Published: September 29, 2008 12:44 am      

Q&A: Debra Yager invited by World Hope for teacher mentoring.

Lockport teacher Debra Yager recently returned from a humanitarian trip to the country of Azerbaijan, a country next to the Caspian Sea and bordered by Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Russia.

A music teacher at George Southard Elementary School, Yager accepted an invitation by World Hope, an international relief organization. Yager went in July with a team of four teachers, four Azerbaijani interpreters and two World Hope workers. The group went to a community in Agdam, Azerbaijan, where about 800,000 residents lived in tents, train cars and shelters for a decade. Because of war in the early 1990s, most residents lost everything. The government recently built homes for the refugees. Agdam is a nine-hour train ride from Baku, the capital.

Yager and the team stayed in the community, where the school had outhouses for restrooms, and water is taken from an outdoor well. The goal of the trip was teacher mentoring, showing Azerbaijani teachers different ways of presenting information to the students. Teachers normally stand in front of students and dictate the lessons.

Yager said the community was gracious to the visitors, and if given the chance, she would certainly return.

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Question: What did you do while in Azerbaijan?

Answer: It was a teacher mentoring program. I was asked if I would go and work on “multiple intelligences.” Not everybody learns the same way, like if you are a visual learner, you need to see things. So I was trying to explain that to them, because the teachers there mostly just stand in front of the room and dictate without any visuals at all. For them it is not common — it was hard for them to get an idea of what we are talking about. I was telling them how it was important to try and say things in different ways and have people talk it out. They don’t let kids talk it out or talk to each other, too. It was just a whole new idea for them. There were four of us, and three of us focused mainly on that area. The other one was going to cover basic computer with them, but we found out they only have electricity in the morning and the evenings. It was difficult, but at least she did teach some basic skills. And when I say basic, she said the first class was getting them to realize the mouse moves the arrow.

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Q: How long were you down there?

A: July 10 is when we left and July 21 is when we came back. We were actually in Agdam for five days, and that was a nine-hour train ride there. We had a five-day teacher workshop, and we taught from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. I would teach the same lesson throughout the entire day, and the next day was a different lesson.

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Q: How were the teachers there? Were they receptive?

A: Pretty much so. They were very stoic, but I think that’s their culture. When I was trying to take pictures, they didn’t know to smile. And they don’t have cameras. These are refugees from a war. In responding to us, they were receptive, just very stoic. In the end, they seemed very thankful we had come. I think it is just their personality.

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Q: How did you get a chance to do this?

A: People keep asking me that. I don’t know how World Hope got my name. They e-mailed me a number of times, and I e-mailed back. They said they were looking for teacher mentors to go to five different countries. I thought Azerbaijan had the most areas I could help with, but I never told them that. I said it didn’t matter and they asked, ‘How about Azerbaijan?’

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Q: What was your overall feeling of the culture?

A: Baku is more modern. But Agdam has more of the Russian feel to it. They said to me, ‘No one ever came to help us.’ They said we were one of the first ones that have actually come in from the outside. They served us tea like five times a day, and kept asking, ‘Do you like us, do you like us?’ I feel like they’ve been so cut down, they just need people to listen to them and care about them.