How Was Nepal?

From March 10, 2014

How was Nepal?
And how were the last eight months of your life?

I don’t mean to be rude, but if you ask me this question I probably won’t answer. It’s just too hard. It’s too much information, too much complexity, too much everything to consistently and repeatedly verbalize. Plus it’s not all the happy, rosy, wonderfulness that is expected in those two second conversations as you pass someone in the parking lot.

But I understand that the question comes from a genuine place and today, sitting back at home after my last day of school, I’m in the mood to try and speak the past eight months of my life.

How was Nepal? Nepal was this…

Nepal was disorganized and lopsided.

Nepal was vibrant and fragrant and beautiful.

Nepal was handpicked for me by a group of children whose faces in my eyes are chased by tears because today I said goodbye and I don’t know if I’ll see them again.

Nepal was precious and delicate. Probably not how I would have designed it, but infinitely more meaningful because of that.

Nepal was a lot of weeds.

Nepal was overwhelming and too much to take in all at once. But I desperately want my memories to maintain their truth, even as the experience itself wilts and this season closes.

Nepal was Dipika, Sunita, Sajan, Asmita, Karan, Postraj, Bijay, Niran, Sarmila, Parbati, Dipa, Numa, Sunder, Roshni, Sapana, Sabina, Sangita, Rashmee, Sumanta, Namrata, Arjun, Suraj, Dipesh, Saswot, Hira, Shila, Sushma, Laxmi, Bimala, Dipraj, and Pawan.

Nepal was singing with class one, doing puzzles with class two, learning to whisper in class three, practicing the months of the year rapid-fire with class four, and wishing class five would stop yelling.

Nepal was walking to school and covering my face with a scarf

when a truck left me inside a tunnel of thick, cancerous, smoke.
 

Nepal was being caught by surprise when the mountain peaks were suddenly whiter and brighter after new snow.

Nepal was milk tea.
 

Nepal was me giving handshakes and high-fives and hugs at the gate. Nepal was my students going round and round in the line instead of leaving after the first goodbye. Nepal was me not even caring and perhaps even wishing they would never stop.

Nepal was biting my tongue and smiling through a salty, facial monsoon while my students told me not to cry or be so “sadly.” Nepal was me not even being able to correct their English, but only standing there sniffling.
 

Nepal was me walking home with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers

I will ever receive and realizing I have to come back.

No More Monkey Business

**Disclaimer: due to technical issues I have been unable to post for several weeks. The next few posts are severely back dated. In real time, my grant in Nepal is finished and I am travelling before returning to the US. If you were thinking about sending me something, just send it to my US address and I'll get it when I come home.**

From February 20, 2014
Friends, I am very happy to announce that Kitini school no longer has a resident monkey! He was picked up by employees from the zoo in Patan. I hope that he lives a long and healthy life under their care.

He is gone now, but in the three days between the first terrorizing event (see here) and his departure the monkey did manage to create havoc in my classroom.

The monkey was consistently entering classrooms, going through kids’ backpacks, jumping on desks, etc. which is disruptive, but I had little sympathy for teachers who this happened to because they left their doors wide open. I worked very hard to make sure that my door and windows were always securely shut.

Well, except the one day when I didn’t notice that the last window was only closed, but not locked.

Naturally, the monkey sensed this opportunity to pry the window open and come in. He sat directly on top of the bench where I lay out all of my materials. On top of the materials. He dumped out the entire contents of the trash can and spread them all over the front of the room. He flipped through my flashcard box and moved all of the g’s to the front. (Monkeys really are quite clever with those opposable thumbs.) He chewed on my colorful pen and every single one of my board markers. Then he walked over to the only student who didn’t hurriedly leave the classroom, climbed onto the desk next to him, bent over, and stared at said student from between its legs. I wish I had been faster with my camera.

 

 

Needless to say, I was quite pleased to see him go. But just because my classroom is all one species again doesn’t mean they always act like it.

What the Number One Teacher Education Program in the State of Michigan Failed to Preare Me For; Or Why I Am a Teacher and Not a Zoologist

I blame the man in the yellow hat for giving me an inaccurate picture of monkeys. They are not mischievous in an innocently curious and laughable way. They are not snuggly. They are not named George.

