Subj: Russian School (File: g02zb5g2.html)
Date: 10.01.03
To: dorogadomoj@aol.com
Dear parents,
(1) The purpose of this letter is to explain to you the effort that our School made to accommodate children who are not fluent in Russian Language and clarify the status of your children.
(2) As you know, our School is the Russian School and not the School of Russian Language. In the Russian School, children who are fluent in Russian are learning Russian grammar, literature, history and God' Law. In the School of Russian Language, children who do not speak Russian, are learning Russian language. All our curriculum and textbooks and other aids are in Russian language. Many times this was a problem, but somehow we managed to overcome most of the difficulties mainly with the aid of Russian speaking member or a friend of the student's family.
(3) In September of 2002 at our Teacher's Meeting otec Stefan asked me to teach 5th grade (Russian Church History) with several students who were not fluent enough in Russian to be able to study from the Russian textbooks. At first I refused, since we have no textbooks in English and I would have to create all the necessary material. For me this is very difficult, since my wife is on Dialysis and that means three times a week trips to the hospital clinic, plus visits to doctors and so on. There is an additional problem. Since in God's Law we study every year a different subject, we have to do a lot of reviewing from previous years. That meant creating textbooks in English not only for 5th grade (Russian Church History) , but also for 1st (Old Testament), 2nd (New Testament), 3rd (Church Service) and 4th (History of the Church) grades. Knowing tremendous ammount of work to be done in translating the material, I refused.
(4) To test children's Russian, I gave them the test assignment, where they had to read assigned text in Russian and paraphrase it. They could not do it. The conclusion was that we have to give them some aid in English.
(5) After thinking it over and realizing how important is Orthodox education to our children in our times, I changed my mind and accepted the challenge.
(6) My approach was not to translate everything, but just some portions of the material. Also, instead of constantly making new copies of the material, I decided to utilize the internet. This would help me and children would have a chance to learn PC and the internet, which is now nearly a must in all schools.
(7) Very soon I found out that I cannot give them just English translation. They need special English. English as an aid to Russian text, because we do not want children to completely stay away from the Russian text.
(8) Also I had to ask several people to help me with editing my English text, which they did.
(9) To achieve all this I had to create a special webb page and fully or partially translate following School texts:
The Miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ (DD-21.2ra)
The Parables of our Lord Jesus Christ (DD-21.3ra)
The Teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ (DD-21.4ra)
The Divine Liturgy (DD-10ra)
History Of The Christian Church (DD-13e)
The beneficial influence of Christianity (DD-6)
(10) Assignments were supposed to be written in Russian. English could be used only as an exception. This is not a problem, since most of the assignments are basically rephrasing School Russian text and putting the words in a different order.
(11) Unfortunately some children stopped doing their homework without finding it necessary to inform me. As of now, their grade is "incomplete". Please let me know by e-mail (with CC to Father Stefan) if your children will continue to participate in our program. If they will not, I will stop my translation effort, which I am doing for their benefit.
Sincerely,
Aleksandr Nikolaevich