Uzbekistan: the Ultimate Classroom without Walls

Tashkent International School's’ Grade 7 students get to grips with the Old City of Khiva, western Uzbekistan (photo: Erik Peterson).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The slow, methodical thump, thump, thump of the camel’s hooves hangs in the hot, desert air, interrupted only by his snorts and grunts and the brush of an occasional breeze.

The weight upon his back is new, yet familiar; a wiggly, smaller-sized passenger who has never been atop a camel before and is both terrified and delighted by the experience. The camel is the largest animal he has ever seen, and the thrill of riding a live camel across desert dunes is something he would never find in his home country.

For a few brief moments, the boy forgets where and who he is. The small passenger imagines for a fleeting second that he is really part of a large, ancient caravan making its way across the hidden desert highway, an endless sea of sand in the steppes of western Uzbekistan.

It is just another day of school for this student, who normally attends his studies in the comfort of a classroom at Tashkent International School (TIS), far from camels trails, caravans, and the fleeting ghosts of the Silk Road. Titled Week without Walls (WWW), this experience is a regular part of the TIS curriculum for all secondary students in Grades 6 through 12. For five school days at the beginning of every school year, students and their teachers jump into the living classroom that is Uzbekistan. The entire experience is designed to take students away from their traditional learning experience.

In 2012, Grade 6 traveled to a village near Nuratau, where students and teachers visited two local schools and participated in traditional Uzbek dancing at the home of a local family. They also visited a nature reserve in the area.

For many of the Grade 7 students who traveled to Khiva, Urgench and the desert camps, this was the first time they had traveled this far into Uzbekistan, or away from their parents back in Tashkent.

Students from Grade 8 spent WWW in Parkent. During the day they visited an old silver mine, the Physics of the Sun Institute, and a mosque; they also hiked a nearby national park, which challenged them both physically and mentally.

Historic Bukhara was the destination for Grade 9, and with three full days of activities, the students were able to do a lot of exploring and learning! They visited a master potter, and used traditional tools to create ceramic figures and pots in local styles. They also tried their hand at block printing, silk-thread embroidery, and miniature painting. “The kids loved it. Even the boys,” said Susan Waterworth, a trip chaperone.

Grade 10 visited ancient Samarkand, where students learned about that city’s colorful past; studied the mathematical concepts found in the geometric mosaics on historic buildings; visited Registan Square, the Shahi Zinda Mausoleum, and Mirzo Ulugbek’s observatory; and took tile-making lessons at the Samarkand craft center. They also made silk paper from mulberry pulp, and visited a local village near Urgut where they sketched pictures of local scenes.

Students in Grade 11 had a slightly different experience: they visited the local mahalla office and learned about the neighborhood system used throughout Uzbekistan. They participated in helping in the mahalla, by passing out food packages to needy families and sweeping up leaves, and painting in an apartment complex.

The focus for Grade 12 was also different: an interdisciplinary field study embracing history, economics, biology, chemistry, and physics. For this, Grade 12 students traveled to Yangiobod, a former uranium-mining town outside of Tashkent, where they carried out their research studies.

As TIS teacher Siobhan Buckman observed, “Standing out in the desert where the sky is 180 degrees all around, you feel so removed from the other parts of the world, but so central to the truth. You have this feeling that this place is at the center of where things started.”

---

Please fill out the form below if you would like to post a comment on this article:

Nickname

(this will appear with your comments)

Email

Comments

---

Comments

There are currently no comments posted. Please post one via the form above.

MORE FROM

ONLINE ARTICLES