Just before winter break, an injured monkey took up residence at Kitini School. Since the school was empty and peaceful for a month when it arrived, it seems to have decided to stick around. It’s kind of a milky brown, about the height of a small child when it sits on its haunches. It can be quite fast when it wants to, and it does a nice job distracting students and teachers alike for vast portions of the day. It’s male; which I know because today it sat outside my classroom window and played with itself. In this instance, I was actually happy that my students haven’t mastered questions in English just yet.

Did I mention that the monkey is terrifying? Because it is. It has nasty looking sharp teeth, makes scary noises when provoked, and definitely seems ferocious enough to send a kid (or an American volunteer) to the hospital if it wanted to.

But no one else seems concerned. Most of the students now spend their breaks taunting the monkey. They like to throw food at it and then see how close they can get before the monkey lunges at them. It is a horrible game, but I have yet to see an adult make the effort of approaching the herd of screaming children and encouraging them to leave the monkey alone. I frequently try to warn children by miming a scary monkey biting them. Apparently I’m not very convincing.

Today the monkey (and the mob of animal hating children) were between me and my classroom. It was unfortunate. I worked my way up to the front of the group and then made all the kids go back downstairs…which meant they backed up in the general direction of the stairs. With more enthusiasm I got some to leave at least temporarily. But when I turned around one poor little boy from grade one had been left alone on the opposite side of the monkey. Without the protection of the older kids, he was now realizing that being trapped in a 3 ½ foot wide hallway with a wild monkey between you and the stairs was not an ideal situation. Especially if you are six years old and the monkey probably weighs more than you.

Annoyed that I somehow seem to end up as the only adult around in these situations more than my share, but also sympathetic for the kid, I took on teacher role #1356: human shield between student and aggravated wild monkey.

Getting past the monkey to get to the kid was no problem because I just walked really close to the wall. But escorting him back to the other side meant I was suddenly a full child’s width into the middle of the walkway…a clear invasion of the monkey’s territory. Plus once said child was an inch past the monkey he was no longer interested in matching my calm – let’s not frighten the animal – walking speed and he bolted.

The combination of proximity, sudden motion, and loud footsteps startled the monkey. Obviously. And it basically lunged at me. The few students who remained within sight laughed because I’m pretty sure my entire leg visibly trembled and I may have made a small noise of terror. I don’t entirely remember because the whole time I was just thinking, “what are the nurses going to say if I go back to the clinic and ask for my THIRD post-exposure rabies series?”

All’s well that ends well and, for now, the monkey has yet to actually make contact with anyone at the school. But perhaps Hope College should consider some interdisciplinary courses for education majors like: Animals in the Classroom 101 or Introduction to the Schoolyard Dynamics of Primates and Immature Homo-sapiens.

 

 

Disillusioned

Lately I find myself leaving school with a particular flavor of exhaustion. The more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I recognize that I cannot fix everything. Which might seem obvious, but if you have met me perhaps you will understand how this hurts me. I care deeply about my students wherever I am. It’s what motivates me and what makes me so emotionally vulnerable. I love what I do because teaching is such an intrinsic part of who I am. But that also means that when work is hard I feel it deep in my bones.

 

Right now, work is hard.

I want all of my students to be able to write their full names with js and gs and ys that drop below the line. And I know that if I had infinite time with each of them I could make it happen, but I don’t.

I want the tests to actually measure students’ ability to read, write, speak, and listen. Rather than whether or not they have memorized the questions and can regurgitate minute details from a story we read in October. And I just spent four years learning how to write appropriate and meaningful assessments; it’s one of the things that I love most about teaching because it creates a tangible way to go to a student and say “Wow! Look how much you’ve grown!” But I don’t make the exams; they come from a Nepali organization and go to all the schools in the district. Kind of like MEAP tests or PSSAs except they’re the only form of assessment.

I want to stop everything and work with my third grade girls who still don’t have any idea what sounds the letters make. But then what will the other students do? And what about all the other struggling students in all the other grades? Who will drop everything to tell them that they still matter even if they can’t read and that they’re not stupid and that they can learn to be just as good as everybody else?

I want the key to the library to stay on school grounds because I hate that if the teacher with the key is absent then no one can access the resources that other schools can only dream of.

I want my co-teachers to talk to me. To tell me what they like about the way I teach and what they think is silly and what they will never ever use after I leave. I want to ask them questions and I want them to ask me questions. I want them to come to class or not come to class, I just want to stop living in this strange limbo land where I never know how much to plan.

I want to know the words to say in Nepali when I walk into a classroom and find a student crumpled in his/her chair with tears dripping onto the floor. I want to know how to ask if they’re hurt or sad or hungry. I want to know enough to understand when they finally blubber out a response.

