Anyone can be a cynic; it takes courage to be an optimist.

Unknown author

Anyone can be a cynic; it takes courage to be an optimist. These words have become my motto since 1997 when I started to participate in ACCELS Program. And at last, in the year 2002, my optimism was justified and I was given the chance to participate in the 7-week professional development seminar in the USA together with 19 Ukrainian teachers who were also National Finalists.
It is impossible to vest in words our feelings the moment we learned about our future trip. Something like “Dreams come true!” flashed through my mind. I know that every teacher of English dreams to visit either Great Britain or the USA. Could I be that unbelievably lucky person?
At last we stepped on the American soil. From the first minutes on we felt our Washington coordinators’ deep concern for us. I will never forget such a scene: fragile-looking Julie Rotherham helping Georgian and Armenian teachers unload huge suitcases.
Now my life is divided into “before” and “after” periods and it is not totally due to the “culture shock”. Here are my most vivid impressions I experienced in the US.
First of all, I got rid of some harmful stereotypes about America. This process started at the first presentation made by Dan E. Davidson, President of the American Council for International Education. He told us about different approaches of American and NIS citizens towards such notions as Motherland, care, upbringing, help, competition, success and others. The roots of this difference lie in such inherent features of the American character as individualism and self-reliance. I have nothing against the Ukrainian character, but I think that we should undoubtedly become more independent and self-reliant than we are now.
I was surprised to find out how average Americans answered the question “Do you measure your professional success primarily in terms of how much money you make?” Only 19% of those questioned answered “Yes”, but 79% of Americans do not place more importance on money than on other aspects of professional success.
Another question and answers to it: “With whom would you like to spend your free time?”
Work—7%
Friends—11%
Family—65%
Self—13%
Family plays an important part in American people’s life. I could see that during my home stay in the house of Herbert and Kathryn Strom. I spent a weekend there together with a teacher from Izmail Iryna Khomyakova.
Home stay was one of the brightest impressions of my whole “American life”. Herbert was a Lutheran priest (now retired). On Sunday we attended the Service in the Lutheran Church and it was extremely interesting for me to compare it with the Service in Greek Catholic Church.
Kathryn is the former teacher of Hawthorne Elementary Art School in Bozeman. Later we had a chance to visit this school which aims at teaching and upbringing students through arts: music, drama, painting, etc. The halls of this school look like an art gallery full of children’s drawings showing a great deal of maturity and originality.
Kathryn and I became friends. Moreover, we keep up correspondence up till now. Actually I share the ideas of her school; songs and poetry are inseparable components of my lessons. “Humanity is elevated through art, music, drama and literature. As our world becomes uglier, noisier… our children must learn to recognize beauty, harmony and truth in order to realize complete humanity and citizenship”. I read these words in Hawthorne Elementary Art School and I used them during my presentation at the Fifth Annual English Teachers’ Conference in Columbia (South Carolina).The theme of my presentation was “Promoting Human Values in English Lessons Through Arts”.
By the way, some American teachers told me that a decade ago this topic was not so popular in the USA as it is now. Americans show growing interest to the problems of upbringing. When we asked US teachers about these problems, they said that we touched the nerve. As a matter of fact, Americans take their democracy for granted, that is why they don’t pay much attention to patriotism in schools (unlike Ukrainian schools). However, American schools have civics instead, and it seems to be a great idea.
I noticed that American people try to foster in their kids independence and ability to take own decisions from early years. There are even the so-called Montessori schools named after Maria Montessori who founded the first school of this kind in 1896. We visited Highland Montessori School in Bozeman (Mt.). I was pleasantly surprised by the feeling of coziness and spiritual elation permeating the atmosphere of this school. We were asked not to intrude upon children’s work and just observe it. The children were free to choose their own materials and activities, and it was also surprising and unusual for us.
Generally we believe that parents and teachers shape, mould the future personality of a child. According to Montessori philosophy, the child is his or her own creator and grown ups should respect every little individual and remain unobtrusive coordinators of the process of children’s self-education. Montessori children display a total disregard for either rewards or punishments in relation to their work. They become daily more self-confident, self-disciplined and loving towards each other.
Self-reliant citizens are being brought up there and I was a little envious of those children and their parents. Our schools and kindergartens still practice authoritarian approach to children who are rather corrected or rebuked than encouraged. Schools do not often develop children’s self-esteem. No wonder that we do not have enough leaders among students who would be ready to take on responsibilities.
