FLEX? What's that you ask? FLEX stands for Future Leaders Exchange and it's a US sponsored program that sends youth from post-Soviet states to America to be a high school student for a year. Through American Councils, youth all over these countries take tests to qualify for the opportunity. The 1st round weeds out the ones who shouldn't even be in the room for lack of English knowledge. The 2nd round is a quite a bit more difficult and only 15% of the original pool make it to the 3rd round to write more essays and interview. From the 3rd round, only about 50 people from the batch will be invited to study in America and usually only half of that number are from the regions of the country. Given my calculations, that would average 4-6 from each region testing site (where usually over 800 take the 1st rounds' test).
I've worked with my girls pretty intensely the past few months, beginning in July. It began as a film and writing club, but has since moved to watching Gilmore Girls (and movies, still), listening to podcasts, and reading books in English. They've wrote essays and/or short stories for every movie we've watched, we've discussed issues, reviewed grammar and have built vocabulary (I'm pretty confident that my girls are the only ones to correctly use extraordinarily in their essays - I'm leaving my mark). We've posed question after question, situation after situation, for anything I thought could pop up on the tests. I wanted my girls to be able to show everyone how great I know they are. They wrote their essays Monday (one of which was one I posed to them as a timed assignment the day before) and one had her interviews today. My other girl is interviewing tomorrow.
I'm so proud and lucky to be working with these girls. And, what's really amazing about this program is if they make it through, I might be able to see them in my environment! It's been such an incredible experience being there to support them throughout these testing sessions. Not only has it been great seeing them come out of testings confident and smiling, but I've also been able to see other kids, too, with all of their hopes and dreams unfolding slowly in front of them. I've been able to see supportive parents who want their kid to have an opportunity they've never imagined would be available. I've made sure to tell my girls' parents how incredible it is for the girls to get this far and I think they know how big of a feat it is, at least I hope so. This has been such a motivating experience.
We don't find out until Aprilish if they've been invited to go, but, no matter what, these girls have learned and experienced so much this past year. And, if they don't make it, they'll definitely rock it out next year. One of my strongest girls was a smidge too young to take the test this year, so they would be in good company...
2 comments:
Hi Kim. It's great to hear you're working with some Ming girls! Are you working with Sema from School 13? I really hope she's still doing well and I miss her a lot. Please tell her I think of her often if you know her. I hope to see her in the US next year!
-Carolyn AZ5
Hey Carolyn!
I do work with Sema and she is one of the girls I was talking about, as is Sabina. Sema's doing great and she'll be coming over later, so I'll be sure to pass the message on. She had her interview yesterday and she felt really good about it. The crazy thing is is that she wasn't going to take the first round this year because she was scared, but I had a long talk with her about how, even if she didn't pass, nothing bad could come from taking it and it would better prepare her next year (when she said she would take it). Well, obviously, she took it and everything so far has been working out fine. I'll let you know in a few months the results.
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