I want to be able to communicate to the kid, who hit the grade one student so hard, that his behavior is not okay without making him feel like he himself is horrible.

I want my girls to grow up in a world where their teachers and principals don’t hit them. Because if every male authority figure you encounter beats you, even once, why would it even occur to you that it’s not okay for your boyfriend or your husband to do that too.

I want the things that I learned in college to apply in this context. I want to have a team of colleagues, administrators, and specialists who I can call upon to cooperate and bring so-and-so up to grade level because I’d hate to see him/her drop out at the end of third grade.

It’s hard right now because I want all of these things from the most well-intentioned part me, but the more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I understand why things exist the way they do. And when you start to understand something it becomes harder to wish it away.

I now know how little teachers are paid; probably not enough to even compensate for the work they are doing let alone the work I think they should be doing. I now know that the decision to cancel school at 1:00 instead of 4:00 is far more complex than I could have ever imagined; weighing political factors, policy decisions, economics, and even physical safety threats. In America, the culture drives people to create change and make progress, and I now see the consequences (positive and negative) of a society with different priorities.

This casserole of wishes and realities, this complicated mess of life, is forcing me to let go of my illusions. Which is good because it means that I am beginning to grasp the arrogance of what I hoped to accomplish in eight months as an ETA. But it’s also deeply painful because letting go of what I want for myself includes letting go of things I want for my students. I want the world for them, but my time and my resources are so much smaller than the universe.

So where do I go from here? How do I choose where to invest what I do have to offer? Do I choose the student most likely to succeed in hopes that they’ll pay it forward one day? Do I choose the students who nobody thinks will succeed and swallow the reality that they still might drop out next month? Do I stick with the whole class just to be an example of an adult who follows through or do I drop my classes and switch to intensive small group work? Do I pursue the goals I originally set for creating sustainable change in teachers and administrators or do I focus on making my last six weeks unforgettable for my students?

The teacher voice in my head says “those are great questions!” But the actual me wishes I also had some really great answers. Fortunately winter break is fast approaching and with it comes my American family! Perhaps I’ll become enlightened somewhere between trekking to Poon Hill and riding elephants in the terai ;)

What Teachers Want

Teachers want

Less standardized testing

Smaller class sizes

More engaging in-service days
More appreciation
More leveled books
Less paperwork
Cuter classroom decorations

In America

I hope they get the chance to take risks and try new things without fear of falling test scores, job insecurity, and budget cuts. I hope different styles of teaching gain recognition like different styles of learning so that all teachers can succeed in a field where 50% leave within their first five years.

 

In Cameroon

Teachers want

Practical training instead of theories from the 1950’s
Enough textbooks for every child
Math manipulatives
Chalk

I hope they get a stable and honest government with a commitment to equally distributing materials and appropriately allocating resources. I hope they get opportunities for professional development. I hope they get a sense of satisfaction for doing so much with so little.

 

In Nepal

Teachers want

Smarter students
More consistent attendance
More time to finish the book
To sit in the sun

I hope they start setting goals and creating solutions more often than sitting back and asking “ke garne?” I hope they get support rather than empty resolutions on “continuous assessment” or “differentiated instruction.” I hope the ones who go above and beyond get rewarded; they deserve it.

Spontaneous Holidays and Unexpected School Days

Perhaps one of the most challenging parts of teaching in Nepal is knowing whether or not the school will be open on a particular day. I have basically always taken it for granted that school would follow the calendar published months in advance, with an occasional but widely announced change due to a snow day or two. That is not how it happens here.

Don't assume that February and March will actually include that much school,
it's just too early to know about the unexpected stuff.

I live with another teacher from my school and the headmaster of another local school, so if anyone should be in the know about whether or not school is running, it’s me. But that hasn’t really been my experience. Here is a quick guide to determining whether or not school will be open based on my diligent observations and questioning in a desperate search for answers:

1. Be sure to say “see you tomorrow!” to everyone you encounter at school. Hopefully one of the dozens of students and teachers will pipe up if it has already been determined that school will be closed the following day.

2. Don’t count too strongly on strategy number one. It probably works 50% of the time.

3. Try to make friends with people who are well-connected to the grapevine. This provides access to rumors about upcoming bandhs or poorly publicized local holidays that are approaching. Any kind of a rumor, no matter how seemingly ridiculous, is enough to indicate that school may or may not be closed.

