Test 5

                                                           FEBRUARY 16-MARCH 1, 2013
                                                                                         

                                                              MY CLASSROOM

This is the Academy auditorium. The curtain in the background divides the room into two parts. I am taking the picture from the right side aisle near the stage. This hall is used for all kinds of things, on Saturdays and Sundays the community stages talent shows. Students from different faculties put on shows as well. The Academy is divided into faculties which teach subject areas and institutes. The three Institutes are: Prosecution and Investigation, Professional Judges Training, Intellectual Property located in Kyiv. (I think it ironic that the Academy has an Institute of Intellectual Property Law as the Ukraine Government has used pirated software since its inception. It announced this year that payments would be made for software being used but as of today's date, there has only been the announcement, no payments!) The nine faculties are: Judicial and administrative Law, International Legal Relations and Legal Journalism, Civil and Economic Justice, Social Law, Advocacy, Legal Political Science and sociology, Police Investigators Training, correspondence and Evening Studies and Correspondence Studies Faculty No. 2 "(for persons obtaining second university degree)".  I teach in the Faculty of International Law and Journalism. The largest Institute and Faculty is Prosecution and Investigation.

The students are really young. Many are only 16 when they start at the Academy of Law. The students in the photographs  are 4th year students so most are 19 or 20 years old. There are no legal fraternities or sororities and each faculty provides extra curricular activities similar to Intramural. In the fall there is a beauty pageant and the "Most Beautiful" Student is crowned. One of my former Estonian students told me that such practices are common in former soviet block countries. Unfortunately, my photographs of the display boards from previous pageants were lost when my laptop crashed in London on May 9th.

As you can see from their faces, these students are absolutely fascinated by whatever comment I was making when taking the photograph. I found it very difficult to teach in this room, as it was so large and I had to sit on the stage in order to connect my laptop to the projector. I believe this room was the only one in the entire school with laptop to projector capability. Had I known that, I would have brought my own as a visiting Professor from the University of Bologna, Italy did in April. Every other school in which I have taught in Eastern Europe, Estonia, Latvia, Russia,  had its own portable projector.

Additionally, this class is really large, over 50 attended, and I was never given an actual role of class members. I was provided with a list of all students from various faculties who could take the class or signed up for the class, was never sure which. This roster was divided by faculties, not in alphabetical order, and over half of the people listed never attended a single time. When my student assistant called role, it took over three minutes and I could not understand her. Coupled with the fact that the class met 4 times the first two weeks and then only 4 times the next 4 weeks; I had great difficulty learning the names of my students. Learning and pronouncing their names correctly is a huge part of my presentation effort, so to not be able to do so proved very very frustrating.

                                                                         

                                           Two Clearly Enraptured Students, Ilona and Olga

This is not a "wired" school, unlike the other institutions in which I have taught. At St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Law, the entire first year courses and all reference or reasearch material that is thought to be needed has been scanned and available over the school's Internet. The library had over 160 Apple computers when I taught there in the spring of 2011, that were available for students and every student in my class, about 30 individuals, had laptops or iPads. Whenever I wished to send out course materials, I put them on a flash drive, took it to the International Office and it was dispatched post haste. In Tartu, Estonia, my class had its own webpage with all students listed. I posted assignments and class information on it. Not so here in Odesa, after about a week of asking, I was provided with a list of the possible students' email addresses, then the next day a list of all emails for students who might be in the class. Thereafter I would send out an email addressed to about 110 people with class information.

I was also told, and it makes a lot of sense, that visiting professors were not encourage to have things printed and handed out because of the waste of paper. That reminded me of an American attorney who taught in a former Soviet Bloc school and shipped his "course" materials which included 50 notebooks for students. Each notebook was about 250 pages, the cost of shipping was $650 and the receiving nation's customs duties were an additional $300+. So thumb or flash drives is the way to go.
After the first four class meetings, I had given a lecture about alternative dispute resolution, what it is, the different avenues disputants may take; a lecture about basic principles of negotiation and the students had seen a DVD which depicted six different sets of attorneys, negotiating the same problem with six different results. It was a good start, but very different from what they were used to when taking a course taught in English.
                                                                         

                                                                Daria and Marina

Note the dividing curtain with a blonde student standing in front of it. I think that is Anna, who had long hair that had never been cut. Her mother's had been cut once, and her mother's mother (grandmother) had also had only one or two cuttings in her life time. Oh, beind D and M sits one of my favorite students, Kristian, she was in both courses I taught, was a third year student, and invited me to a concert where she danced. (You won't read about that until we get to March. At the rate I am composing that will be in August?)

The Academy is trying to establish an American Law Department. As a result, it readily invites visiting professors who will lecture in English. The Italian I mentioned earlier gave two lectures about basic structure of Italian corporations in English. Many courses are also taught by Ukrainian faculty members in English. I lost an entire class period in March when the students were asked to fill out a long questionnaire about the Ukrainian professors who lectured in English. It took over an hour for everyone to complete the survey. These courses are usually taught every day for two weeks. Almost all courses taught in English end by the third week in April, this year Friday, April 19.

  I had been invited by the Academy to teach from February to May, so I planned a course which met once a week for three hours and submitted a syllabus to both the school and the Fulbright selection committee utilizing that scheme. Only when I got to the Academy was I informed that I would be teaching six times every four weeks,  that each class period would last eighty minutes, and that my last classes would meet on April 18.  So I spent the first ten days or so  modifying the course, removing quite a bit of material, and giving it a general over haul to comply with the different parameters. (I am stopping here because my laptop is acting up on me. 26 May.)

  (30 May, continuing this blog entry) My class first meetings: for February and March;  February: 12 (Class No. 1, 10:00-11:20), 14 (Class No. 2, 11:50-13:10), 19 (C;ass No. 3, 10:00-11:20) , 21 (Class No. 4, 13:20-14:40), 26 (Class No. 5, 13:20-14:40);  March:  05, (Class 6, 13:20-14:40) 14 (Class No. 7, 11:50-13:10), 19 (Class No. 8, 13:20-14:40) 28 (Class No. 9, 11:50-13:10).  My class has a great deal of student participation. It was difficult to keep up a good  rhythm with the continual change, although we did always meet in the large auditorium as mentioned previously. The length between class meetings threw me for a loop, however, as I found that I forgot student names when I didn't see them for nine days (note gaps between  March 5-14 and then March 19-28)   I did learn that meeting in the morning at 10:00 was the best  time for class, the 11:50 to 13:10 time was OK, but quite a few students missed the lunch break period from 11:20-11:50, so were restless and hungry, while others were sort of sleepy from lunch. But the absolute worst time was 13:20-14:40 as people were either hungry, tired and cranky; or full, sleepy and cranky. Still we all perservered and kept pushing forward.
                                                                               -30-