Planting Trees I Will Never Sit Under

  It's been a month, but I'm finally starting to get a handle on my classes.  How each of them works, which students pay attention and which would rather be somewhere else, and how my counterparts like to teach.  I have only just started getting a foothold in the classroom, and at the moment I'm mostly focusing on English games, but really hope to expand.  The problem that I am running into is that I am in a small village, near a big (ish) town, and that town has some very good schools in it.  Anyone who can send their kids to Agdash, does.  That being said, the kids I have in my school are enthusiastic, and most of them do try in class, but they just don't have the same level of English that you find in towns and cities.  Somewhat compounding the problem is the fact they they have been taught by the Grammar-Translation method; meaning that they only learn English grammar and translate text from English to Azerbaijani.  So they know our grammar better than I do, and can usually translate a decent amount of text, but they can't actually speak.  For example, They can translate "Tell me about your family.", but they can't actually answer, or talk about their family.

One of my 5th grade classes

     I've been studying each class to find ways to try and get students to start practice talking, and actually start using the language, and I'm starting to lay the groundwork that will hopefully bear some small fruit in 2-years time.  One of my younger classes has a fair amount of students who don't have books, so those students pretty much ignore most of class, since it's all from the book.  For them, I've been doing a lot of hangman, which is starting to draw those dispassionate students into the discussion.  From there, I hope to move to more movement-based activities, which aren't in the book.  That should make it a bit easier for everyone to follow along, and that class needs to be more physically involved; too many students just sit there until I bring in an activity. (Side note: The kids have never really done classroom activities that require them to move around the classroom, or work with others, or be abstract, so it's a bit chaotic at first, because they can't fathom what they heck they are supposed to do.  But they're slowly getting it, and it makes for an interesting observation)((God, I am such and anthropologist))
     Another class has been frustrating me for ages, but today I finally made a connection, and found out that they love competitive games.  Splitting the class into two large groups, and delegating a speaker for each group made them all work together, especially after I told them that if anyone besides the speaker yelled out the answer, the other team automatically got the question.  Again, it took a while for them to realize that they could all come together and talk to come up with an answer, but after awhile, they were all huddling together and madly discussing possible answers, even if the other team had the question.  It was a great class, and I will definitely do more competitive games in that class; eventually (hopefully) by the time I leave, I would like to be able to pose a question and have them answer in complex sentences.
     I keep looking at what other volunteers are doing, and so many of them are doing great and amazing things, and I wish I could do what they are, but I also know that I have a different situation than what they might have.  I don't have access to magazines, or empty school buildings, or even coloured paper and scissors.  My resources are the students, teachers, and my own mind, which admittedly makes things a bit difficult, (especially since I'm such an introvert) but hopefully it will also mean that whatever changes I make here will be permanent and sustainable, since it's going to have to come from the people, rather than something I buy or bring in from outside.  Only time will tell, but I can only hope that what I do here will have some kind of lasting impact for the better.  Guess it goes with that old saying, "Society grows great when old men plant seeds for trees they never expect to sit under."  We never know what seeds we plant, since we won't be around to see what our impact will be.  We just do our best and hope it all turns out better than it would've been.