4. Don’t spend too much time asking people. When confronted directly with the question “Is there school tomorrow or not?” in English or in Nepali, most will say “there may be school tomorrow.” Which is a frustratingly vague answer.

5. Definitely don’t try to get an answer the night before. It’s too early. No one knows.

6. In the morning, check with your host family. Questions like “are you going to school today?” generally receive a more informative answer than “is there school today?” Even though it would seem like within three hours of school starting a decision would be clear. If you don’t get a clear answer, check back in 45 minutes; kind of like shaking a magic 8 ball until it gives you what you want.

7. If on the way to school you pass an entire soccer field full of students from grade three, don’t assume this means that school is closed. Simply make a note that class three will be smaller than usual.

8. When in doubt, take everything with you to school on the assumption that even though less than half of the staff have showed up the school will still run and you will suddenly be in charge of way more classes than normal. At least the student numbers will also be running below half so even when the headsir says “you take grades one AND two” the class size won’t be terribly overwhelming.

9. Even if school is running, don’t assume that it will be a full day. Assume that any adult approaching your classroom, at any time during the day, is coming to announce that everyone is leaving at 12:00 or 1:30 or right now. NOTE: DO NOT listen to older students who deliver the same message, always wait for a credible adult who you can identify if later asked “who told you to let all the grade ones go running out the gate?”

10. Laugh. Go with the flow. Bat away a single tear as the time you were going to use to teach that great new game with rhyming words is snatched out from under you. Enjoy the six kids who actually showed up – be sure you know their names and give them an extra star just for coming when no one else did. Sigh as you develop a deeper understanding of why teachers in Nepal are frustrated beyond belief and have no interest in lesson/unit planning. Why plan for a day that may or may not happen? Force a smile when you walk past the seven teachers enjoy their leisure period outside while you run between classes wondering how there can possibly be any spare adults on a day like today. Take the long way home when the day ends three hours early. Buy yourself a pack of oreos at the grocery store to remind yourself that somewhere in the world things are different. Then eat a huge plate of daal bhat to remind yourself that you’re in Nepal whether school runs today or not.

Classroom Management 2.0

I think I am successfully conquering class three.
And the use of the word "conquer" is very intentional because it's been a battle. 



They look so innocent.

After the catastrophic failure of the girls vs. boys point system in grade five and the rapid intensification of behavior management issues in grade three, I determined it was time for a completely redesigned strategy.

Just to recap...I'm working with students who are totally unaccustomed to any kind of classroom management system based on reward. The popular forms of discipline that I have witnessed include yelling at the whole class, hitting students (on their backs, heads, foreheads, etc.) and having students kneel on the cement floors. Although it should be noted that some teachers have managed to develop enough of a rapport with their students that they rarely require serious discipline.

I also wanted my system to address the most frequent problems preventing me from making the most of my instructional time; which has been severely limited due to holidays and bandhs. Problems like frequent absenteeism, constant request for bathroom/drink breaks, talking during class, not bringing a pencil or notebook to class, etc. I needed a way to limit negative behaviors and reward students who were already being awesome, but I wanted to make sure it would not be subjective or cumbersome for me to consistently enforce (part of the problem of the girls vs. boys points system). Based on some fantastic advice via a desperate facebook status, I was reminded that for kids new to behavior management the more immediate the consequences (positive and negative) the better.

And STARS was born.

Here's how it works. Students earn stars for various good things and spend them as they choose -- either by choosing to misbehave during class or by cashing them in for tangible rewards. I use a marker to draw the stars in the front of each child's notebook which means that suddenly I no longer have kids forgetting their book at home. Miraculous! I always have markers in my bag and it takes me less than a second to draw a star so the day-to-day doesn't require me to bring any extra materials or remember who earned what yesterday.

A lot of people have asked, "But don't the students add their own stars to get more prizes?" which is a really legitimate concern. So far I haven't had any problems. I talked about it on the first day and told students that if I caught them cheating by drawing their own stars I would take away ALL the stars. I said it really dramatically and even let my co-teachers translate the warning into Nepali. I usually use the markers that I brought from the U.S. so the colors are slightly different than the standard sign pens you find in Nepal. I told the kids that I could look at the colors and know that it wasn't from my marker. In reality, the kids just aren't that good at drawing stars so it would be obvious if they tried to add their own.