A visit to Thomas Jefferson Science and Technology High School stands out vividly in my memory, too. A lot of specialized classrooms, a huge and well equipped gym, music rooms (separately for the orchestra and for the band), spacious computer classes, a biology room with fantastic aquariums and other details make a striking contrast to what we have in our school (though I must confess that recently great changes have occurred in the sphere of improving technical equipment of our school).
They teach four foreign languages in this school: Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese. The results of teaching are high (unlike many other American schools that cannot boast high results in teaching foreign languages) as they use the immersion system there. I made acquaintance with a teacher of Spanish, Linda. She liked two Spanish songs I sang to her and said that she had never heard them before. Linda gave me two Spanish textbooks when she found out that I was also fond of Spanish at one time and even studied it a little.
I was greatly impressed by the visit to Bootstrap Ranch High School, a private school situated not far from Bozeman. Only 27 students study there sponsored by the owner, Mr. Woods. One day he conceived the idea to found a private school for children from different regions of the USA and of various backgrounds who otherwise would not have a chance to fulfill their true potential.
The Principal of this school, Dr. Carmi Wells, told us many interesting things about the structure and traditions of their school. Some of his students had a difficult past, but almost all of them change their attitude towards the world when they become students of this school. The motto of Bootstrap Ranch High School is: ALTER YOUR ATTITUDE AND YOU CAN ALTER YOUR LIFE. Here they try to bring up their students relying on the principle of respect, responsibility, integrity, compassion and safety. The number of teachers is small, that is why their work is not easy at all. They have to use the strict system of encouragement and punishments, and some of the latter ones seemed too severe to me. For example, a student must eat up everything he or she has put on his/her plate, otherwise this student will be punished (for instance, by washing up). More serious violations are followed by more serious punishments, e. g. all the students go on an excursion for the whole weekend and the one who broke the rules stays alone and does the chores. Maybe it is right; being aware of possibility of punishment, students think twice before violating the rules.
In this school students participate in various kinds of sport, such as equine sport (and a special equine program has been developed), cycling, skiing, snowboarding, etc. Children have a small farm where they can look after different animals (from hens to lamas). But the main students’ business is studying and they do work hard to earn their credits!
I must admit that the schedule of our professional development seminar was extremely busy. We visited an incredible number of museums, memorials, historic places and national parks (Yellowstone, the National Glacier Park). Watching masterpieces in the Metropolitan Museum in New York or taking pictures of the Ground Zero Area, I suddenly came to realize that not so long before I had been telling my students about those sights, but they remained for my students (and for me as well) abstract notions as if existing on some other planet. And only now this distant America became nearer and dearer for me and, I hope, for my students, too.
There were also some other important aspects of my stay in the US. Nearly for two months I was communicating with unbelievably interesting people, teachers of English from Ukraine, real enthusiasts. One of American presenters, Denis Rogers, said about them the following words, “You are the heroes of the world!” It could be said about Maryna Pervova from Mykolaiv, Natalia Novikova from the Crimea, Iryna Artyukh from Zaporizhya Region and about many others. Though we live in different regions of Ukraine, we have similar problems and the seminar offered us a chance to share our ideas and experience.
Several times we had to present our country before the hosts and other delegations. We sang Ukrainian folk-songs, recited poems by Taras Shevchenko and other Ukrainian poets. I had a long- cherished dream to see the monument to Kobzar in Washington and we managed to do this during our last days in the capital. The monument stands not far from Embassy Suites Hotel, where we lived. In my opinion, the words from the poem “Caucasus” inscribed on the pedestal are the most powerful ones from the poet’s heritage:
Struggle and you will win, God helps you…
And the following Shevchenko’s words were used in my presentation at the conference:
Read, study and discern,
And from the foreigner learn,
But do not your own disdain.
Why did I cite them? Because these words reveal two great truths: respect and tolerance to other peoples and love to one’s own native land. And these are the most important things we should teach our students, aren’t they?

This article was written by me in the autumn 2002, just after I came back from the USA where I attended the professional development seminar as a National Finalist in the United States—Ukraine Awards for Excellence in Teaching Program. It was published in the newspaper ENGLISH in 2004. It is needless to say that American experience influenced my life and teaching career immensely. Moreover, all the changes were positive ones. I spoke about it during the meeting with our former coordinator, Professor of Montana State University Joyce Hannula, a Ukrainian by origin. When we were leaving Bozeman, we thought we would never see our American friends again. Never say ‘never’! Joyce gathered us, alumni of 2002 and 2003, in Kyiv Alumni Resource Center on August 4th 2004 and each of us spoke about his/her achievements, aspirations and problems.