First Day of School!

Every year on the first day of school I hear this clip from Finding Nemo (click on me!) in my head. :-) (Interesting fact for readers, the first song in the movie was what I walked down the aisle to for our wedding!)

The beginning of this year felt surreal for both of us. Not in any bad way but it felt like it was a long way away, even as we were getting ready this morning.

A big mass of IA!

We showed up bright and "early" and the ceremony began! At IA our very first day is a half day that serves to show students around, let the parents meet the teachers, and give important new information.

Our new Russian Director was introduced as well as our new Academic Principal, Susan.

Here is a not excellent picture of her (on the left). :-P

We continued the Russian tradition of having the oldest child carry the youngest child while the youngest rings a bell. It's been fun to see three years of this and how the different pairings work out. 

Then the teachers were introduced and took our classes to their different rooms.

My lovely friend Sveta followed by her kids. 

I took our 8th grade class of two girls. I'm definitely looking forward to getting to work with a smaller group and I think this should be a fun year for them.

Please continue to pray for the school, staff, and students as we still have a lot of things to adjust and adapt to in our future. Matthew and I are both really excited for the coming year and believe that this is a year full of excellent opportunities for the school and the students. 

Another prayer request is for one of our teachers who had to return home at short notice due to a family illness. Please keep them in your prayers as this is an especially hard time of year to be missing, for both the teacher and the school. 

Thank you to everyone for all of your prayer and support the past two years and we are looking forward to two more awesome years!

The Upcoming School Year

Hello again!

Wednesday is First Bell Day at IA, the official start of the school year.  In preparation for the new school year, this past week the teachers have been in meetings to work on important details for the coming year.  As always, each year presents its new challenges and opportunities and once again our school is in a position of transition.

We have a new member of the school administration, Susan, who is our new academic principal.  This week we had the chance to work with her for the first time and hear about her vision for the continuing professional development of IA as a school.  The long-term goal is for IA to become an accredited school.  This is something that will take place after our commitment to teach at IA has ended, but there is still a lot of groundwork to be done that we will be a part of.  We began work on the first baby steps this week as we began to talk about curriculum setting and formulated new policies for the school.

IA has grown so much in recent years and the nature and makeup of the school has transitioned as a result.  A major consequence of this has been that as a school we have some major catching up to do in terms of creating procedures and policies, developing curriculum, clarifying tasks and expectations, organizing events, and improving communication. This is an exciting time for IA, because for a significant part of IA's history we have lacked the stability and resources to tackle some of these issues because day to day challenges like where the school would be, visas for teachers, etc. had to be addressed.  God has blessed our school with much greater stability in these ways in recent years, which finally allows us to begin looking at other these other important things.

Thank you to all of you who were praying about the construction work on our building- I am very happy to say that the work (at least on the inside) was actually finished earlier than anticipated!  We were not supposed to be able to get into the school to begin setting up our rooms until August 20, but the work crew actually finished their work on the inside of the building on Thursday, allowing us to begin moving in on Friday, three days ahead of schedule.  This also means that the school year will be able to start normally. This is a big answer to prayer for us and helps make an always busy and somewhat chaotic time of the year a little bit smoother.

While we do have a meeting tomorrow to finalize the school schedule, Amanda and my teaching assignments are in place for the next year.  Amanda will be teaching English for grades 7-12 as well as doing drama/public speaking.  I will be teaching history for grades 6-12 as well as working with two students once a week for some tutoring help.  For 6th grade I will be finishing the elementary history curriculum, using the final two volumes of the Story of the World series that our school uses. The 7/8th graders will be doing Medieval History, covering world history from 500-1500 A.D. The 9th graders will be doing geography (a class that I taught for last year's 9th grade), and 10-12 are doing Russian History. The combination of grade levels means that I will be handling certain classes on two levels to account for the age spectrums and especially to make sure that the older students don't feel like they are getting a dumbed-down class because they are being grouped with students they have not usually been with in class.

It is nice to be able to teach some classes again for the first time.  Essentially every class that both of us has taught at IA has been different from year to year, but not we are finally in a position where certain classes are being offered again.  I am looking forward to being able to refine some of the material that I have already taught and not have to create a whole new course from scratch, while also getting the chance to develop some new classes as well.

Our numbers are down quite a bit in the middle and high school due to a number of families being on furlough and the return to Korea of many of our business families with older students, which means that we are having to do some creative combining of grades.  Grades 10-12 are combined for English and history, and grades 7 and 8 are combined for history but are separate for English. Alternately, the elementary school is bursting at its seams.  Overall, we have about 80 students this year, down from our record of 100 from last year, but still large by IA's standards.

There are other changes in the works for the coming year too, like the creation of the extended day program, a replacement of the somewhat ad-hoc after school activities and tutoring that was offered last year.  The goal is to create a spectrum of activities that can be offered after school that provide academic enrichment but are not simply tutoring or test preparation.  This has the potential to be an excellent and fun way to interact with students, and Amanda and I are planning to be involved.  The details are still being worked out, so when things become more settled I am sure that we will have more to share.

