First Real Week of School

September 25 – October 2, 2015

Alex and I stayed home for the weekend after Bayram. I completed my domestic internship applications for the U.S. Department of State for summer 2016. This entailed updating my resume with the Fulbright experience and writing personal statements for why I am interested in two regional bureaus.

After a restorative week, Alex and I were looking forward to our first day of school of Monday, September 28^th. When we got to the School of Foreign Languages, however, we met the two assistant directors and learned that our schedules were not yet created. Throughout the week, we went to school every day at 10am and spent time at our desks preparing lessons and taking care of other logistics such as getting our school-issued laptops.

Thursday was our first “real” day of teaching, as we were asked to serve as substitute teachers for level 1 English students. We were asked to teach three hours in the morning, but due to English placement testing, we taught for only one hour and instead helped administer examinations. After lunch, we were asked to hold a “speaking club” for our graduate students—some of whom we had met during our settling-in period. We are told that our primary task at Akdeniz University will be to facilitate after-school speaking clubs to help graduate students improve their speaking abilities before they go the United States or United Kingdom for master’s programs funded by the Turkish government. Just as we finished the speaking club on Thursday, we got a call from our administrator once again with a new task: to teach for another three hours (3:30-6:30) to a new class of level 1 English students. This was both exciting and stressful. Exciting because we were finally interacting with students, and stressful because we had to come up with activities on the spot. We engaged the students by having them play a game in which they had to list as many English verbs as they knew, and conjugate them in present and past tenses within 10 minutes. Not surprisingly, common mistakes included irregular verbs such as eat, grow, and hurry – our students conjugated their past tenses as eated, growed, and hurryed and learned that the proper conjugations are ate, grew, and hurried. As with every classroom, there were some students serious about learning English while others created distractions. Teaching with Alex was a great experience because she entertained the dedicated students while I disciplined the class clowns.

Another highlight of our first week at school was Elizabeth Bear, who arrived from the United States on Tuesday and has been staying with us as a guest. She was placed at Akdeniz University through another State Department-sponsored program called the “English  Language Fellow (ELF)” program. She is a sweet young woman, a few years older than Alex and me. She taught in Korea for six years so she brings a unique international and comparative perspective to teaching.

Saving the worst for the last: my medical emergency, part two. I believe in sharing the good, bad, and ugly from my Fulbright experience to demonstrate that living abroad is not always rainbows and sunshine (actually, Antalya gets quite a bit of torrential rainfall, so that alone proves my point). Anyway, my skin infection returned and I went to the hospital designated for staff and faculty—which, by comparison to the public university hospital where I went the first time around, was much cleaner and less crowded. Despite the better facility, I had a dissatisfactory experience with the nurse who was assigned to draw my blood for a blood test. Disclaimer: I have always been afraid of needles (hence my dreams of becoming a doctor ended quite early in my childhood), but I am brave enough to handle blood tests. After the nurse cleaned my left arm with alcohol, I felt a sharp poke in my vein and I could tell something was wrong. I gave her the benefit of doubt and patiently waited for a few seconds. When no blood was being drawn into the syringe despite her efforts, I asked the lady nurse to take the needle out. Ouch! It hurt so much! Then, with the help of another nurse, they were able to properly draw blood from my right arm and it was not nearly as painful as my left arm. I walked away feeling sad because my left arm was in pain, upset because the nurse wouldn’t give me a band-aid, and worried in case the results came back with bad news. I now have a lovely, big, purple bruise on my left arm to remind me of the terrible needle-poking experience.

When I described this week’s events to my family, my Dad—who was an economics professor in Pakistan and Qatar for a good majority of his early career—wrote back to me the following words of encouragement. They cheered me up and reminded me to be patient and flexible. After all, those are some of the most important traits of a good diplomat. I love Baba.

“Mariya Baita,

Sorry to hear about your arm. Hopefully you will be better soon. Don’t overreact to the day-to-day issues. Such things happen in third world countries. University life is always be like that as you are facing. Don’t compare their system with US. Try your best to adjust in that environment. Here, everything is ok. You have to take care of yourself and be extra careful in conversation.

God bless you,

Baba.”