All students get four stars just for showing up on Sundays. In retrospect, it's a little bit high considering they can start earning prizes at five stars but it was a worthwhile decision to get the system going. Plus it encourages kids to show up at school on the first day of the week which is also the day that I am most likely to start something new and the higher the attendance the less re-teaching I have to do later in the week.

Each day I try to offer at least one opportunity to earn a star during class. Sometimes we play a team game and everyone on the winning team gets a star. Sometimes my co-teacher assigns homework and anyone who has it done, BEFORE class, gets a star the next day. Sometimes I forget and there aren't any opportunities for a star but when students ask I'm just honest and say "maybe tomorrow."

Of course students can also spend stars during class. It costs one star to go to the bathroom or get a drink during my class. For me, this is huge. I hate deciding when kids can and can't use the restroom. It's not okay with me for everyone to need to go at the beginning of class, but I'm also unwilling to arbitrarily decide who gets to go and who doesn't. As a friend likes to say "it was only four years ago that these kids were toilet trained" and I certainly don't want to be the one responsible for a kid who really really has to go not quite making it. In another miracle, the 25 tiny bladders that used to be nearing an explosion two weeks ago have suddenly synced to the school schedule and I rarely have anyone asking to leave the room.

Students can also spend stars by choosing to create disruptions during class. Most of the time it's enough for me to walk towards the offenders and take the cap off my black board marker (thus indicating that I am about to cross out someone's star.) I always have the marker in my hand when I'm teaching anyways and I love that it's a non-verbal method. The students stop what they're doing to disrupt class and they don't even get the satisfaction of interrupting my train of thought or forcing me to stop giving directions. Perfect.

For students who opt not to misbehave, do assignments, and regularly come to class stars can be spent on prizes.

• 5 Stars: choice of pencil, eraser, or sharpener
• 10 Stars: new notebook
• 20 Stars: lunch with Miss Rachel

Pencils, erasers, and sharpeners are all pretty cheap. And I don't mind spending money on them because it means that I no longer have trouble with kids not having a pencil. At the very least, there's always a friend nearby who has an extra. Similarly with notebooks, I know that finances are not great for all my students and this gives them an easy way to get the supplies they need. I don't care if they use the notebook for my class or someone else's. I have also learned that kids LOVE drawing copies. These are just notebooks without lines, but most parents don't spend their money on them. So students can now decide whether they want a lined copy or a drawing copy (they call notebooks copies because they are mostly used to copy whatever the teacher has written on the board.)

The prize of getting to eat lunch with me is admittedly a bit vain. But it's also a huge hit. I had two boys in fifth grade cash in all 20 of their hard earned stars for this last week. I met them for lunch and we walked to a nearby restaurant and shared some momos. Feeding myself and two students cost me all of... one dollar.

In an effort to get students to save their stars, (another good life lesson to be earned from a classroom economy), new prizes will be unveiled the next time we have school.

• 15 Stars: a medium sized chocolate bar (based on a poll of students' favorite candy.)
• 15 Stars: a small box of colored pencils (a nice addition to the drawing copy.)
• 25 Stars: a printed photo of me and the student (because I would love an excuse to take pictures with my kids and as a child I would have jumped to the moon with excitement to have a picture with me and any of my student teachers.)
• 30 Stars: an English picture book

I anticipate that the story books will become a fast favorite based on student reactions when I bring mine to class. What more could an English teacher want than students on their best behavior clamoring for the opportunity to earn a new book?

For now, I'm extremely happy with the STARS system. Since I get paid WAY more than the average Nepali teacher I have the funds to support a system based on store-bought prizes. Normally I work hard to avoid doing things at the school that the average teacher wouldn't have the resources to do herself. But I have two solutions for this: 1) prizes for this system don't have to be store bought and the next time I do a teacher training at the school we're going to talk about some ideas for no-cost rewards. 2) I have seen prize distributions after school games days where winners of the banana eating contest go home with three new copies and two pencils...so somewhere in the tangle of bureaucracy and lack of administration there is money to purchase things that the school thinks are important.

Why are your cheeks so puffy? Oh because you just ate a whole banana at once.

Now I just have to convince the headsir that supporting a classroom management system might be more beneficial to society than rewarding the kid who can shove a whole banana into his/her mouth the fastest...

Sigh, only one enormous institutionalized problem at a time.

Grade One Art: Update

My grade one co-teacher walked to the front of the room in the middle of my art lesson last week. She stopped me and reached for the textbook, you remember the one that is half social studies and half art.