In light of all of these things, we would appreciate your prayers for us and our school:

-First and foremost for our students, that God would be preparing their hearts to hear from Him and to learn and grow in this coming year, and that we as teachers would be prepared to help them.

-For the administrative and curriculum changes and planning that will be taking place throughout the year.  This is a huge task and it is not being tackled all at once, but is a crucial piece for the school's long term stability and essential for accreditation.  Pray for the board and administration as they work on the big-picture details and for all of us as teachers as we work on things in our particular subject areas.

-For the classes that will be offered and new activities like the extended day program. Pray that we will be able to challenge our students,  helping them to learn and grow.

-For our community of families. We continue to make strides to develop our relationships with the various nationalities and communities that make up our school.  Pray that we would continue to draw closer as a community.

-For us. Pray for strength, wisdom, sensitivity, and creativity.  We are excited about the new possibilities and challenges for the coming year, but we know that we can't do this in our own strength.  We feel sustained by God through the many prayers that you have faithfully lifted up on our behalf and our so grateful for them.  Please continue to pray!

Finally, one important praise.  I've written throughout the past year about the financial challenges we faced at the beginning of last school year and how God faithfully provided through a number of ways throughout the year so that we always had enough for everything.  July marks the end of our fiscal year and the financial report that we recently received was very encouraging.  We are in a much stabler financial position than we were this time last year and want to say THANK YOU to everyone who contributed in any way financially to us.  We cannot do this without you! As God showed us so clearly last year, He is able to provide in any circumstances, but we still consider it a major blessing to be able to start this school year without having to worry about the possibility of not being able to finish the year due to lack of funds.  Thank you and praise God!

-Matt

The End of Summer

Hello again!

Our summer break is coming to an end and already we are mentally shifting gears to prepare for the coming year. This coming Monday marks the beginning of our teacher meetings which will take place throughout the week.  The Wednesday of the following week (August 22nd) is First Bell Day, the formal beginning of the school year, although actual classes will begin on the following day.

This past week Amanda and I have had the chance to do some work at the school and to have meetings with our headmaster and new academic principle to begin work on sorting out some important scheduling and logistics things for the coming year. As always, there will be changes for the coming year and every year presents its own unique challenges.  The fact that our numbers are down quite a bit in the middle and high school has made it a bit tricky in terms of deciding how the classes will be grouped together for the coming year.  It looks like Amanda and I should be set in terms of our teaching assignments for the coming year, but I will hold off on posting anything specific just yet since final decisions and scheduling won't be done until next week and past experience has taught us that these things are subject to change:-) Either way, we expect the coming year to be a good one and are looking forward to it!

One important logistical detail that really needs to be completed is the construction work going on our building.  The owners of the building decided to replace the windows on one half of the building (the half where my room is) and workers have been working on this throughout the summer.  However, the work still has quite a bit that needs to be done and the inside of the school is a mess! Right now, we have been told that things should be finished by August 20, just two days before our first day.  This means that many teachers will not have much time to get into their rooms and get things organized for the coming year, and that is assuming that the work will be finished as projected and will not go longer.  We are all being flexible, and area actually holding our meetings next week at a different location, but please pray that everything comes together so that our school year can start in a normal way.

In addition to the work that we have been doing to prepare for the coming school year, we are still working on our quest to visit some of the interesting but less-famous places in St. Petersburg.  The past several blog posts have recounted our efforts so far, and today we set out once again to take in a part of the city that featured several interesting places from the book that we have been using.  Today's journey took us to the Petrograd Side of St. Petersburg and several more places of historical and architectural significance. What follows are pictures that Amanda took (many in stylish black and white to add to the ambiance) and my comments.  Enjoy!

This building was not actually one we set to find, but we both thought it was interesting. It was built in 1913 and obviously draws upon the Middle Ages for inspiration.

These two photos are of the Ioannovsky Convent.  The main church of the convent is the burial place of St. John of Kronstadt, an influential Orthodox priest who spent most of his life ministering in Kronstadt and St. Petersburg and is one of the most revered church men in recent Russian Orthodox history.  There was a bit of confusion as we went into the church to visit the chapel and burial vault when a man informed Amanda that she could not go in unless she was wearing a skirt.  Thankfully, a helpful lady showed me a box where the church keeps extra skirts that can be worn by the unprepared faithful:-)

The next series of photos come from a little park that was built on an area that had fallen into disrepair in 2005. The Russian composer Andrei Petrov helped with some of the work, and when he died in 2006 parts of the park were made to honor his memory, including a series of imaginative statues involving the violin, his favorite instrument. The statue in the photo above is violin that is meant to look like a woman.

A violin made to look like a shoe.

A violin made to look like a gramophone (the Museum of Gramophones is adjacent to the park).

Me sitting on a violin made to look like an armchair. This looks a bit like a senior picture, but it's still a nice photo:-)

A tree planted by Petrov with a musically-themed grate around it.

A violin shaped like an apple.

A violin shaped like a swan.