Orientation Day 11: Multiple Intelligences & Ambassador's Reception

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Orientation continued again with the three ladies from the State Department. Today we learned about how to engage our students with writing prompts such as sentence starters, prompt starters for stories, and incomplete pictures that students can finish and write about. It’s been kind of exhausting to do every activity, which feels a bit amateur to us since we already speak English. One recommendation I have for next year’s Orientation program would be to shorten the length of these sessions because they are excruciatingly long. Apparently Turkey has the longest Orientation program than any other country hosting Fulbrighters.

We also discussed Howard Gardner’s famous theory of “Multiple Intelligences” from his 1983 book Frames of Mind, in which he proposes the existence of at least eight basic intelligences. Gardner sought to broaden the scope of human potential beyond the confines of the IQ score and suggested that intelligence has more to do with the capacity for (1) problem solving and (2) fashioning products in a context-rich and naturalistic setting. I remember learning about this in Mr. Cabral’s eleventh grade AP English Language class; he made us debate about the existence of these intelligences. I believe I sided on the “YES” team. The point of discussing this theory was to be aware of different learning styles and to incorporate different types of activities into our lesson plans.

For those of you who are curious about Gardener’s 8 intelligences, they are listed below along with activities that help those types of learners learn best. I identify with the logic, visual, and interpersonal intelligences. Which do you identify with?

• Verbal-Linguistic --> capacity to use words effectively; activities = storytelling, writing journals, reading aloud, debating
• Logic-Mathematical --> capacity to use numbers effectively; activities = problem solving, sequencing, puzzles, using money or geometry
• Visual-Spatial --> ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately; activities = graphing, sketching, painting, illustrating, mapping
• Bodily-Kinesthetic --> expertise in using one’s whole body to express ideas and feelings; activities = dancing, crafts, hands-on experiments
• Musical --> capacity to perceive and express in musical forms; activities = rapping, humming, singing, rhyming
• Interpersonal --> ability to perceive and make distinctions in moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people; activities = peer editing, discussing, study group, conflict mediation, social awareness, teaching, cooperative learning
• Intrapersonal --> self-knowledge and ability to act adaptively on the basis of that knowledge; activities = personal response, goal setting, journal log keeping, independent projects
• Naturalistic --> ability to easily recognize and classify plants, animals, and other things in nature; activities = reading outside, bird watching, gardening, dissecting

One lady also walked us through how to resourcefully use the www.AmericanEnglish.state.gov website for teaching materials. The website is filled with books, audio, music, American culture, articles, worksheets, readings, and all sorts of content for both English teachers and English learners. The end of this session was followed by a question that triggered an important discussion. One Fulbrighter asked: how can we make sure that we are not imposing English as an imperialist tool? The State Department representative answered by saying that English is a tool for global communication, not necessarily imperialist values. We have to distinguish between cultural exchange and cultural superiority; I personally believe that our role as “cultural ambassadors” is not to Americanize our students, but rather to teach them English and empower them to partake in the global economy and global communication. While we cannot turn back the clocks, and it is certainly important to acknowledge imperialist history, we must also be practical with the realities of today’s world. English is definitely a tool in my opinion for global exchange of ideas and access to information. At the very least, we are enabling our students to spread their Turkish language by engaging with English speakers.

We received our residency permits today, hooray! This is basically our driver’s license / ID card here in Turkey – we must carry it with us at all times.

Reception at the Ambassador’s Residence

Karlene, myself, Alex, and Erika before the reception.

We had a two-hour break before the fancy reception hosted by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Mr. John Bass, at his residence. We met at the hotel lobby at 6:30p before departing. Everyone looked charming; boys wore suits and ties, and women wore formal dresses. I wore my favorite yellow dress (the last time I wore this was on my last day of work at Liberty Mutual), manila colored pointy heels, and large pearl earring studs. Alex curled my hair and did my eye make-up so I looked even fancier than I intended. We took photos in the lobby while waiting for our buses, and many peers complimented my outfit (I think because I was the only one wearing bright yellow).

The security guards at the gate checked our passports to verify our names on the guest list before allowing us to enter Mr. Ambassador’s Residence. The house was beautiful! It reminded me of a Pakistani bungalow, with large lawns, numerous rooms decorated with furniture and collectibles, expensive paintings on the wall, and china in the dining room. The reception was mainly on the lawn, but we were allowed to walk around the lower level and observe the rooms. Ambassadors live quite well when they are abroad.

