Essays from the Steppe

As usual, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. If this were an audio blog, I would have made a recording by now to play that at the beginning of each talking post. This time around, I actually have a lot of things I could write about in terms of an update on my life here, but I'm not going to do that at the moment. Yes, that's partly out of laziness, but it's also inspired by the handful of really impressive recent essays I've received from a few of my students here. I was so blown away by a couple of them that I scanned and copied them to this post for my remaining loyal readers - all two of you, Mom and Dad (do you guys still read this?) - to take a look at and let me know what you think.

Except for one, these essays are in response to the prompt: "Pretend you are Barack Obama. Given your country's history of racial relations between blacks and whites, and then given the current state of affairs in the US and in the world, what would you say in your first speech to the nation?" What we did was in each class during Inauguration week we listened to and read along with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech and then discussed what it meant. I tried to give a rough background of the racial situation in America 40-50 years ago, which was admittedly tough since I didn't live through that time. A lot of the students didn't understand exactly what I was asking them, but some of them did, and these few did what I thought was a remarkable job. I asked permission to post from each of them, so their names may appear on some of the essays. They said they were fine with this (and mostly they were excited about it).

Only the fifth essay is in response to the prompt: "If you were pregnant with octuplets, what would you do?" The story of the California woman who recently gave birth to 8 babies and the accompanying discussions we had prompted a variety of interesting responses from students and teachers alike. The essay below is by far the best I received, and it's actually from a first-year student.

Any sincere feedback you all could leave would mean the world to these students who have devoted the better part of the last decade (or more) to learning and becoming proficient in English, so, as I always say to them, don't be shy! Whatever any of you say will surely be passed along to Zaura, Elvira, Elena, Anara, Laura, and Yermek.

Enjoy!