Presentation at the Bi-lingual high school in Bucharest

I arrived a bit early for Thanksgiving and was able to accompany Kymber, another Fulbrighter, to the Bi-lingual high school in Bucharest. I met the director a few weeks ago the RATE conference in Timisoara. It certainly is a small world. She was looking for an English teacher at the time and wondered if I knew anyone interested.

Darkening a room in Romania is an interesting procedure. In this room the shades are a salmon color and so most of the images have a salmon tint to them. I have not figured out how to untint them as yet. We spoke with two groups – the underclassmen and the upperclassmen. It was an interesting afternoon. Both groups were interested but there were so many of them, it was hard to say if they will consider coming to America for their university studies.

I enjoyed seeing another high school in action. These kids are much more serious about their future than most of their counterparts in Gura Humorului. There is a group of students in GH that are very serious, but on the whole, the students' ambitions do not run high. I have seniors who have no idea what they want to do after graduation. Although I do think that our system of starting career training in the elementary school is a bit much, it is also obvious that there is little if any direction given to students regarding a realistic future for them. Most of them are without real purpose in their education. There are certainly fewer opportunities for my students in this rural region, but even so, they seem to be simply enjoying high school. My students are a wonderful group and have a delightful camaraderie amongst their classmates.

These students have heard presentations from several British and other western European universities. These are some of the best that Romania has to offer and many schools are interested in them.