It's Elementary My Dear

So the whole point of being in Nepal was to teach English, and I guess I should talk a little bit about that once in awhile.

 

My school is Kitini Higher Secondary School. The school has over 700 students in grades K-10 and about 20 teachers on staff. For the most part, the school operates on a subject teaching system which means that students stay in their classroom but the teachers move to different grade levels each period.

The primary building at the school. There are two other buildings for the other grades.

 Every day starts with a morning assembly for the whole school. Essentially the kids form lines by grade level, follow some simple commands like “hands up, clap twice, hands down, etc.” and then sing the Nepali national anthem. It’s kind of fun to see them all looking sharp in their uniforms, and it will be a long time before I stop being amazed by kindergarteners who can tie a tie.
 

Students lined up for morning assembly. I took this picture from the second story window of the primary building, so you can see the courtyard and the other buildings from this view.

There are eight 40 minute periods in a day; school goes from 10:00am until 4:00pm. I co-teach in five classes every day which is a typical course load for a teacher at Kitini.

 

 

1st Period: Grade 2

This class has up to 26 students; due to regular absences the actual number is usually closer to 20-23. Because parents can choose at what age to start their children in school, the age range in each grade can be quite large. My grade 2 students span from 7 to 13 years old. (Many parents keep older students out of school until the youngest is ready to join and then send them all at once.) In this class, we have been working on prepositions. Yesterday we played hide the teacher’s notebook which is really not a game since everyone sees me put the notebook somewhere and then they have to give me the sentence saying where it is: “The notebook is under the bench. The notebook is in the bag.” But they loved it, and when I started letting students hide the notebook… it was better than candy, unicorns, rainbows, and leprechauns all put together. 
 

2^nd Period: Grade 4

I love this class. The kids are exceptionally well-behaved and the teacher is wonderful. My co-teacher in second period always has a specific plan for the day so I typically sit-back and then toss out ideas when appropriate. Today the kids had a spelling test of vocabulary words from a story called “A Cruel Landlord.” Some did very well, some did not write a single English word on the whole test. The teacher and I graded the tests right there, and then the students were told to practice writing the words they got wrong. I introduced them to spelling sailboats, which my American fifth graders dreaded during student teaching, and the Nepali students loved them. Later in the day, I saw a class four student teaching some friends from another class how to make the special boat.

One student proudly displays his first spelling sailboat.

 

3^rd Period: Leisure (Well, it’s called leisure because I’m not teaching a class, but I actually use this time for lesson planning and material preparation.)

 

Blogger is giving me so much trouble right now, I don't have the energy to fight with it to get this picture to rotate. Anyway it's a song I will be teaching the students very soon. All of the teachers in the lounge who saw me making it were rather intrigued and I will have the song stuck in my head for months to come.

4^th Period: Grade 5

This is the class that I co-teach with my host mom. These are the kids working on countables and uncountables. We’ve been doing lots of work with a chant about how much and how many. One of my first days in class, I used my cards to introduce myself and my host mom gave the students a homework assignment to write a paragraph about me and draw my picture. It was a pretty precious homework check the next day! 

5^th Period: Grade 1

These are some of my most precious children. They are small and adorable. There is one little girl who sits at the back table and I’m lucky if she pays attention for more than 2% of the class, but she has the most darling little smirk whenever she is being naughty and I just love her. These kiddos are learning about the letter T (check the facebook post from a few days ago about “half-shirts.”) On Sunday, my co-teacher basically turned the class over to me so I decided I would teach them to sing I’m A Little Teapot. Holy moly adorable like nobody’s business! The kids definitely struggled with the whole singing in unison bit, and they can’t really read so I ended up turning it into an echoing song. But still. So. Precious. The video below shows us singing as a whole class and in small groups; you have to mix it up if you are going to fill 40 minutes with a five line song!

I'm A Little Teapot from Rachel Elzinga on Vimeo.

 

 

6^th Period: Leisure

7^th Period: Grade 3

This is my wildest class by a landslide. I don’t know if it’s the end of the day or if they all eat pure sugar at lunch or if the moon suddenly swings closer to the earth at 2:40, but I will never be afraid of falling asleep with this bunch! We’ve been reading a poem about a little boy who is making lunch for a dinosaur; today I used the word extinct and was met by blank stares from all of the students and the teacher. Upon further reflection it is kind of an obscure word, but it really does fit in when discussing whether or not the dinosaur will ever come to the boy’s house for lunch. Anyway, I tried to boil it down to simple English like “all gone,” “all dead,” “no more ever again.” I’m not sure they got the idea that this only applies when an entire species has been eliminated from the planet. So if you happen to encounter three dozen Nepali third graders misusing the word extinct, I apologize.

8^th Period: Leisure

After seventh period, I return to the staff room and finish any prep work for the next day. Then I pack up my things and head home. All of the students from grade three and younger are dismissed after 7^th period so when I leave part way through 8^th period my walk home is usually sprinkled with “Good Afternoon Miss!” and a flurry of Nepali that I catch approximately 0% of; just smile and wave.

So that's my day at school. Please post questions about Nepali schools in the comments box and I will try to answer them in upcoming blogs.