She then proceeded to tell me that I should stop teaching art, but should instead go back to the beginning of the social studies content because there are many new students...

It's true that there are some new kids in class. But I just spent a weekend dying beaten rice a variety of colors and then drying it in the sun so that I had something to use a medium for teaching mosaics.

So we're doing at least one more art lesson.

Education FAQ

**So apparently this post is a repeat and I wasn't so slow to answer people's questions after all. Sorry for the lack of new information. I'll try to get another post up soon.**

Approximately ten billion years ago I promised to answer the questions about the Nepali educational system and my school that people sent to me. Then life happened. But I didn’t forget so here are some long awaited answers to a variety of queries.

 

What do the children do for lunch? Some go home, some buy something from a vendor nearby, some bring something small from home, some do not eat at school.

 

Do they have recess? No. There is a 10 minute break between 2-3 period and a half hour for lunch.

 

What about gym class? No. Arm raises during assembly, but that shouldn’t really count since most of them do more moving during class.

 

Do you have parent teacher conferences? Results day is when parents come to pick up report cards for the term. Perhaps some conversations go on during this time, but nothing as formal as a conference.

 

Do you see a difference in how they speak English with you as opposed to their regular Nepali teacher? I see a difference in my English sometimes since I have picked up some of their bad habits in order to be more understandable! (The s sound at the beginning of a word is difficult so you often hear an “i" sound before words like ischool, istudy, etc. and I definitely do this sometimes.) I try to correct the little mistakes that their regular teachers might have a hard time honing in on since English is also their second language; things like he vs. she, when to use good morning vs. good afternoon, sir vs. ma’m or miss, etc.

 

The biggest difference between me and the majority of my co-teachers is that I am willing to move more slowly through the content because I put a big emphasis on comprehension; when I am teaching by myself I move extra slow because I can’t translate tricky things into Nepali so I have to spend enough time doing actions in front of the class to get the message across. (Some tricky ones lately: haystack, millet, and horn – the instrument that none of the kids have ever seen as opposed to the thing sticking off of goats and buffaloes that they see every day.)

 

How large an area does the school serve? I walk about one kilometer to get to school. I know students who come at least twice as far as I do. I would guess that the longest walkers probably go for about an hour, but I’m not sure. There are also students whose families actually live outside the Kathmandu valley. The families have chosen to send one or more children into the valley to get a better education. These kids live at hostels nearby, but some of them went home before Dashain and won’t come back until after Tihar because the trip is long. One student told me his family lives in a village and to get home he spends one day in a micro and then two days walking!

 

How do the kids get to/from school? Only expensive private schools have buses. Most of my students walk. Some of them get dropped off by parents on a motorcycle, and when it rains I sometimes see a few getting out of a microvan which means they spent the 10 rupees to catch a ride that day.

 

Do the boys wear their ties during recess? Yes. Ties are required for both genders at all times. Some of the littlest ones have various clip-on systems since they don’t know how to tie them yet. (But I also saw a kindergarten girl helping some of the boys the other day and she was a pro!) I will occasionally use ties as collateral when I loan pencils to students who don’t have one.

 

My host brother, who goes to a private high school in Kathmandu, forgot his tie the other day, completely by accident. He rode the microbus for about 40 minutes to get to school and when they saw he didn’t have a tie, they sent him home. So at 7:15 he was done for the day. Sounds even easier than trying to convince your mom that you should stay home sick!

 

What games do the kids play? Beat each other up, steal each other’s pencils, try to hide from the American teacher under the desks or behind the pillars…oh, did you mean games outside of class?!? I see kids playing tag, ping-pong, and what I think is like hide-and-seek. I’m sure they have other games that I can’t pick out from the mob of running children. I taught my grade two students how to play Mrs. Fox What Time Is It and thought that maybe that would become a popular game. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of confusion about this – the kids don’t know when to say mr. or mrs. (gender-pronouns again), most of them can’t tell time, and they definitely haven’t thought through the strategy of taking smaller steps – I don’t really care because I’m just trying to get them to practice telling time, but sometimes I wonder why they think the game is fun.

 

When the kids graduate from this school, how many will go on for additional education? Some definitely will. Those who can afford it will go to a private school for “+2” which is like grades 11 and 12. Then there is bachelor’s and after that masters. Some will continue coming to Kitini where +2 classes are offered from 5:00am until 9:30am. I don’t have a good sense of how many, I know that education is respected but I also know that a degree doesn’t guarantee you a job and some students will go straight to work. There are already kids dropping out in grade two, so my guess is that most of the ones who stick around until grade ten will continue but that won’t be all the students I’m working with now.

