A Window to my World

*Please note that this post refers to a video clip that has been removed

Technology never ceases to amaze me. As I mentioned before, I have recently discovered the wonders of YouTube. For those of you who haven't heard, YouTube allows people to very easily upload their video clips and share them with the rest of the world. Man I wish this stuff was around when I was back in high school. We (you know who you are) would have been famous. I like to thing that we pioneered the show "Jackass" before it even exisisted.

Anyway, my first video installment was taken yesterday at school. As you may remember, I've referred to my school as a "zoo", myself as a "zookeeper" (see comments section, Oct. 8th post) and the students as "animals". Well, click here if you want to see why...

I would like to emphasize that, while the students are aware of the prescence of the camera, this should not lead you to believe that their behavior in the clip is any different from when there is no camera present. It's like this everyday. Seriously. I didn't do anything but walk down the hall with the camera and say "hi" a few times. The whole thing was spontaneous.

You see, there are 10 minute breaks between class periods, officially. However, most of the time these breaks stretch to 15 to 20 minutes because the teachers are busy chatting, smoking, drinking coffee or trying on clothes that some guy brings in at least once a week. Yes, the teachers' room is a flea market sometimes. Teachers in Romania do not have their own classrooms, the kids do. So when the bell rings, the teachers take their sweet ol' time to get up and go to their next class while the children make their way back to their respective classrooms. Unfortunately, this usually results in 10 minutes of lost class time per period, which adds up to a whole class period a week. Add it up and that's 36 class periods lost per school year. But hey, gossip, coffee and cigaretts are surely more important than teaching the children, right?

The kids have to be in the same room with the same classmates every day of every hour (with a few exceptions). They don't even get a lunch break. As a result, they are kind of like caged animals. When the bell rings and the teachers retreat into the Teachers' Room or "Canceliare", anything goes. It's not like America where students have to spend the passing period going to their locker and getting to their next class. Oh no. Every hour on the hour, for 15-20 minutes, chaos ensues. Running, yelling, wrestling, grab-ass, full on fights and brawls, kicking stuff down the hallway, dancing, swearing, you name it. They are completely unsupervised, as there are no teachers monitoring the hallways. Either the teachers don't know, don't want to know or don't care about what goes on. But guess who witnesses it all on a daily basis? That's right. Yours truly.

Of course, you may be asking yourself why? Why am I not in the Canceliare with the rest of my colleagues having a coffee and gossiping. Or why am I not having a smoke outside of the building in plain view of the students, or inside the school for that matter? It is because I spend my breaks in my room talking to students, running my English library, setting up the laptop/projector, preparing for the next class, etc. Sometimes I actually walk the halls and go out into the play yard. I recognize the fact that I am lucky to have my own room and all of its resources. However, even if I didn't, I would rather be amongst the kids, as they are clearly starved for attention. The teachers just don't see this.

Unfortunately, the teacher-student relationship in Romania becomes very cold and impersonal after elementary school (1st through 4th grade). The system is authoritative and is based on rote learning of facts in which the teacher-student exchange is simply call and response. Teachers generally project an intimidating air of authority and don't really communicate with the children on a personal level. This is really a shame, because children, especially young adolescents, need more than just facts and information from their teachers; they need positive social interation as well.

As you saw in the video, I get mobbed when I walk the halls or go outside in the play yard. I'll say it again, they act like that even when I don't have a camera in my hand. And I've come to realize that it's not just because I'm different, the American. It's because I actually talk to them. I show intrerest in them as human beings. I don't treat them like objects. Sadly, they don't get this from many of their own teachers.

When I look back on my school days, I know that my social interaction with my teachers was just as, if not more, important than the information that they presented to me as part of the curriculum. I wish that it could be the same for the students in Romania. Hopefully it will change one day. Maybe I'm part of that process of change? Maybe one day a student of mine will become a teacher and remember the positive social interaction he or she had with me, and will thus do the same for his or her students? I sure hope so.

On a lighter note, many of you may know about the comedian Sasha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as "Borat". He's got a new movie out and it looks hilarous. Can't wait to see it. Anyway, the character Borat is a TV journalist from Kazakstan. However, the scenes from the movie that are supposed to be in Kazakstan are actually filmed in Romania. Click here to see the first four minutes of the movie, filmed in a Romanian village, not Kazakstan.

The language you hear is Romanian. The car is a Dacia. I've been to places like that. It's nice. I like.