I Don’t Speak Your Language But I Can Teach You Photoshop

“Evelyn! Թակդի Աիհֆէ դհիըթէթա թհդաթոֆիէհֆաոի!” Urgent tone of voice, concerned expression on her face, my counterpart swooped in out of nowhere, yelling in my ear about some important matter that only I could solve.

Problem was, I had no idea what she was saying, and not a clue how to help get her out of this mess. I gave her my best blank stare, while also trying to appear useful.

— Let me pause for a moment to tell you the best way to talk to someone who does not speak your language, when you want to get your point across.

• Try to make the conversation relevant to the setting. Do not ask at dinner if they want to iron their clothes. Ask them when you’re holding the iron.
• Use props. If possible, use props that actually are what they represent.
• Take their arm and lead them if you need them to move, or point to where you need them to go.
  
• Act out the words instead of delivering them with just your mouth. Use big gestures.
• Speak slowly. P-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y sloooooooowly.
• Use easy words. Pretend you’re a four year old again.
• If you can translate a word or two, that’s fine, although chances are if you know it in their language, it’s probably one of the few words they know in your language, so translating won’t help a whole lot.
• Give them time to process. Even if you stopped talking thirty seconds ago, all is not necessarily lost. Have patience and let their brain have time to work it out. —

(If only I had these instructions in Armenian, to pass out to everyone I meet!)

BACK TO MY STORY:

My counterpart quickly grabbed a piece of paper and sketched a rabbit and a bird, chattering all the while. More incomprehensible gibberish, except this time I heard “Photoshop” thrown in there.

Eventually (much too late to put out the burning fire in my counterpart’s mind), I realized that she wanted me to show her how to find the custom shapes in Photoshop. The previous day, I had used both a rabbit and a bird in my demo Photoshop file, and that had stuck with her. (Unfortunately, it did not make as much of an impression on me!)

A rabbit and a bird: the two shapes that would come back to haunt me.

I’ll be honest. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out what she wanted, because we had our entire “conversation” at a table in the classroom. Not once did she motion toward the computers, or indicate that we needed to have Photoshop open to figure out what she so desperately needed to know.

Curiosity satiated, she had me sit down with her two students and help them create a solar system in Photoshop. (No birds or rabbits involved; I think the swirl custom shape gave her a new idea.)

A solar system created in Photoshop, influenced by the "swirl" custom shape. My students created similar-looking designs.

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With that intro, let me tell you a little bit about what I do on a daily basis at the college.

I am scheduled to be there every day from 11:00-2:00. That’s fifteen hours a week, and for me right now, that’s quite enough.

I have three counterparts—all female computer teachers (who don’t speak English—part of the reason that 3 hours a day is plenty).

Usually during the course of a day at the college, I will sit with one or two students and/or one of my counterparts and help them create something in either Photoshop, Excel, Access, or Powerpoint.

One of my counterparts and two students at the computer. A typical class.

Animated gifs were very popular for the first few weeks. I was caught off guard with that one the first day, and had to figure out how to create them on the fly, on a computer that was in Russian. That night I did a little Internet research, and then I was expert enough to guide them through the creation process.

An example of a simple animated gif. I helped my students and counterpart create much more interesting animations in class.

Photoshop Tools: specifically the History Art Brush, a new one for me!

I have taught and demonstrated the functions of almost all the Photoshop tools, taking them a section at a time. (If you look closely at the toolbar, you will see little dividers.)

This included all the little fly-outs of the tools, some of which I have never used in my life. But with a little sneaky experimenting while my counterpart wasn’t looking, I was generally able to smooth over my ignorance, and just say, “Watch,” and show her (and myself) what the tool does.

— Did you know there is a “history brush” tool? When you are editing a photo, and you use this brush, it erases whatever changes you made to the photo in that particular spot. Very interesting! —

I found pictures on my laptop that would best help demonstrate some of the tools, and saved them on the college computers for the students to practice with. So now some days when I go in, I see cute little blond kids sitting on an orange bench in a sunset (Thanks, Brita, for this picture; I hope you and your client don’t mind that these sweeties are now a Photoshop teaching tool!). Or I see me and my PST village volunteers—Brian with a red eye, Steve wearing James’ sunglasses, Collin with new-colored clothes, and me with long hair.

A photo I grabbed from my computer to demonstrate some Photoshop techniques. The Armenians were amazed at all the blonde hair!

The original and Photoshopped versions of a picture of me with some of my Peace Corps friends

Whenever anyone—student or counterpart—asks me for help, if it’s their first time, I will show them once, fairly quickly, how to accomplish the task, then again, much slower. If it’s complicated, I will show a third time, using whatever Armenian words I know, and a lot of pointing and extra demonstration. Then I will undo everything I did and have them try from the beginning.

I think this teaching style caught them off guard at first. They are so used to being told/shown what to do and never practicing it themselves, that they always expect my end result to stay on the screen. When it disappears (seemingly by magic!), they look at me, a little shocked and disappointed that all my hard work went to waste. But I think now they like it, because they can see the results of this kind of learning. They can DO IT THEMSELVES! And it’s so much easier to remember the steps. And when they mess up or forget, I always tell them, “վոչինչ:” It doesn’t matter. And then try to explain where they went wrong. When possible, I try to avoid taking the mouse from them, and just point to places on the screen, or make a weird motion that means, “click and drag.”

We have done a few short classes in Excel, Powerpoint, and Access. The teachers have Armenian textbooks that explain how to use these programs, but I doubt that they are written very well; my counterparts always appreciate having me around to explain the next step in the tutorial.

The lessons are usually very short, and the students finish the assigned project long before the class is supposed to be over. When they’re done, they often look at me and ask, “What next?” To which I have no answer, because I have not been able to figure out what my counterpart’s plan are (and she is usually not in the room when this happens.) From what I can tell of most of the students, they want to be challenged, and would appreciate having harder tasks.

Since I am still getting my feet wet, I haven’t yet been able to come to class prepared with additional assignments. (This is partly because I never quite know what the “subject” will be that day.) But I can definitely see a need to plan ahead, and I think as time goes on, I will have more influence on the material being taught.

As it is, I have had some success teaching my very own computer class, once a week for an hour, completely in Armenian! More on that later…

* P.S. The Armenian text at the beginning of this post is complete gibberish and does not spell anything. It’s the equivalent in English of: dlheri ajlfkheafh aldkf heihfa!