History lessons

The school New Year tree this year is small, from the school's own yard, and the decorations the children made from old exercise-book paper. Nobody complained. The 5th class sang. A grandmother in the back row cried and said it was from the smoke of the stove.

We have 412 children in the school today. In 2005 we had 640. I do not need to say more. Happy New Year to everyone who reads this, in Irad and outside.

A short note. This week the district sent us thirty new textbooks of the 7th class history, paid by the Ministry. They smell of the printing house. The children keep opening them just to smell. I let them for one minute at the start of the lesson, and then we work.

I know it is only books. But books arriving by lorry on a road that was shut in the summer is also a kind of news.

We started a month late. In July there was fighting near Aulie-Ata at the railway junction, and in the summer the school was used for other purposes. Now the windows are glazed again, the parents painted the corridor.

In my 10th class there were 26 pupils in May. Now 19. Two families went to Kazakhstan, two to Talas, three I don't know. I will not write more about this. We teach.

In July 751 the armies of the Abbasid caliphate and the Tang empire met on the Talas. The Chinese were defeated, and China did not come west again. Islam was cemented in the towns. Tradition says the Chinese prisoners taught the Arabs how to make paper (this is disputed; tell the pupils it is disputed, it is good for them to know that historians argue).

Exercise: draw the Talas valley, mark the river, the mountains and where you think the armies stood. Nobody knows exactly where. That is the beauty of it.

These days it is difficult to talk about wars with the children. Many families from Aulie-Ata and the villages went to Talas in February. I heard that School No. 31 in Talas took in many of them. Thank you, colleagues.

For the young colleagues who asked me by e-mail. My method after seventeen years:

• One main idea per lesson. If you cannot say it in one sentence, the children will not carry it home.
• One story. History is not dates, dates are the nails. The story is the wall.
• One question for the end that has no answer in the textbook.
• Five minutes of silence in the plan for what you did not plan.

The fifth is the most important.