School Memories from Baku

The world has become digital. Though we might be shocked to realize the explosion in blogging, chatting, and social networking sites, we will have to accept it. I firmly believe that it is not all bad. My wife and I taught in Baku, Azerbaijan from 1997 until 2001. One Saturday this spring in Almaty, I received four invitations to join people on Facebook. All four were students I had taught in Baku when they were 7 or 8 years old. The kids featured in the pictures below are 15 or 16 years old now.
They are all around the world now: Macedonia, Seattle, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. They and their parents have all agreed that I can write about them and identify them in the pictures.
When I looked at these kids’ Facebook pages, I found pictures of all of us doing science experiments.


Gulay Aliyeva at 8:11pm March 6
Old school memories, we all look so funny. Remember how we were impressed at like everything he did. Like the separate colors of liquid in one cup thing or the taking the sheet of the table without anything budging stuff, he was a great teacher XD
Eda Starova at 8:22pm March 6
yeah. i miss him so much. we used to have so much fun with him. remember how he used to read the which witch or something from roald dahl and do those funny voices?
Ankit Nair at 9:10pm March 6
woww.. mr martin.. he sent me a msg long time ago.. ms. martin gave birth to a son..
Gulay Aliyeva at 9:15pm March 6
OMG yes, eda u r gonna make me cry. Remember counting the bananas he ate? He ate tons didnt he XD omg and the pigs, remember the poster!?!
Eda Starova at 9:19pm March 6
the BANANAS! hahahaha! yeah, we had this graph thing where everyone had to do something different everyday like count the bananas, change the date, measure the wind speed or something. hahahaha.
Eda Starova at 9:31pm March 6
Remember computer class with him? We did these cool projects on the computers...

I was amazed to see that these kids remembered all this stuff. OMG did I actually do something with these kids?

Gulay Aliyeva at 10:00pm March 6
LOL, man he was fantastic. I mean he was plainly granted XD to us
Jan Bartolome at 5:10am March 7
MAX! the cat with two eye colors! (right?)
Eda Starova at 2:23pm March 7
Jamescat had two different eye colors...
Gulay Aliyeva at 10:23pm March 7
Yeah he did, that cat had charisma im telling u
Nick Olney at 6:14pm March 8
ha ha this is so cool, i remember so much of it. He was the coolest teacher ever. Hope you are all doing well wherever you are in the world :D

I was amazed that Gulay was using the word charisma. When she was in my class, she said no more than a dozen words in ten months! When we chatted one evening, she "accidentally" dropped a quote from Macbeth. How calculated it was, I'm not sure, but I simply had trouble picturing the young lady I knew as a pathologically shy child tossing off quotes from Shakespeare.


Eda Starova at 2:10pm March 6
I'm using the wicked new scanner that my dad got
Gulay Aliyeva at 8:00pm March 6
OMG i miss mr.martin soo much, he is like one of my fav teachers...
Kazim Tosayev at 11:01pm March 7
Eda, THANK YOU SO MUCH for adding these photos, really, they brought ye olde BIS students+best teacher ever back together :D
James Martin at 11: 10pm on March 7
Eda, I can't imagine you as a person who uses the word 'wicked' You all sound so grown up.
Ankit Nair at 1:24pm March 8
MR MARTIN???????????? !!
Gulay Aliyeva at 5:11pm March 8
The cat with the two different eye colors was James cat and we took care of him after you left (he is even named after you u c cuz he sorta hated everybody except you)
James Martin at 6:03pm March 8
Eda, why did I get all these invitations at once?
Eda Starova at 2:28pm on March 9th, 2009
Hey Mr.Martin! Haha, well, I uploaded a bunch of BIS pictures yesterday and everyone went into a look-for-old-friends/teachers--on-facebook-and-add-them craze.

Gulay Aliyeva at 9:53pm March 6
YES!!! He was awesome... Remember how we chose his hair to be blond




Jan Bartolome at 5:03am March 10
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
James Martin at 8:21pm March 10
This is the world's greatest photograph.
Kazim Tosayev at 9:32pm March 10
OMG!!! INCREDIBLE!!!
Ankit Nair at 6:02pm March 11
haha.. do u know that i still have the pic in my bedroom? i have framed it and take it to every country i go to.. :)
Eda Starova at 6:52pm March 11
It's framed in my bedroom too. :)
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I know that teachers can make lasting marks on students. I remember my football coach when I was a 120-pound freshman, saying that he would “take James Martin, pound for pound, over anyone on the team.” I didn’t realize for several years that he was giving me a backhanded compliment for my propensity to throw body without reason into situations where I had no business.

Why am I a teacher? Stirrings of the reasons came with the Facebook comments. Had I truly made a difference somewhere? If nothing else, these kids had at least learned English, and learned how to love school. My philosophy is that in modern times, where information is growing exponentially, and access to information is ridiculously easy, our goal as teachers is to inspire in our students a life-long desire to LEARN. A positive relationship to school may be the first step in developing such inspiration. If kids enjoy coming to school, and they think what they do there is valuable, learning might be an integral part of their entire lives.

I was thrilled when I started to read the comments from my students. I felt wonderful that these kids still thought about me. With these kids, I feel like I accomplished something. I listen to many podcasts these days, and one of them featured a man who wound up on the wrong side of the law. He said that when he had a heart attack, he was afraid that he would die and look back on his life and see that he had not done anything. Now, I feel like when I look back and remember these kids, I’ll be happy.