 

***

 

Hopefully that answered some of your ponderings. If you have any other questions feel free to post them in response to this, and I’ll answer them…. probably sometime next year!

Coming Soon…

-          STARS: a review of my latest attempt at classroom management

-          Games: why 25% of the school days were not instructional the past two weeks

-          And other important reflections on my first two months of teaching

Fifth Period

Alternatively Titled: The Adventures of an American General Education Major, Fresh Out of College, Teaching Grade One Art in a Nepali Classroom

 

Me and the grade ones with our napkin flower collage projects.

I can’t remember if I have previously revealed that awhile ago my grade one co-teacher asked me not to teach English anymore. It’s not actually as bad as it sounds since grade one is supposedly English medium which means all subjects should be taught in English. Long story short, I now teach a subject where the government textbook is titled “My Social Studies and Creative Arts.”

 

In the past five or six weeks, we have completed the remaining chapters from the social studies section. So the rest of the book is for creative arts including topics like: collage, clay, and printmaking. In general, I find the idea of doing art with adorable children pretty appealing. We have already done some step-by-step drawings on the board and the kids are surprisingly attentive during this activity. But the more serious the crafts become the more materials and preparation are required.

 

I always try to be cognizant of the fact that my presence at Kitini is temporary. My goal is to use creative new teaching strategies that I think the teachers could use again without too much additional effort. If I bring in outside materials, I try to select items that can be found for little or no cost, or that I can purchase and leave behind. When I make games or flashcards, they are either durable enough to be reused or made out of scraps of blank paper I cut out of the margin of the notebook I use for planning. I want to give teachers as few reasons as possible to dismiss what I’m doing as something they could do, on their own, after I’m gone.

 

With this attitude in mind, I spent a pretty decent amount of time during the Dashain holiday pondering how to teach art with little to no conventional art materials. I already have several boxes of crayons that I use with the kids so simple drawing, coloring, and relief printing is easy. (For paper I usually just have the kids use their regular notebooks, but I’ll have to find a way to obtain something else when we start using wet materials like glue and paint.) For collage, there is always the option of using old newspapers. In brainstorming ways to get color I thought about having the kids use crayon on the newspaper before tearing it into pieces. Then I realized that yellow and pink napkins are also easy to find and cheap. Thus was born the napkin based flower collage activity which you will see below. I have one, half dried, black inkpad that we will probably use to do fingerprints or stamping at some point. And I have already made up some homemade play-dough with flour and water. I will need a larger batch to use it with a whole class, but I’m thinking about showing the teachers how to make it at a future workshop so letting them do the mixing will solve that problem. Mosaics can be made with practically anything; I even found a cute turtle craft using a paper plate and lentils. If anything, I KNOW that lentils are available here.

 

I did purchase some food coloring in the city, but that is beyond what I expect teachers to do. According to the internet there are also lots of ways to make your own natural paint dyes! I wish I was kidding. After reading up on flour based paints and vegetable colors, I concluded that taking a nature walk to gather plants and sticks/grass to use as brushes would be a super eco-friendly and fun activity. But there’s also a lot of ambitious things going on in my all-natural first grade art class imagination, so I decided that should wait until the end of the unit. I did find out that the grocery store sells old 6x6 egg crates for one rupee each so once we get to painting I have the perfect containers.

 

Fast forward to the end of Dashain and the start of school. I had planned a no-frills drawing activity for the grade ones with extra time to play “over-under” the exciting game of passing a ball around the circle alternating between giving it over your head or between your legs! Seriously though, it’s a huge hit. On special occasions I make up times and we race to do it even faster! Sometimes I worry that I get too much of a power trip by working with six year olds who will do practically anything.

 

Anyways, during said simple drawing activity I checked in with my co-teacher to make sure I wasn’t missing information about a magical supply closet somewhere full of art things.

 

Me: “Social studies siddhyo. Ahile art?” Social studies is finished. Now art?

Teacher: “Yes.”

Me: “Materials chha ki chaina?” Materials exist or no?

Teacher: blank stare

Me: “Paint chha ki chaina? Brushes? Glue?”

Teacher: “Paint no, small glue.”

Me: “No paints, no brushes, maybe a little bit of glue?”

Teacher: “Yes.”

