Janna and I do one on one English lessons with Marina and Tanya respectively. We try to do two one-hour lessons a week except for when we aren’t in town. If the girls focus and know their material the lessons would be about 30 minutes.
Two weeks ago, we had a really rough lesson. Tanya stalled for twenty minutes before storming and sitting down sullenly with her head lowered. She moped the entire time and the whole lesson she didn’t raise her head. The lesson took three times longer than it should have and in the end I just gave up and let her go before we finished what I had planned for us. Marina spent the whole lesson with Janna complaining that there was too much work (The lessons that Janna prepares for Marina are always 1 page long). Janna has been trying to get Marina to master her pronouns and 8 verbs. This is over the course of almost 20 lessons. Neither girl had done their homework. They never have.
The next day Janna and I went to our Russian lessons. We also have lessons twice a week, but our lessons are three hours long. We both did our homework including reading our text a few times and making sure we know all the unfamiliar words. The last hour of our lesson, I tend to watch the clock a little bit, waiting until I can relax a little bit. But I don’t complain, that would be disrespectful and I agreed to the three hour lessons. At the end of the lesson we paid for the week. We pay our tutor roughly $10 per hour for private lessons.
When Janna gave our tutor the money, something clicked in my brain. Even when I don’t want to study or learn, I value my Russian lessons because I know how much they are worth. I’m not going to disrespect my teacher because I am paying for the opportunity to learn with her. It is also very important to me to be able to speak in Russian.
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When you work with kids coming out of the orphanages, one of the biggest hurdles you face is teaching them how to value things. In the orphanage, everything is given to the kids. Their clothing, their food, their lodging, presents at Christmas. Some of the kids get to participate in a hosting program in other countries, and they don’t have to work at all to be able to participate. On top of that, 90% of the kids who live in the orphanages have parents, and their lives in the orphanage doesn’t cost their parents anything either. So why would they treat their clothing with care? Why would they take their studies seriously when they can always depend on handouts from the system? Its an inaccurate view of life, but its what they are shown every day even if no one every tells it to them.
This plays itself out in many ways. A few weeks ago, we gave out photo albums and presents at the orphanage. Just before giving everything out, we gathered all the kids and I told some of the older boys that we had presents for everyone. They looked at me dubiously and asked what the presents were. They were already planning on selling what we gave to them to buy cigarettes and if the presents weren’t worth anything, they didn’t really want to take the time to go get the present. This happens a lot and is one of the biggest reasons we don’t want to give presents to the kids at all, it just feeds this harmful mindset.
The girls live at Second Chance for free, so we are already walking a fine line of following in the footsteps of the orphanage system. But at Second Chance, the girls have chores, they have to participate. And, they don’t have to live at the house. Already, Tanya has pushed up against the boundaries, and Kolya had to tell her, if you do this … then you can leave, you will not live in this house. Thankfully, Tanya chose to stay. Even if she struggles with the structure and everything else, she wants to live at Second Chance. She wants her life to be different than other kids leaving the orphanage. But teaching them to value things is a constant struggle.
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If the kids know English in Ukraine, they can find a job, and usually they can advance in that job. It is that simple. So the English lessons we give the girls are valuable, but because they haven’t done anything to earn them they don’t value the lessons.
Janna and I spent a lot of time that weekend discussing what to do. If the girls don’t want to learn, never do their homework and don’t try during lessons, they won’t learn. It will be a waste of their time and ours. We have other kids at Safe Haven who really want to have English lessons with us, we just haven’t fit them into our schedule because Tanya and Marina are our priority.
Initially, we thought that maybe we should just lay it all out for them and explain that if they complained and didn’t do their homework then we wouldn’t have lessons. It was their privilege after all, not their right. We would explain the value of knowing English and leave the decision in their hands. But when we discussed our thoughts with our team, Anya, the mom at Safe Haven, pointed out that if we cave into them when they complain and drag their feet; we set a bad precedent. Next, they will start complaining about church, and chores and other things that they don’t want to do.
It’s almost a lose-lose situation. The girls have most of the control. We can’t give them the motivation to learn. We can’t charge them for the lessons. And we can’t really threaten to not teach them English. What do you do?
When we discussed it as a team, we came up with a plan that we hope will work.
First, we sat down with the girls and asked them if they wanted to learn English and why. Marina said that she originally wanted to learn English, “but its just not happening.” I asked her how many times she’s done her homework, and she answered, “Once.” I pointed out that the one time she did her homework, she did it during the lesson. I told them that when I started learning Russian, I couldn’t remember any of my first verbs, and so I made flashcards and repeated them until I remembered. They haven’t been repeating anything outside of lessons, so they can’t learn. But in the end, both of the girls said that they do want to learn English. It seemed like the girls caught the message. Language is hard.
We also explained to them how much a typical private tutor costs. Russian tutors are about $10 an hour or more if the have experience and a native speaking English tutor is even more expensive. What they are getting is very valuable. Both of the girls perked up when we told them how much a private tutor costs, and both said that they want to be a private tutor and make that much money (we have a lot of work ahead of us showing them how the world works, because no one wants a lazy private tutor).
And finally, we laid it out for them. They will have English lessons. If they don’t do their homework, we will do homework during the lessons. If they complain, the lesson will be longer. Essentially punishment is the only tool we have in our arsenal. But if they study, if they try, they can learn to speak English, and it will be very beneficial to them.
More than likely, we will have to have another serious discussion with them every month. That comes with the territory when you are working with kids from the orphanage.
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