Valentine's Week

Regardless of how I ever chose to observe certain secular holidays in the U.S. (i.e. MLK Day, President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day), in Azerbaijan, these holidays make great topics for English conversation clubs with automatic segues to cultural exchange. For Valentine’s Day last week, I decided to use the theme for both of my student conversation clubs. Valentine’s Day is recognized in Azerbaijan as “Lover’s Day,” and I realized that my school-day version of Valentine’s Day, where all the kids wear red and bring valentines and candy for each other may be a bit out of touch with some of the current notions surrounding the holiday here. I decided to spin the theme so we learned about compliments. I taught new words like “kind, pretty, beautiful, interesting, generous, honest, friendly, patient” and told my students that Valentine’s Day is a good opportunity to give compliments to people we care about, like our family and friends. At the end of the day, I handed out a pink index card and had the students write a valentine (in English of course!) to one of their family members. The stipulation was that each valentine had to include a compliment and the line, Happy Valentine’s Day! As I was proof-reading through their notes, I made a last-minute addition that beautiful is an adjective that describes women, while we use handsome to describe men. I also gave my students the task of translating their valentines when they give their cards to the respective recipients to make sure they’re understood properly. One of my students wrote to her older brother who is currently in the middle Azerbaijan’s compulsory military service for young men. She wrote that he is a “kind and handsome boy,” decorated the card with red and purple hearts, and even included an “I love you” before she signed her name! As we were leaving, she asked me if it’s okay if she waits to give it to him next year when he’s home for Valentine’s Day.

The older group, which happen to be all girls, completed this valentine card task rather quickly, so I passed out extra index cards and gave them the opportunity to write to their friends, too. I ended up receiving a valentine from one of my 9^th graders that read:

Dear Annie!

You are a honest person!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s always nice to know your students have such a keen eye for character, isn’t it?

On Friday, the final day of my Valentine’s Week, I was teaching articles a, an and the (which, for the record, was a coincidence and had no relation to the valentine I received from my student) to a 7^th grade class. Because the Azeri language lacks articles, it’s a rather difficult topic for my counterparts to teach and for students to understand. So I had presented most of the material for this lesson, and I could tell my counterpart was hanging on my every word to make sure the examples she wanted to present would be accurate. After I had given a series of example sentences, my counterpart jumped in and gave the example: He is a beautiful boy. She immediately shot an approval-seeking glance my direction, and as I was endorsing her sentence with a slight nod of my head, I heard “handsome,” come from one of my conversation club students sitting in the front row. “He is a handsome boy.”