I mingled with State Department officials and learned about their work at the embassy. One day, inshAllah, I will also be working at a U.S. Embassy and perhaps doing similar public diplomacy work. I also saw my Turkish hocam (pronounced “hojam” which means ‘my teacher’), met two ladies from Antalya, and a few other officials who were affiliated with the embassy.

With U.S. Amb. to Turkey, Mr. John Bass.

Since there was no dinner to be served, I indulged in the various hors d’oeuvres being offered throughout the cocktail-style party. Mr. Ambassador made welcoming remarks and Dr. Professor Ersel Aydinli also addressed the crowd by publicly thanking the State Department for their cooperation and his staff for the hard work in coordinating this program. After these speeches, I greeted the Ambassador, introduced myself, and asked for his advice for my future career in the U.S. Foreign Service. He said to pick an area of regional or functional specialty in graduate school and become an expert in it. I thank him for his time, snagged a photo with him before a long line formed to take selfies with him. I also spoke to his wife, Holly, who is a foreign service officer as well. She, too, had a large crowd of people waiting to ask her questions.


Other than losing my pearl ring on the lawn, the reception was wonderful.

Lesson Learned
Later that night, I decided to go out with my friends because I was in a festive mood. I hung out with Alex and a peer named Casey Mangan. He is a renewing grantee and a very sincere young man. He gave us a lot of good advice about the next 9 months and acted as a brother to many female colleagues. Just as we were about to leave the bar, we saw a few other Fulbrighters hanging out with a young Turkish man. They were about to go dancing and asked if we wanted to join them. We said we would check it out for a few minutes but were very tired and wanted to go back to the hotel soon. We walked for 10 minutes and realized that this mysterious dancing place was not nearby at all, which is what the Turkish man had promised us. Our gut instinct was not to trust him and to return to our hotel. Casey and Jordan also noticed that there were two men following us the entire time. I got a little scared and hoped that nothing bad would happen. Casey’s Turkish and leadership helped us get out of this situation; we simply told the Turkish man we did not want to dance and walked the other way. Tensions ran high amongst our group because some girls wanted to dance and others wanted continue to flirt with their newly acquainted Turkish men. Jordan stepped up and convinced them all to leave immediately and we all hurried back to the hotel.

Alhamdulillah (thank God) we were safe, however, I learned a very important lesson that night: to always trust your gut instincts and to always check your surroundings whenever you are outside, especially at night. I was grateful that Casey and Jordan were the two male, more experienced colleagues in our group to save the evening! Alex and I must be very careful in Antalya.

Güle Güle!

Orientation Days 9 & 10: English Teaching & Learning

Tuesday & Wednesday, September 8-9, 2015

I am going to combine Tuesday's and Wednesday's activities into one blog post because they have the same theme: English teaching training sessions by State Department officials. Three ladies from the U.S. Embassy have come to teach us strategies for effective teaching, classroom management, cooperative learning, and web engagement. For the most part, it’s been really interesting to learn about how Turkish students and classrooms are different from American students and classrooms. Turkish students often show up late and can sometimes be unmotivated; but they also love and respect their American teachers and don’t hesitate to illustrate their affection. For every session, we had to complete activities that at times felt a bit childish to us. For example, the lady conducting the “Cooperative Learning Techniques” training made us complete cross word puzzles, a describe-and-draw activity, and “Find someone who____” activity—all of which would hopefully encourage our students to speak English and practice conversational vocabulary.

One lady told us about the power of nursery rhymes; repetition helps remember phrases and words that can trigger more grammar and vocabulary learning. Everyone recalled their favorite nursery rhyme from kindergarten or pre-school; my favorite rhymes have always been Humpty Dumpty and Mary Had a Little Lamb. In Turkey, kids grow up to “Ali Baba'nın çiftliği” (Ali Baba’s Farm). It’s similar to the American “Ole McDonald Had a Farm” which teaches kids about animals and their sounds. The Ali Baba song was quite catchy, if I must say so myself.

Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM43PcWPXsI.

