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.

Bandh

*Full disclosure: this is a long post and it doesn’t have pictures. Sorry! But if you’re willing to brave the long stretch of text I think it will be entertaining and you’ll find out how I broke my cardinal rule: don’t ever let a six year old tell you what is supposed to happen.

Today was my first experience with a Nepali bandh. The word is pronounced kind of like “bond” but with a stronger “aw” sound in the middle and a slight inhale/gasp at the end: b-AW-ndh. Literally bandh means closure. In practice, it is a fairly successful form of protest where an unhappy group of people decides to close down a certain portion of road. With the road closed to all vehicular transport, people do not go to work and most places are closed. This could mean all of Kathmandu, just a small section of the city, or any other place in the country. The bandh is “announced” which really means that it effectively travels through the grape vine, and then it may or may not happen.

Like many things in Nepal, bandhs come with a high degree of uncertainty. After hearing about the potential closure I asked many questions, to which I found very few answers.

-          Who is sponsoring the bandh?

-          Will police, ambulance, government, or tourists vehicles be allowed to travel?

-          Will our school be closed?

I really should have just conserved my oxygen because I still can’t answer any of those questions with complete certainty. Let me just tell you about the school aspect.

By American standards, today was a failure. At least 50% of the students were absent and for nursery-grade 10 there were only eight teachers, myself included! (By the way, starting in class 6 there are two or three sections for each grade so if you thought we were close to having someone to supervise each class, think again.)

When I arrived at 9:40, I was the only adult. I went to the teacher’s lounge and waited; hoping that another adult, preferably one who spoke the same language as all the students, might show up. At 10:00, the school peon rang the bell calling all the students to morning assembly. At this point I was nervous that he might ask me what to do with the two hundred children milling about, but then I decided that if no one else showed up I would either teach them all how to play the quiet game or do nothing and see how long before they just left on their own.

At 10:10, two other teachers and the principal appeared and we went outside for morning assembly. A few more adults straggled in during the meeting. The principal gave a lot of instructions in Nepali, the kids sang the national anthem, and then they filed off to their classrooms like any other day. I wandered from teacher to teacher asking “ke bhayo?” (what happened?) until I found someone who said that it had been decided that classes would run.

 If I had been principal, I would have immediately sat down and mapped out a plan for combining classes and assigning teachers. But that’s not quite how it went. Basically, each teacher grabbed an attendance book and headed to the corresponding classroom. I picked grade two because that’s normally where I start my day and I already knew that their regular teacher was not present. Since there were lots of unclaimed classrooms – meaning unsupervised children – the headsir called some of the smartest grade 10 boys and they divided up the rest. Perhaps this strategy could be employed in American schools when there aren’t enough subs, just pick your favorite student and let them teach. I don’t really know what happened in those classrooms because I had my own kiddos to worry about.

Oh, and by the way, since when I left for school that morning it had seemed pretty likely that classes would not actually run and everyone would be sent home, I had decided not to bring all of the supplies (textbooks, games, crayons, etc.) that I normally bring. Remember that book Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire? That’s about the only thing that could have made this day more ridiculous.

First period with grade two actually went pretty well. This was my second time teaching them by myself because my co-teacher was absent a few weeks ago. Plus there were only 16 kids today. We reviewed the adjectives that we have been talking about lately (fat, thin, tall, short, near, far, etc.) and then I made up a game that filled the rest of the time. When the bell rang I saw lots of teachers changing classes so I decided I should too. I created a writing and drawing assignment for the grade two students, wrote it on the board, tried to emphasize that I would be back later to make sure they did it, crossed my fingers, and left.

I spent second period with grade four. When I walked in there was an older boy standing at the front of the room, and the kids seemed under control. I asked what he was teaching and he said “nothing.” So I told him I would take this class and he could go to another room. Whether he went somewhere else or just walked home I have no idea.

This group of students is very eager (read get easily out of control with excitement) but I like them. Their regular English teacher is fantastic so they’re used to following directions and doing activities besides reading aloud in unison from the textbook. They told me the teacher had given them homework the day before so I checked it. Only two kids didn’t do it so I made them move to the back to finish the assignment; I let it slide but what really happened is that they moved to the back and copied someone else’s work so that they could join the rest of us in playing a game. But remember, there were tenth grade teachers today so standards were a little lower than usual.

We played run to the board with vocabulary words from the story they are reading, “The Very Bad Landlord.” Most of the kids really loved it, but there was one girl who was really shy and didn’t want to come when it was her turn. I was trying really hard to get her to play, and I had every intention of cheating a bit to help build her confidence, but then class ended. There is a little break between second and third period so I made all the other kids leave and kept her behind. I brought her up to the board and we practiced one-on-one the words that were up there. She actually knew a lot of them. I tried to convey that she could trust me to help and not to embarrass. I made a big deal out of shooing all the kids away from the window so that she could practice without an audience. I think she smiled at the end, either because she understood that I don’t hit kids who don’t know the answer or because I was letting her go join her friends outside.

