A Batson's Education: Adventures with Creative Writing, Conferences, and Christmas

A rare beautiful sunny day in
Białystok

TL;DR or Quick Summary

No exciting trips to report on this week, just a fairly successful week in Białystok.
I worked on creative writing with my classes this week. It was a good way to practice writing skills but still have a fun and relaxing class in the middle of the semester.
On Thursday and Friday, I attended and presented at a conference sponsored by my university. I was schooled on my incorrect grammar terminology.
Sunday was the official Christmas festival in Białystok. They had a the real life Santa Claus from Finland and an official tree lighting ceremony.
It is getting cold!

It was nice to have a 'regular' week here is Białystok. While I love travelling, it certainly takes a lot out of me. Staying home this weekend was a great way to catch up on my work (I literally have about 80 essays to read) and to experience the start of the Christmas season in Białystok.

Classes

Writing Classes

Like I mentioned in my last post, my students were starting to feel the stress of a long semester. So I wanted to give them a break, but still do a writing focused activity. I decided to a creative writing activity; each student would pick a starter sentence that would serve as the first sentence of their story. The original author would then write five sentences to continue the story. After that, each story would be passed to four more people for a total of five authors. Although the students were hesitant (and somewhat confused) at first, I think most ended up enjoying the activity.

Some of my favorite starter sentences include:

A hostage situation at the bank was not how I wanted to spend my morning.
The cemetery was rather quiet on my annual visit.
Amy was hesitant to open the hotel room, scared of what she may find.
Flowers came to my house every Monday around 13:00.
All the nuns at the orphanage were ruthless except for Sister Francis.
She kept absolutely still as the footsteps got louder.
The fire was getting closer.
The text message simply said ‘very clever.'

Snow Wars Episode 6: Return of the Snow

Students ran with the ideas in really interesting ways. There were several serial killer stories, one about a nun who force fed orphans candy, a Batman origin story, a WWII story from the point of Germany, and several others. Not all stories came together in a reasonable manner, but most did. While students were reading the final version of their stories, many laughed and excitedly shared the story with their partner.

On the academic side of things, the goal for students was to match the tone, theme, and direction of the previous author. I asked students not to completely change the story by bringing in random aliens or nuclear explosions (there were some aliens but no explosions). For the most part it was successful! I also think that a huge component of learning to write well is to read what others have written, not just 'official authors' but also other authors of a similar level. By having students continue stories from other students, I hope to expose them to as may types of authors as possible.

Integrated Skills

Decorations in Białystok

In integrated skills, I decided to continue with topic specific vocabulary and terms; this week was terminology about jobs and interviews. Most of my students seems surprisingly excited about this topic. We discussed words to describe yourself in an interview (hardworking, dedicated, big picture, detail oriented, experienced, etc) as well as words to discuss what the job will be like (part-time, full-time, work culture, etc).

After discussing the definition of all the words, I had students interview each other. The questions were pretty basic, but it was good practice. Next week I will continue to work/interview related lesson with some specific phrases and words. I found some good, but silly games that practice using the words; hopefully the spirit of competition will bring out the bet in my students.

Conversation Class

Christmas decorations or attack of the bioluminescent jellyfish?

I don't think that I have written much about my conversation class before. It is an informal class for graduate students and professors in my university. It is a fairly small class, usually there are only around 8 people, which is lets the class get pretty personal. Since they (in theory) want to be there, they are generally more enthusiastic and engaged in the lessons. There are two graduate students who worked with another Fulbrighter last year, my Polish teacher, and several professors at the university. It is a good group with different levels of English and different life experiences.

So far we have discussed the presidential election, 'The 11 Nations of America,' and many many idioms. Much to the delight of my students, we have discovered that there are many equivalent idioms in English and in Polish.

Last week, I jokingly told them about the Preposition Song that my middle school teacher made me memorize and they were super excited about it. So this week I think that I will be directing a choir of enthusiastic preposition singers. You can file this under the category of things I did not expect to be doing (although I am definitely happy to do it). When we land our first record deal, I will post a link on the blog!

Crossroads Conference

Action pose during my presentation

Last week my department sponsored a conference titled 'Crossroads I: Remembering/Forgetting.' It was a conference that focused on a wide variety of presentations related to human memory. There were presentations on collective memory, how particular people/groups are viewed through memories, how particular books portray memory, and many other topics. It is difficult to broadly explain the presentations, since many of them were very specific. Going into the conference, I was not totally sure what to expect and I was definitely feeling nervous.

For my presentation, I discussed the (now somewhat) recent controversy of the revised Texas education standards in regard to social studies and history. Specially I discussed the changes made by the Board of Education and the subsequent textbooks that were written to conform to these standards. Essentially, I discussed the motives behind the changes, what changes were made, how the textbook publishers used grammar to change the tone of the text, and some possible effects on students. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but you are welcome to check out my presentation if you'd like.

Lunch during the conference

Although my presentation was a success, I was called out on using the wrong term for describing verbs. Instead of using 'passive voice,' I just called it a 'passive verb.' Cue a quick grammar lesson in the middle of my presentation. Due to their many years of intense English grammar, the Poles were absolutely right about my mistake. The rest of the presentation went well and I received several questions at the end.

Interestingly, most Polish presenters read off their entire presentation. Most had written a paper for publication in conjunction with the conference and primarily read straight from that paper during their presentation. The projector was used to display relevant pictures or quotes, but not primarily as a means of information transmission. Talking to several presenters they said they preferred to read because it helped make sure they did not forget any points and because in school they never really had an opportunity to practice public speaking. One even told me that he wished that he could present like I did (without a script).

Overall, the conference was a great chance to meet some new people and see different types of research projects. It was a great academic as well as cultural learning experience.

Light Up that Tree!

The lit Christmas Tree

On Sunday afternoon (can it still be called afternoon if the sun has set?), Białystok held its annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. It was a much larger event that I was expecting. They had a stage with lights, speakers, and projector. There were creepy 'penguins' walking around and ~~terrifying both children and adults~~ posing for pictures. There was free soup and coffee, although both went extremely fast. And finally, there was Santa Claus, straight off the sleigh from Finland.

The ceremony started off with several performances by children and teens, few of which were actually related to Christmas. Then came the Christmas songs; I sang Silent Night in Polish (don't tell anyone but I was actually singing the English lyrics) and several others. Finally Santa came on stage, talked to several kids, and promised many presents.

The final event was the lighting of the huge tree in the middle of the rynek (market square). The tree is about 30 feet (10 meters) high and pretty perfect looking. It will be a welcome decoration for the rest of the Christmas season.

But what I will remember most is probably the cold. It was 'only' around 22°F (-5°C) but I did not come prepared, especially in the sock department. All day I had been fine going between different heated locations, but after standing outside for almost 2 hours, I really started to feel the cold. Luckily the rest of me was fairly warm, so as long as I don't make the same sock mistake, I should survive!

Well that's all for this week! Thanks for reading!