On Tuesday, September 8th, we were scheduled to learn Turkish folk dancing and have a “Turkish Night” that evening. However, due to news about an attack on a police minibus, in which 14 police officers died, dance activities were cancelled to pay respect to families in mourning. The news about the attack concerned some Fulbrighters and many of them expressed interest in discussing more security measures. The very next day on Wednesday, the Turkish Fulbright Commission invited back the security officials from the State Department to answer any student questions and concerns about security. After 1.5 hours of repetitive advice from the security officials about avoiding rallies, dangerous situations, and eastern parts of the country, executive director Dr. Professor Ersel Aydinli addressed us for 30 minutes. His advice was simple: be prepared, aware, and use common sense. He said our security was their first priority but they can only take so many measures; they’ve done their part in providing us with as much knowledge, phone numbers, and material as they can—it is now up to us to use our common sense and look out for one another. He was right.

Orientation Day 6: Teaching Techniques & Emotional Well-Being

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Another really tiring day today. I woke up to the sound of the beautiful azan, call to prayer, for the morning prayer. It was so peaceful, my soul felt at ease. I prepared for long day ahead.

The day started with more English Language Training sessions. We learned how to incorporate technology, such as websites, softwares, and phone apps, in our classrooms. Technology helps us get information, connect to people around the world, and access media and current events. This cross-global communication is imperative for emphasize in the classroom.

Interactive learning helps the brain remember better, so the instructor gave us some useful suggestions. For example, some websites we can take advantage of are:

• Americanenglish.state.gov – official U.S. State Department website with English and American culture teaching material.
• Eslgamesplus.com – English interactive games
• Englishclub.com/esl-games – English interactive games
• Classtools.net – has tools such as “random name picker” so you call on students

Apparently Turkish youth loving being up-to-date with technology, so it’s fair to assume that almost all of them have smart phones, in which case we can encourage them to use their phones to learn English.

Other ideas that were shared during the workshop are listed below:

• For podcasts or assigning audio homework, we can use apps such as Vocaroo, Soundcloud, and WhatsApp
• -Other cool English-learning apps are GrammarUp, SoundsRight, Intro to Letter Sentence Builder, Hello-Hello English, Speech Tutor, and Daily Pro HD.
• Joining LinkedIn groups for ESL (great exchange of ideas)
• TED-Ex talks with Turkish titles
• Jeopardy review online
• Blogging – publishing student essays  - this was my idea that I shared with my peers. I did this when I taught in Pakistan. Check out my student essays here: alimtiaz2010.blogspot.com and aiajournalism2011.blogspot.com.
• Breaking News English – news at various levels of English comprehension
• Voice of America – English learning/teaching materials
• Games – completion in the classroom gets students very motivated
• Assessment sites – Kahoot.com and Socrative.com

The day continued with another session titled “Focus on Speaking and Listening.” Like Pakistan and most other countries, Turkish educational system is based on “rote” learning, which means that students spend a lot of time memorizing but not enough on speaking and listening. Speaking is defined as the “process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbol in variety of contexts” while listening is defined as the “complex process, active role in discriminating sounds, understanding vocabulary grammatical structures, and interpreting stress in various socio-economic and cultural contexts.” Keeping this in mind, our primary focus should be to get students to gain more confidence in speaking their English, which inherently requires that they practice their listening skills.

Switching gears to a more solemn topic, after lunch we had a session titled “Maintaining Mental Health and Emotional Well-being.” Mental and emotional health are party of the harsh reality of traveling and living abroad, and as such, it was important to discuss the types of symptoms Fulbrighters feel. I learned about the phases of cultural shock which include honeymoon, anxiety, adjustment, and acceptance. Keri and Tess, who are program advisors and two-time renewing grantees, facilitated the discussion. In their presentation, they said it was normal to feel lonely, depressed, homesick, anxious, and helpless; that all these emotions that are legitimate and justified, however it’s important to take care of ourselves so that we maintain good health and well-being. We were encouraged to tour Turkey, yes, but also take time to relax, catch up on sleep, and take part in hobbies. Instead of becoming a homebody, we should explore our city and make friends.

It was also interesting to learn that one can experience depression by helping someone else go through a tough time. “Various trauma,” for example, is the experience due to supporting someone going through an emotional time, and “secondary traumatic stress” (also known as “compassion fatigue”) is the experience through proximity to emotional unhealthiness.