An artist created these works on the wall of an adjacent building that looks in on the park. From left to right are Dnail Kharms, Dmitri Shostakovich, Salvador Dali, and Dmitri Likhachev.

The next item of interest for us was the Benois House.  This building was constructed between 1911-1914 by three architects from the same family.  Throughout its history it has been home to many notable people including the communist leader Sergei Kirov (whose mysterious death in 1936 has been widely attributed to Stalin) and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Inside the courtyard of the Benois House.

Aview of the iron railings on the balconies.

A view of the house from across the street.

Our next step was Austrian Square, an intersection that makes the shape of a star and is faced on all four sides by striking buildings from the beginning of the 20th century (1901-106).

The tower and detailed facade of this particular building was a favorite of Amanda and myself's.

Finally, our last stop for the day was a building from the late 19th century that is considered by a classic of the Northern Modern style of architecture. It was a movement within Russian architecture that drew upon influences from Northern Europe and Scandinavia found in the National Romantic movement of architecture (who knew that reading our blog would be such a tutorial in the history of architecture?).

With the coming of the school year there will be new things to report, but our posts will probably be somewhat less frequent once the full force of a busy new year begins.  We've enjoyed our time this summer and may still be able to fit in a trip or two more like the recent ones we have been posting about, but our attention is definitely being focused on the coming academic year.  Hopefully we will have something soon about our finalized teaching assignments for the coming year as well as some specific prayer requests for this next year.

Thanks for reading!

-Matt

More to Explore!

Hello again!

This post continues on the theme from the last post of finding new places in St. Petersburg.  It's a fun (and free!) way to spend some of our extra time in the summer.  I am still tutoring and we are still helping out with baseball, in addition to working on things for the coming school year, but we still have time to enjoy some of the sites we haven't seen yet from our beautiful city.

These pictures come from a long walk that I took last week as well as from earlier today when Amanda and I headed off to the area around the Chernyshevskaya metro station to find a few more places listed in our book.

I'll post the pictures in the order we went and provide some commentary.  As always, click on the photos to see them in better detail:-)

This is a water tower on an old factory that is no longer in use.  It's actually on the island that we live on, and I had seen several times before but it was included in the guidebook that we have been going through, so I thought I would stop by and take a few pictures.

From the front view, you can't tell immediately  that it isn't completely solid, which is what makes the tower striking from an architectural standpoint.

This is the main synagogue for St. Petersburg's Jewish community.  It is a beautiful building and the design in the iron fence is very striking as well.  The synagogue is just one example of some of the striking non-Christian religious architecture in the city in addition to the main mosque (which we have posted pictures of before) and a large Buddhist temple which we haven't had a chance to visit yet.

a closer view of the central part of the synagogue and of the iron entry way at the bottom.

The Church of Sts. Isidor and Nicholas sits alongside Griboyedov Canal and has been one that I've wanted to take pictures of for a while but hadn't made the time to.  The church was originally built for the Estonian community of Orthodox Christians in 1907.

A closer-up view of the church.

The Lomonosov Bridge is a stone bridge that originally dates back to the late 1700s.

This building was built in a Moorish style and in addition to its striking design is significant for being the home and meeting place of a number of the leading Russian writers of the Silver Age of Russian poetry which took place during the first two decades of the 20th century.

This view gives a better look at the detailed facade of the building.  Also, on the balcony is a sign for a museum for Joseph Brodsky, the famous Russian poet who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s and settled in the United States and later won the Nobel Prize for literature, who lived in this building for 30 years.

Another gorgeous building with a detailed facade that we came across.  It was built in the 1870s.  The bright sunlight unfortunately obscures a bit of the fine details on the front of this building.

The next series of photographs all come from the same place and were the original part of the guidebook that we have been going through that caught my eye.  Tucked away unassumingly in a courtyard is the Malaya Art Institute, and people from the institute have decorated the walls and a playground/park in the courtyard with beautiful mosaics.

It's me!

An unusual sculpture-type thing forms the backdrop to a group of benches covered in mosaics.  In the center is a mosaic fountain.  Unfortunately, it is undergoing restoration and is not visible.

The bottom portion of two outside walls of an adjoining building are also covered in mosaics.

This is the Malaya Institute building itself.

One entire side of the building is covered with the most elaborate and colorful of all of the mosaics.

Amanda!

This and the next several photos are of a building done with Egyptian-style designs.  It dates back to the early 20th century.

This building, with its striking four-tiered tower, was also the home of important gatherings of intellectuals during the early 20th century.   A plaque of the side commemorates its significance for the leading poets, artists, and philosophers of the pre-Revolutionary era.

This church, located close to the building above, was built in the early 1900s, but its appearance is similar to many of the traditional Russian churches of the 11th-14th centuries that can be found in older cities like Novgorod and Pskov.

We hope to go out and find a few more places in the time that we have left before school resumes.  Our teacher meetings will be taking place shortly and August 22nd is the first day of school so summer is beginning to come to an end for us.  We'll have more about the upcoming school year later, but for now we'll continue to enjoy the last part of our break before the excitement of the new year begins.

-Matt