Written by a former teacher in Sarajevo

I wake up at 9:30 and walk to the bakery five minutes from my door. I pay half a KM, about 25 cents, for a buhtla cokoladna – a warm roll with chocolate inside that I buy regularly but can never pronounce correctly. Returning home to eat, I watch an older episode of Oprah, which, as with all television programs in Sarajevo, is in its original language with local language subtitles. This has been a useful way to improve my vocabulary.

I leave home at 11, stopping by the Internet café to check email – there are two computers with dial-up connections at work, but there are usually teachers in line to use them. I take a shortcut through the outdoor market and when I arrive at the school, I make photocopies and short notes for my one-to-one lesson. I head across the street for lunch. That will be my main meal of the day because lasses run from 5 to 9:40. Dinner will be yogurt and fruit at my desk during the twenty-minute break.

I look forward to my one-to-one lesson every week, and it goes well. The student I work with is around my age, and she has chosen to go through the nuts and bolts of grammar with a local teacher and to focus on conversation with me. After nearly a year of this arrangement, I sometimes worry about coming up with interesting topics to discuss. Today we both take a personality test and agree that it does offer some insight into our respective characters.

When the one-to-one ends, I have about two hours to prepare for four hours of classes. I’ve taught similar lessons before, so I can get ready quickly, but usually I would need most of that time or more. I run out the door to buy my dinner at 4:45.

My first class is an elementary level group. I can speak enough of the language to translate if I need to, but I try not to. The book is designed so that translation shouldn’t be necessary, and the students signed up for the course knowing they would be “forced” to communicate in English with a native speaker. Occasionally we have trouble with instructions, but we always figure it out somehow. I like teaching this level because students can see their progress so quickly after each class.

The next class is an upper-intermediate group, and most of the students are teenagers. Only a few have done their homework, so we spend ten minutes working on that and then check answers together. Whispered conversations and giggling are not infrequent in this class. Sometimes I interrupt by calling on one of the chatters, and sometimes I ignore them. One student is a high-profile attorney in his fifties or sixties. I know this because I’ve seen him on television. He tries to help me keep the class in line.

After classes end, I record what I covered in the register so the teacher who works with the group the other day will know where to begin. I feel rushed because the front desk manager wants to go home. He keeps coming in to check if we are done. I finally finish and as I pass by him on the way out, I tell him my co-worker is writing “Rat i Mir”, War and Peace: she is writing a lot, more than me, even. He high fives me for the joke and I head out for the end of my night.
My Sarajevo Landlady [I changed this title...it fit on my blog but sounds weird and people won't know what tefl is...]
She was an old woman, seventy-five years old, she told me, holding up seven fingers and then five. The day I moved into the flat in the building her family owned, she came up the steps the first day with some homemade sirnica, cheese pie. Every week or so she would come up the stairs slowly, bearing some kind of food. If I ever knocked on her door, she would invite me in for coffee and warm up some food for me.

She told me that she did this because her mother had died when she was young. She knew what it was like not to have a mother around to care for me. When Bajram arrived, the holiday when people feast for multiple days, she made it up the stairs with a full tray of baklava. Such a big tray I don’t know how it even fit in her oven! I was in a hurry, and she said something with a number. I assumed she was trying to explain that Bajram was a three- or four-day holiday. I thanked her and took the tray, saying it was too much for me. I had a half-size refrigerator – I couldn’t fit all the balklava in there even when I redistributed it into a Tupperware container.

Later that day, I went down when her daughter-in-law was there. She was the only one who spoke English so I tried to explain in greater detail. Maybe there had been a mistake? Maybe she had meant for me to take four pieces? I couldn’t imagine why she would bring the whole tray up the stairs when she only wanted me to take four pieces, but I just couldn’t believe it was all for me. No, said the daughter-in-law, it was for me and I should bring it to work. It was difficult even to transport it on the tram there was so much, and even after bringing it to work, I had baklava to last me well into the next month.

A few months later the end of my time in Bosnia arrived. My mother had taught me how to crochet on a trip to the US, so I decided to make a scarf for her. When I presented her with it, she said she hoped she had not done anything wrong to make me leave. I tried to reassure her as much as I could in my broken Bosnian: it had nothing to do with her! In fact she’d made my stay all the more pleasant. She told me she had wanted to come up more often, and someone had even suggested she get me to teach her English. Obviously these things had nothing to do with my leaving.

An hour before I left for the bus station, she came up to give me a small wrapped package. Inside were two pairs of nylons. One for me and one for my mother.

Written by a former teacher in Sarajevo

She was an old woman, seventy-five years old, she told me, holding up seven fingers and then five. The day I moved into the flat in the building her family owned, she came up the steps the first day with some homemade sirnica, cheese pie. Every week or so she would come up the stairs slowly, bearing some kind of food. If I ever knocked on her door, she would invite me in for coffee and warm up some food for me.

