“It Was Important for Us to Come to the Rural School”: MIT Students are Delighted with Katon-Karagay
Students of one of the best universities in the world taught English, physics, and conducted workshops on programming and information technology for students of S. Lastayev Secondary School in Katon-Karagay village.
Park Hanna and Eduard Alexander Shertsnev are fourth-year students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, noted the good level of knowledge of schoolchildren within the framework of the Global Teaching Labs (GTL) program.
S. Lastayev School has been a participant of the project “Rural School Powered by NIS” of the Fund for Sustainable Development of Education, AITAS Holding and Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools AEO for the fifth year. The school entered the Global Teaching Labs (GTL) program along with the best private schools in Astana and Almaty, where it became the only rural school in the program.
According to Park Hanna, the trip to Katon-Karagay was one of the most impressive for her. “After getting off the plane in Astana, I was amazed by the architecture and beauty of this city. Then East Kazakhstan was no less impressed – Ust-Kamenogorsk city and Katon-Karagay. The nature and inhabitants of your region are simply breathtaking. I can speak Kazakh a little and it was very interesting to communicate with native speakers of this language. I will definitely come here again,” she shared.
Yerniyaz Aktayev, the seventh grade student, shared his emotions from the lessons conducted by our guests: “I was interested in the presentation of their subject, as they explained many things creatively and in the “language of youth”. In addition to communicating during classes, we tried to spend more time with them in the library, practice our English, study their culture, and in places we showed them our way of life.”
During their stay in Katon-Karagay, students managed to get to know Kazakh traditions and customs better, attend a traditional Kazakh wedding as guests, taste national treats and learn how to cook some dishes of Kazakh cuisine.