I walked to the school, which felt good. It only took 10 minutes and it was in the 60’s and sunny. I keep forgetting how little sun we have in western Pennsylvania. The students did very well with my lesson on the second day. They are very excited to do this kind of hands-on creative work. I had about an hour between my two 80-minute sessions and I was surprised that the two teachers said they were planning to go down the street to get coffee. I jumped at the chance to join them since it’s hard to be able to talk to teachers away from their students. They stopped by the office to let them know where they would be.

I really liked the fact that they were allowed to leave the school during their prep periods. This is not the case in schools I’ve seen in the US. I asked the Headmaster later about it and his philosophy is to let the teachers teach and stay away from nuisance regulations. He spends money on the school, such as Promethean Smart Boards but doesn’t force them to teach according to the orthodoxy of the day. The students and the teachers seem to me to be very happy and learning well. The two recess slots a day, along with playtime before school seems to help too. Perhaps it’s just this school (The Grammar School), which is private and has an excellent Headmaster and not all Cyprus schools, I have no way of knowing.

One educational model I believe we should be looking at more is Finland. Their students consistently finish almost at the very top in international exams. They pay teachers very well and teaching is a highly respected profession. Teachers are given a high degree of autonomy and helper teachers are in their classes. Their school year is short and their emphasis is on “relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm

The Headmaster, Nick invited me for coffee at around 4. I typically don’t like to have coffee after noon or so, since it keeps me up but I jumped at the chance to hang out with him. He is the third one in his family to graduate from New York University. He went on to get an M. Ed. at Long Island University, then came back to run this school, along with his brother who is the Headmaster of the secondary school. They inherited the school from their family and have really made it flourish.

I suggested we have a beer instead, which changed the focus of the encounter. We went to a sports bar that had a lot of Russians in it. Apparently Cyprus has very low taxes so it’s a haven for companies around the world. There is a strong Russian influence and they’re known for having money to throw around. I tried not to look at Russian signs here since I took 5 years of Russian and the Greek and Russian alphabets are similar but different. For example the letter “H” in Russian is the “n” sound, while in Greek it’s “e”. But the symbol for Pi is pronounced “p” in both languages. I found it better not to think of the Russian.

After a couple of beers, he invited me to the Syrian Friendship Club to have another meze. Irini and Yiorgio, if you’re reading this please skip the next sentence (I know you won’t skip it). I actually liked it a little better than the Cypriot meze. It’s the difference between a 10 and a 10+ out of 10 though. I got Nick to point out each of the dishes on my iPhone video. The restaurant was filled with hookah smokers and we were the only non-smokers there, which didn’t bother me for some reason.

I’m trying to figure out how to use video in this blog. WordPress wants $60 per year. The $60 is sort of OK but the “per year” part is unacceptable. I’d like to be able to look at this 20 years from now and there are better ways to spend $1200. I tried to use Microsoft’s sharepoint or sky drive but it rotated the video 90 degrees and has a limit of 50 MB for files, which is about 1 minute. The obvious choice seems to be youtube, which is compatible with iOS and everything else. I’ll get that going one of these days. Anyone have any suggestions?