Teaching Overseas - righting my wrongs!

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot

When I worked at IBM in PC development (yes it’s a long story how I ended up in teacher recruitment. That’s for another newsletter. Or three) one of our jobs was to test new releases of the Microsoft operating system on our hardware. And we would find bug after bug and report them back to Microsoft. Some of them would get fixed but from time to time a resistant bug would be found and Microsoft, in their haughty way, would turn to us and say, “You know what, that’s not really a bug. It’s a feature.”  I use that terminology today. Our new TV turns itself off on occasion and our doorbell doesn’t work when it rains. Interesting features. 

So I need to point out a few features from last week’s newsletter which actually got quite a bit of feedback, and that’s really great. At least I know that people are reading it!  So here are a couple of the inaccuracies last week’s discussion about the educational standards at secondary/high school around the world.

·         Feature number 1.  In New Zealand , School Certificates are not given out at 16. This is apparently very old news that just took a while to make it all the way around the world to me here in London.   Instead they get National Certificates of Education Achievement levels 1 through 3 as they rise through years 11 through 13.

·         Feature number 2. Australia is in the process of adopting a national curriculum called ACARA. It’s in consultation at the moment. And Australia doesn’t have provinces, it has states/territories.  Doh.

·         Feature number 3. Pursue is spelled pursue not persue. Ahem.

·         Feature number 4. For the US, I mentioned AP exams but didn’t mention SAT or ACT. These last two are standardised tests that universities use to measure academic success because there are no national standards.

So for today, I will think of myself as better than Microsoft, at least in this one little way-I can admit when I’m not entirely right. (don’t like to use the words ‘ I was wrong’ out loud. You don’t know who might be listening.... my boss or maybe my husband. )

“We made too many wrong mistakes”  - Yogi Berra, baseball player and very  funny guy.

“I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong” – Benjamin Franklin, American inventor.

“Darling, of course your directions were correct. It’s just someone must have moved the hotel we’ve been trying to find for an hour several blocks north when we weren’t looking” – my husband, right before I swatted him with the map.

Teachanywhere takes on Kazakhstan - and loves it!

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot 

I just returned from a trip to Kazakhstan. Well technically I’ve not returned yet- I’m writing this on the plane. But I’m very excited and can’t wait to share.

Because in my job with Teachanywhere, I travel quite a bit- visiting schools and regions worldwide. But rarely do I get as surprised by a place as I have been by Kazakhstan this week.

When I write “Kazakhstan”, what pops into your mind? Borat in a mankini? A poor ex-soviet country with cold snowy winds blowing over vast empty steppes?  Yup, me too. Before this trip that is. I even researched a bit beforehand to find out more, but found very little recent information and almost nothing reassuring besides a National Geographic article that landed on my doorstep in January which I could not quite believe hadn’t been extensively photoshopped.

What I found when I stepped off the plane was entirely surprising. Well, except for the snow but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I found a wealthy country rich in oil and minerals intent on looking forward, grasping the 21^st century with both hands, whilst also simultaneously looking backwards at its Soviet-repressed deep Kazakh cultural traditions and language, and bringing them along for the ride. It has a stable government, happy, confident and well educated citizens,  hungry for the best new ideas, and possessing the means to import what they don’t currently have – new teaching pedagogy, top architects, and even, as I found on my inspection of a supermarket, Coco Pops cereal and Heinz Ketchup. 

I visited the new capital city of Astana and found a city transformed in the past decade from a sleepy backwater railway junction to a vast humming city with fantastical skyscrapers, top notch sports facilities (the cycling world cup was just held recently there in a state of the art velodrome shaped like a bicycle helmet for instance) and leisure facilities such as an award winning eco-friendly glass shopping mall cum amusement park shaped like a Kazakh tent, complete with an indoor water park on the top floor and monorail system.  Much of the architecture is inspired by other landmarks including a Louvre-like glass pyramid, the president’s palace is reminiscent of the US capitol, the Central Concert hall giving a nod to the Sydney Opera house, and a Moscow inspired office building that would not be out of place in Gotham City. Top architects from around the world have contributed to the growing skyline, including British Norman Foster and Japanese Kisho Kurokawa. It’s quite Dubai and Singapore-like in its love of OTT.

What was different than Dubai and Singapore was that this programme of reinvestment of wealth and the building of a fantastical city does not seem to have been done for the usual reasons – to attract foreign tourist money. Indeed, foreigners are rare here and treated per Kazakh tradition, as “a gift from God”. All the foreign teachers I spoke with told of being openly welcomed and developing many good Kazakh friends quickly and easily.  Everyone, it seems, wants to find out more about you and practice their English.

So instead of luring foreign tourists, the Kazakhs seem to be building Astana for themselves. Perhaps it is being been done as a reflection of their infectious optimism, their sky high aspirations for their new place on the international scene, or  because perhaps simply because they can.    

Education is a top priority for the Kazakh president Nazarbayev and his government, and billions have been invested in building new school facilities – university, secondary and primary and they are driving to create not just a bilingual system by overlaying Kazakh on top of the long required Russian language, but now a tri-lingual system with English – the language of international business- as well.  

What, besides the winter weather, is not to like?

Teachanywhere have a number of interesting jobs in Kazakhstan this week and I encourage you to have a look. Yes it is cold and snowy during the winter which runs from November to March. Yes, the infrastructure is developing –this is not for teachers who want the finished product. But what an amazing opportunity this is for teachers who want to see this Eurasian butterfly emerge. Because I have a feeling that with the financial resources, strong work ethic, resilient optimism of the citizens, and with the strong governmental focus behind them, this transformation will be over in the blink of an eye.