I also learned there are two types of coping techniques: active (resolving) or avoidant (running away from the issue). Teri and Jess encouraged us to ask ourselves if what we are experiencing is daily annoyance or a serious issue. They said to keep everything in perspective because not everything is in our control. Could it be ignored or does it need intervention? Is the discomfort leading to personal growth or is it destabilizing? Teri and Jess warned us that different attributes such as skin color, eye color, hair color, hair texture, and weight do breed attention in Turkey, but that majority of it is coming from curiosity. “We other that we do not know.” As such, micoaggressions, non-conscious bias in intercultural and intracultural situations, are common.

Although I cannot prepare for any emotional distress I may encounter, it was helpful to be aware of various types of emotions, and keep in mind that mental and emotional health are real. Listening to this session reminded of what Baba always tells us: “Heath is wealth.”

“The Qualities of a Good Teacher” was next, which reinforced best practices for good teaching. A classroom with a friendly atmosphere and clear rules and routines, for example, creates a comfortable environment. A good teacher challenges her students, networks and is resourceful, and gives specific feedback. Seating charts can be helpful for learning names. For troublesome students, we should make sure students understand that it’s their misbehavior we dislike, not them. Speak slowly at first so they can hear your pronunciation of words and understand your sentences.

Finally, the day ended with a lecture by a judge who told us about things to be aware of as a foreigner. His English was limited but we understood the main concepts. It was essentially a briefing on the Turkish legal system. It felt like a recap of the security briefing we had received on the second day.

As you can see, it’s been a LONG day. Tally-ho for now, I need a nap.

Orientation Day 2: Briefings & Turkish Lessons

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

On day 2 of Orientation, we were welcomed by special guests from the Turkish Fulbright Commission, U.S. Embassy in Ankara, and the Turkish Council of Higher Education. But the day mainly consisted of briefings from State Department officials. During the "Turkish and U.S. General Overview," it was interesting to learn that there was a 73% unfavorable view of US among Turks in 2014, and that number has been pretty consistent over the past decade. Despite this, however, NATO member Turkey is a strong ally of the United States especially for its strategic geographic location to Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya, Somali (piracy issue), Iran, and Syria. We were also encouraged to learn more about the party system as the Turkish presidential election approaches in November. One party in particular, the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), an insurgent group demanding separation from Turkey to form Kurdistan, was called out as a terrorist organization. This drew lots of questions from the audience, and I quickly realized that the minority Kurds were a contentious topic in Turkish politics.

One brave Fulbright student sincerely asked an interesting question for which he apologized but said he was genuinely curious to know. It caught everyone off guard. "You said that the United States defines terrorists as those who use violence to achieve political ends, but doesn't the United States  also use violence or enable organizations/rebel groups that support such means?" The State Department officials answered very diplomatically and said it was a complicated question because there are many definitions of terrorism and multiple schools of thought on how to define the word/concept. The room became silent and the topic later became a dinner conversation.

During the "Security Briefing", perhaps the most engaging of the presentations, we were advised about taking general precautions about our safety when interacting with locals (watch out for pick-picketers), being outside (carry a copy of passport at all times), (not) participating in political rallies, and regional travel (avoid southeast). The terror threat level in Turkey, as ranked by the U.S. State Department, is critical because of transnational and indigenous terrorists while crime threat is low. Everyone scribbled the emergency phone numbers at the end of that presentation.

During the "Health Briefing," they cautioned us to drink only bottled water, be careful of bugs outside, and to always keep an emergency and insurance cards on us at all times. The "911" version of Turkey is 155 for police and 112 for medical emergencies.

The "American Citizen Services" was dry and simply told us about what the U.S. embassy can do for us while we are abroad such as passport renewals, etc. One cool thing to note is that after January 1, 2016, they are no longer adding additional pages to passport books for anyone; you are required to get a new one. I think it would be wise to add a few more pages to my passport...

The 12-member Turkish Fulbright Commission then had a 30-minute panel about who they are and what they do; they manage and coordinate various the exchange programs. After a lovely coffee/tea break, we had three hours of Turkish language instruction! I was placed in a beginner class and my teacher only spoke in Turkish, forcing us to figure out what she was saying. We learned how to say the following phrases:

• Hello, my name is __, what is your name?
• How are you doing? I'm doing well.
• How old are you? I am ___ years old.

Here is a short video of me practicing my very first Turkish phrase later that night.

Görüsürüz!