Teachers' Day

This week there is a significant school year holiday: Teachers' Day. The holiday is on Sunday, but we are celebrating on Friday. Actually, we started celebrating on Wednesday. At two o'clock there was a big concert at the Doma Kultura (House of Culture), which is the main concert and conference venue in town.

The concert (someone else I talked to called it a conference instead of a concert) started off with a big awards ceremony. Just about every school event I've been to has started that way: with awards being presented and certificates handed out. The First Bell starts this way, and so does the Last Bell. At the Teachers' Day concert, this took a long time, because there were a lot of speeches to accompany the awards. There were awards for teachers from all three schools in Chernomorskoe, plus the school in so-close-it's-practically-Chernomorskoe Novoselskoe. I also heard a few other schools mentioned, although from what I could tell no one from those schools was actually present.

I sat in the audience and zoned out while all this was going on. I was also feeling a little underdressed, since most of the teachers were very dressed up. When I mentioned this to the friend I was sitting with, and English teacher from a different school, she said she didn't think they were dressed up at all--they just liked to dress up every day. Which is true enough, but believe me when I say they were even more dressed up than usual. I was only wearing jeans and a sparkly knit shirt--even less dressy than my usual school clothes, due to an unfortunate lapse in judgment on my part that caused me to leave my balcony window open during a big wind and rain storm last weekend, resulting in a soaked balcony and a very unhappy downstairs neighbor. My balcony is still drying out, and I haven't wanted to hang any wet clothes out there. So I haven't done any laundry in a while.

Anyway, after the seemingly interminable awards ceremony was over, the talent show portion began. I call it a talent show because I really don't know what else to call it; I've never been able to think of a word in English that does a better job of explaining it. I have yet to meet a Ukrainian who doesn't love to perform, young and old alike, so most school events include--following the awards portion--a talent show. Every school presented at least one act; quite a few teachers sang, and some students sang or recited poems. One teacher presented a "comic" dance, and another a "gipsy" dance. My school had a skit, a variation of one they'd done for the first bell, and all the young teachers came out, dressed all in black, and danced. It was quite a success.

My friend asked me why I wasn't up there dancing too, and the honest answer is that no one asked me. (Though--again, honestly--I probably would have said no even if they had asked.) The fact that I was at this concert at all shows that I understand a lot more about what's going on around me than I did a year ago, because I'm pretty sure this concert is a yearly event, and I just didn't know about it when it happened last year. That tends to happen a lot to me: there will be some event that everyone goes to, and I won't hear about it until the next day, when someone asks me if I went. But people rarely think to tell me about it ahead of time.

I think part of it is that they don't understand that I don't understand or even bother to look at a lot of the notices that get put up in the school (most of them are administrative, and in Ukrainian, and irrelevant to me) that announce things, and that I just don't know the things that they take for granted that everyone knows. The only reason I found out about Wednesday's concert is when my coordinator said that she was preparing a dance for Teachers' Day, and I asked when I could go see her. I had no idea it was a city-wide event until about an hour before the concert.

Another example of this phenomena happened a couple of weeks ago, on Gas and Oil Workers Day, a holiday I learned about only because no one showed up for debate club. The woman I work with there then explained about the holiday, and told me that there would be a big concert that evening at a complex on the other end of town from where I live. Apparently they usually get pretty big singers to come, although this year it was a group and musical style that wasn't as popular, so this woman wasn't planning to go. "You should go, though," she said. And when I replied that I really didn't like to go by myself (not to mention that it wouldn't be safe to walk to this place and back by myself after dark, especially on a big drinking night), she volunteered her son to take me. Her son is 16. He has his own friends, and wasn't all that interested in the concert anyway. There wasn't a single thing about that "invitation" that was attractive, so I declined, and instead watched the fireworks that night from my balcony. Still, I was glad that--for once--I'd heard about the event before it actually occurred.

The next day I visited my best friend in town, who--of course--asked me if I'd gone to the concert. When I said that I hadn't had anyone to got with, she replied that I should have come with them; they'd been a big party, with lots of kids and grownups.

Sigh. If only I'd known.

But back to Teachers' Day. It's a fun holiday, and I wish we had something like it in the US. Here it carries the significance of a holiday like Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day. There are Teachers' Day cards sold at every card shop and the flower sellers do a brisk business. Classes give flowers to all their teachers, and bouquets and gifts to their "class teachers" (a class teacher is like a homeroom teacher). I should get flowers from all the classes I teach, although some of them will probably forget me because I'm not a "real" teacher. I'll still go home with a whole armful, however, since another teacher will probably give me some of hers. That's what usually happens, anyway.

There won't be real classes, although another volunteer tells me that at her school the students take of the role of teacher for the day. In my school the graduating class did this last year, preparing lessons for the younger forms. I'm not sure if that'll happen this year. In any case, after whatever token classes we have are over, there will be another small concert (this one at the school) for the teachers. Groups of pupils will sing and play musical instruments and dance for us. And then there's the party, open only to teachers. There will be some food, desserts, vodka, and wine, and most of the teachers will get drunk and start dancing. Eventually I'll slip away, and go back to my apartment to put my flowers in water before they die, and they will brighten my kitchen for the next week.

And that, my friends, is Teachers' Day in Ukraine.