 

This conversation confirmed my earlier suspicions that I shouldn’t count on having much to work with, and I gave myself an invisible gold star for accurately anticipating the situation.

 

 

 

* * *

 

The next day I came to class armed with colored napkins, some cheap glue bottles I found at the grocery store, and a sample flower collage. I displayed my sample to generate interest and then had the kids watch me make another one before sending them back to their seats and looking for the quietest students to get their materials first. 

As I am passing out napkins, my co-teacher scurries over to the always locked cabinet in the first grade classroom. I know she has the key and I have seen it opened before… it’s full of crumpled up old papers and some wooden boards made to stand up with paintings of different family members on them. No sign of crayons, markers, or other consumable items. A moment later she whips out a stack of vibrantly colored tissue paper! Where did that come from? I have yet to see tissue paper sold anywhere in this country so I certainly wasn’t expecting it to show up in my school.

 

So maybe there is more to that cabinet than I previously thought. While the kids are happily ripping their napkins and getting glue all over the tables I go over and ask if I may have the key to take a look for myself, just in case there are any other buried treasures. The teacher hands me the key and when I open the door and start rummaging underneath piles of trash she says, “Tell what you need and I get.” But I don’t even know what to ask for and I really just want to see for myself. So I ask her to give out more pink napkins and keep digging.

 

 

 IT’S ACTUALLY A SUPPLY CLOSET!

THERE ARE SUPPLIES IN IT!

 

I find all sorts of good stuff like full color printed, laminated, English flash cards! A class set of dice! Copies of old exams (which I have been asking to see for weeks now!) Blank chart paper in several colors! A pocket chart! An old clock – exactly what I’ve been wishing for in class two where we are learning to tell time and really struggling to understand that the hour hand doesn’t always exactly point to the number. Large print stories to go with each chapter for the social studies book provided by Rotary International! More wooden figures with people and animals!

 

PAINT!

 

I’m not even irritated that no one thought it would be a good idea to tell the volunteer English teacher, “hey so we have a whole cabinet full of laminated words, letters, and flashcards in English if you wanted to use them….”

 

Mostly I’m over the moon about the paint. (And let me tell you, this whole thing would have played out very differently if I had spent my Saturday boiling vegetables to make natural dyes and then come to class and watched my teacher pull paint out of the cabinet. My amusement would have been significantly less.)

 

My joy and delight led me to spend my lunch hour sorting and organizing the cabinet while I simply basked in the availability of so many things I had been pondering making myself. If there had been an earthquake, I would have died extraordinarily happy underneath that cabinet. 

 

 

Please note that the before picture was after I'd already been digging for 20 minutes :)

 

Present Tense Nostalgia

(From Thursday October 3, 2013)

So today I was standing outside the grade nine, section A classroom at the end of the day. I was waiting for my afterschool poetry club students to filter in while most of the kids headed home. In the past week, I have noticed a dynamic change with a lot of my littlest students. They are definitely not nervous around me and wherever I go (in school or out on the street) I can hear little kids shouting “Good Morning Miss!” When I put my hands on my hips and say “morning?” at 3:00pm they don’t turn red anymore; they just smile and shout even louder “Good AFTEEEERNOOON Miss!” Today, I was standing on the second floor balcony, waiting for my own program to start, waiting to move on with my day, my plans, my life, and all the while my students were waving up at me as they ran out the gate.

And it hit me. I’m going to leave. One day, they will wave at me for the last time.

Obviously, I knew this coming in and I know that this happens to teachers every year: they get attached and then they have to say goodbye. But the realization that I too will become a blip on their radars and that I won’t always hear their footsteps running up behind me (but then suddenly slowing down as if that would convince me they’ve been walking down the hall the whole time!)…it drew up a little wave of sorrow. One might say I was “being nostalgic about now.”

I am so lucky. I am so lucky that after six weeks I have grown to love these kiddos. Even the ones who beat each other or pretend to cry to get out of class. Even the girl who I watched take her pencil, throw it out the window into the small field that backs up to the school, and then shrug her shoulders at me to say “sorry, I can’t do any work today. I don’t have a pencil.” I am so lucky that I get to stay her for another five months to savor all the yelling and laughing and bilingual confusion. I am so lucky that at the end of a week of failed behavior management systems and MIA co-teachers, the good still outweighs the frustrating-irritating-overwhelming-shocking-saddening-craziness so dramatically that today I stood watching them leave and was practically crushed by how much I will miss them.

Repost of one my favorite photos.