She told me that she did this because her mother had died when she was young. She knew what it was like not to have a mother around to care for me. When Bajram arrived, the holiday when people feast for multiple days, she made it up the stairs with a full tray of baklava. Such a big tray I don’t know how it even fit in her oven! I was in a hurry, and she said something with a number. I assumed she was trying to explain that Bajram was a three- or four-day holiday. I thanked her and took the tray, saying it was too much for me. I had a half-size refrigerator I couldn’t fit all the balklava in there even when I redistributed it into a Tupperware container.

Later that day, I went down when her daughter-in-law was there. She was the only one who spoke English so I tried to explain in greater detail. Maybe there had been a mistake? Maybe she had meant for me to take four pieces? I couldn’t imagine why she would bring the whole tray up the stairs when she only wanted me to take four pieces, but I just couldn’t believe it was all for me. No, said the daughter-in-law, it was for me and I should bring it to work. It was difficult even to transport it on the tram there was so much, and even after bringing it to work, I had baklava to last me well into the next month.

A few months later the end of my time in Bosnia arrived. My mother had taught me how to crochet on a trip to the US, so I decided to make a scarf for her. When I presented her with it, she said she hoped she had not done anything wrong to make me leave. I tried to reassure her as much as I could in my broken Bosnian: it had nothing to do with her! In fact she’d made my stay all the more pleasant. She told me she had wanted to come up more often, and someone had even suggested she get me to teach her English. Obviously these things had nothing to do with my leaving.

An hour before I left for the bus station, she came up to give me a small wrapped package. Inside were two pairs of nylons. One for me and one for my mother.

By ISA BELLEBosnia and Herzegovina must certainly be the world-champion in fitting several schools under one roof. A common phenomenon in this country is the so-called ‘two schools under one roof’ which means that there are two different ethnic groups enrolling in different school curriculum in the same building.  One group usually starts early in the morning until noon and the other begins right after until dinner time.The gymnasium in Mostar is a good example of this. The school is the home of two different curricula for the Bosnian Croats and the Bosniaks. All three major ethnic groups in Bosnia have their own curricula, with a lot of emphasis on the difference of history, religions and languages. Everybody will agree that a good educational system is crucial to the long-term development of a country. Bosnia needs it more than most, especially the country is eager to join the EU. The current school system of separation has done nothing but slows down this process and deepens the divisions within the country.On February 10^th, young students from all over Bosnia attended a conference in Mostar to discuss the separation of school curriculum. I participated in this conference even though I personally have no experience with the Bosnian educational system. I acted as a moderator for a group of students of different elasticities who currently study the different curricula. The discussion was an interesting and enriching experience. I’ve learned that the necessary reforms in Bosnia obviously will not happen from a top-down approach. Demanding and putting some pressure on the authorities from below might have a better effect. Even if the desired result is not attainable, it is always useful to discuss existing problems and to make young people become more aware of the backwardness of their school system.All the students agreed that the separated curriculum does not bring anything good for both the students and the country.  Lessons and books do not represent issues from different perspectives but from just one perspective of your own ethnicity which praises your ethnicity is the only good one and how you should keep up the traditions and be proud to belong to this ethnicity. Clearly, this shows how segregation is being encouraged inside the classrooms in Bosnia. They love to get more objective information from varied and broad perspectives rather than subjective and one-sided information presented in textbooks. Facts should be presented as facts, and different interpretations are of course welcomed to develop critical thinking. However, it is of major importance that facts are not twisted to ‘benefits’ one’s own ethnicity.  In addition, the students have far too many subjects, even up to 25 and they all feel that quantity is often valued over quality. There are also controversial topics such as politics and religion which should not be involved in education. More details can be found in the final declaration made on this special day.There was an interesting story told by a girl whose brother applied to the University of Sarajevo. In order to get in, he has to do a test, but because the system is corrupted and racist, the majority of the people who get accepted have already known beforehand the test. They prepared for the test, and even when they failed the test, they still got in because the test results are not published, thus no-one knows how the others performed. So even though the brother had one of the best scores for the entrance exam, he did not get in to the university. Getting into university is apparently not about your own capacity but about your ethnicity or the money you possess. Another girl in the conference has an older sister who wanted to study Croatian literature at a university in Mostar, but first she had to pass a very biased Croatian history test before she was allowed to start her study.  This test was mainly about history of religion, of course only of Catholicism. Furthermore, she had to learn about wars and battles in which Croats were involved, always portraying the Croats as either heroes or victims of other ethnicity. What is the point of all this when you want to study Croatian literature?During this conference, opinions and wishes of the students are recorded in a declaration which will be presented to the official of the country in hope of long-overdue reforms and improvements of the educational system.[Link]