoz of Volyn Oblast has been teaching for a mere three and a half years. Mrs. Lehetska had been encouraged to apply for the program by a former student, who is now a teacher and had won an earlier competition.

Maryna Pervova, 38, of Mykolaiv, also is among this year's finalists. She had entered four previous times only to fall short, but had continued to work to improve her teaching skills until she finally became a member of the top 20. There is also Iryna Yakusheva, 38, of Konotop, Sumy Oblast, whose husband had been a finalist in 1997, an achievement that drove her to attain the same heights; and Anatolii Stepanenko of Cherkasy, who is keenly in tune with U.S. government programs and has previously taken part in Peace Corps and Junior Achievement projects.

These five winners and 15 others came out on top in a competition that began earlier this year when oblast judges selected a group of 231 round-one winners from the original 343 contestants. The quarterfinalists received commemorative plaques with their names inscribed, to be displayed in their respective schools.

Mrs. Pendzola-Vitovych explained that to ensure that the judging process was transparent and impartial, each judging committee had a U.S. citizen with teaching or language expertise assigned to it. She said that the committees also were urged to have a journalist present to not only publicize the affair but to record the fairness of the selection process. She noted as well that oblast committees judged only contestants from other oblasts and not their own.

In March the 231 contestants were reduced to 90 finalists who were selected by a group of U.S. and Ukrainian educational and language specialists in Kyiv. The semifinalists received $200 worth of teaching materials and texts, while their schools received $2,000 worth of books and equipment.

The third round involved another group of judges and included individual interviews before final selection took place. The winners will now spend the summer in the United States - first a week of orientation in Washington followed by four days in South Carolina where they will participate in an English as a Second Language conference, and then a trip to the University of Montana-Bosman, where they will have six weeks of intensive training. At various times they will meet with U.S. English and social studies teachers to exchange viewpoints and teaching techniques. Some of the U.S. teachers will eventually travel to Ukraine as part of the exchange program run by American Councils.

While the U.S.-Ukraine Excellence in English Teaching Awards is an integral part of the work of the American Councils, the organization does quite a bit more in Ukraine. It is also is responsible for administering the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship Program for graduate students, as well as an undergraduate exchange program and a high school exchange program called the Future Leaders Exchange Program. There is also a professional exchange program for teachers called the Partners in Education Program.

American Councils has sent a total of more than 3,000 students and teachers to the United States in a variety of exchanges in its 10 years of work here, explained Ms. Pendzola-Vitovych. This year alone 400-plus Ukrainians who might not otherwise have had such a chance will travel to the United States. Among them will be more than 100 graduate students, about an equal number of undergraduate students, some 50 high school students and another group of 30 teachers, in addition to the 20 winners of the English teacher awards.

American Councils began in the 1960s in Russia as the American Council of Teachers of Russian and to this day that designation remains in its official title, which is American Councils for International Education ACTRA & ACCELS (the second acronym stands for American Council for Collaboration in Education and Language Study).

However, after Perestroika and with the Soviet Union disintegrating, ACTRA redefined its focus and objectives and with the collapse of the empire organized representative offices in most of the newly independent states, including Ukraine.

The Kyiv office of American Councils opened in January 1992, with the organization offering many of the exchange programs it continues to administer today. Then, however, it also had responsibility for the highly respected Fulbright Scholarship Program, as well as the Regional Scholar Exchange Program and the Junior Faculty Development Program, all of which are now separately administered.

Today American Councils has a very strong alumni program with many former exchange students continuing to remain active with the organization in various roles, acting as volunteer judges and coordinators. Ms. Pendzola-Vitovych estimated that more than 60 percent of the alumni remain active, while around 20 percent remain "super active" in that they are often in touch with the organization and always willing to lend their support.

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