Counterpart Conferences

This weekend we met the women with whom we will be working most closely for the next two years. We spent the weekend in a hotel conference room, getting to know our counterparts and attending PC TEFL training sessions with them. It was interesting to see the wide range of backgrounds our counterparts represented. Some trainees have been paired with college professors who have trained in The US or the UK. Some of the English teachers from the smaller villages speak little more English than the students in our practicum classes back in Artashat. 

Sam and I were fortunate in that both of our counterparts spoke very good English. We had been worried that, since our Armenian is still very basic, we wouldn't be able to communicate clearly with our new coworkers. And as this partnership is the basis upon which any progress is to be made within the classrooms at our schools, communication between members is important. 

I will be working in an elementary school with two counterparts, but only one was able to come to the conference. Her name is Armine, and I couldn't have hoped for a nicer counterpart. She has worked with a Peace Corps Volunteer in the past, and that experience was positive enough that she applied to have a second volunteer assigned to her school. 

Meeting Armine was a huge relief. She was cheerful, energetic, and most of all, very open to ideas about adapting her teaching practices to embrace more interactive classroom styles. The older volunteers who have been doing this for a year tell us that the most difficult thing about working in the schools is convincing counterparts to try something new- but Armine is already there. This makes me feel really good about working together, and makes me very hopeful that we'll have a productive partnership. 

It also makes me feel a lot more comfortable admitting my own limited experience to her. Knowing that she feels like it's okay to tell me that she wants to change things about her teaching practices makes me feel like it's okay to let her know that I don't know everything either. This is something I'll have to keep in mind as I continue to work in Armenia: the best way to make sure that some one is comfortable enough to admit that they don't know it all, is to start by admitting it about yourself.