Snejana Iovtcheva,
Program Coordinator,
Bulgarian School Boston
During Saturday school hours on March 30th, our school in Boston fulfilled a long-awaited meeting. A group of 20 students, teachers and parents from the Bulgarian Saturday School in the island of Nantucket, traveled a long way to participate in a joint Saturday lesson with the students from the Bulgarian School in Boston - an extremely exciting event full of educational activities, tasty food, musical performances, and most of all new friendships!
We opened the lesson with warm greetings and short presentations of the two schools. The school in Boston was represented by the president of the school, Mr. Rosen Dimitrov, and Mrs. Zhaneta Marinov presented the Bulgarian school in Nantucket.
The youngest students joined regular classes in the first grade classroom, where they immediately felt at home. Mrs. Kristina Georgieva had prepared fun activities for getting to know each other, a discussion of the lesson on line breaks and syllable transfer, and picture painting based on Angel Karaliychev's story "In the nest". The young students got involved actively and were happy to be part of such a large class with children from another school where the Bulgarian language is spoken.
The older students participated in a large open lesson in mixed groups with the Boston students from the middle and high grades. The lesson began with introductions in small groups, with each student telling about their interests, hobbies and most interesting character traits. It was no surprise to anyone that for the majority of them the favorite place was "Bulgaria" or "the beach". It quickly became clear how many similar interests and knowledge the children share. They "melted the ice" between them and quickly fell into friendly conversations.
Mrs. Petya Koeva and Mrs. Silviya Mihaleva conducted the first educational quiz, which included questions about the Bulgarian language. Each of the six teams had one minute to answer questions related to Bulgarian spelling, synonyms, idioms and grammar rules. Students feverishly and enthusiastically debated the correct answers and sought to earn the most points for their team.
Mr. Ivan Batchvarov held a quiz on the geography and history of Bulgaria. Here, the questions covered information from the very creation of the First Bulgarian State to present day. The students competed to correctly answer questions such as "When was Bulgaria created?", "What was the first capital of Bulgaria?", "Which ruler can we call the Lawgiver and who the Baptist?". The shared knowledge united the children and made them proud of their achievements in the Bulgarian Saturday schools.
During recess the Boston parents had arranged a lavish food spread for the guests. Students used the time to play outside together and teachers to share professional experiences and compare academic curricula.
Returning from recess, the students from Nantucket performed three folk dances. Accompanied by their folk dance choreographer Mrs. Kristina Hristova, they presented rachenitsa, Djinovsko horo and Thracian horo. The students from Boston performed three songs guided by their choir teacher Mrs. Zdravka Nikolova. We ended the long day with the emotional song "One Bulgarian Rose", to which the entire hall joined in and applauded.
While teachers and students had a full school day with conversations and language games, visiting parents used the sunny weather to meet Boston parents at a local beer garden and make new friendships, too.
The parting in the end was emotional and warm. We exchanged contacts, shared photos and left with the promise of a new future meeting - this time on the island of Nantucket.
We thank everyone - the children, teachers and parents for the wonderful organization!