One nice thing about teaching on my own is that I have full control over the feedback that students get when they struggle. The kids here are caught totally off guard when they don’t know how to respond to the question and I just whisper the answer so that they get to look successful in front of their peers. It’s so important for students to know what it feels like to get it right, especially the ones who are openly referred to as “very weak” or just ignored by most teachers.

Normally I don’t teach during third period, but not today. I headed back to the corridor with classes one and two. Since no one else came that way I took both classes. I quick scribbled the names of some colors on sheets of scrap paper I had grabbed during the break and motioned for all of the kids to follow me out to the courtyard.

After quickly reading over all the colors, I picked five of my most confused students. Their only job was to hold one of the papers high over their heads and I spread them out around the area. For the next 30 minutes I called out colors (or pointed to things of different colors) and the other kids ran to the corresponding sign. The whole activity attracted a lot of attention. At one point the principal, three other teachers, and some people who work at the food stand nearby were all spectating. (Remember, there were only eight teachers present so draw whatever conclusions you want about the fact that three of them decided the best use of their time was watching me try to corral the 40 students who speak the least amount of English in the entire school.)

There was only one casualty: a kid who was running with his pencil and fell so that the point stabbed into his palm. I felt really bad, but I have an especially hard time understanding crying children who are speaking Nepali so I sent him to one of the spectating adults. I think said teacher basically hit him on the back and told him stop crying. I went over and let him hold a color sign for the rest of the game.

Eventually the game lost its novelty and I ran out of creative ways to practice five colors so I lined the kids up ready to walk them back to class. They all ran, but whatever.

I decided I should spend a little more time with class one since they are small and they hadn’t had a teacher all day. Thank goodness I did have my run to the end cards (half pictures, half words). I had them work with a partner to match the words and pictures. I tried to teach two of my naughtiest boys how to share, but there is only so much you can do in one day of impromptu teaching with a language barrier.

I was just arranging the students to play a new game with the cards when two students, maybe seventh graders, came to the door. “Class one is going to…[lots of fast Nepali/English that I did not understand]” they said. I looked quite lost, but my students were all packing up their things and heading for the door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “Oh, we have to go practice running for children’s day tomorrow.”

Normally, I do not take seventh grade boys or first graders at their word. But given that tenth graders were teaching, and that yesterday (when the full staff was present) all classes had ended after third period so that the kids could practice for the Nepali equivalent of field day, it didn’t seem out of the question that another teacher would have sent the two boys to fetch the grade ones since the American teacher had clearly missed the memo on running practice.

I looked very seriously into the eyes of the smartest, most proficient English speaking girl in grade one and asked if this was true. She gave me a genuine smile and said “yes, we must go.”  And as soon as I said okay, the herd of first graders were screaming and running down the hall, across the courtyard, and out the school gate. Yes, out the school gate.

Honestly, I sort of thought I was done for the day; that the teacher who had sent the boys had organized large group games practice for the students since there weren’t enough teachers for actual instruction to take place. But I was quickly corrected when one of my co-teachers emerged from another classroom and asked something equal to “what the h*** is going on here?!?”

So there I was. Standing outside the door of a grade one class in a Nepali school, having just watched at least half of my students (and definitely all the boys) escape out the front gate with my permission. Did I know where the location for running practice was? No. Did I have any idea if my students were actually going to that mysterious location or if they were all halfway home? No. Did I know how many of the kids were gone or any of their names? No. Was I suddenly granted the ability to speak Nepali so as to explain the situation to the other teacher? No. Were the seventh grade boys who had started the whole mess anywhere to be found? Of course not.

Was any of this a problem? No.

The other teacher just told me that there was no practice today and shooed the students who hadn’t run fast enough to get away back into the classroom. I tried to ask about all the kids who were gone, but she told me just to teach the five who were left. Eventually the others came back, I don’t know who arranged that or how it happened, but whatever.

Approximately five minutes after I had a full class again more students, older girls this time, showed up at the door and said that school was closing and everyone could go home. While my students yelped with joy and grabbed their backpacks, I firmly planted myself in the doorway. No way was I going to fall for this again! But this time when I leaned out into the hallway the same teacher appeared and confirmed that yes, school would be closing. The principal had decided that we could not continue with so few teachers. Why this occurred to him hours after morning assembly I have no idea. 

So at 1:05, school ended. I went upstairs to get my umbrella and found the rest of the teachers already in the lounge waiting for tea to be delivered. We sat in the room together, one of the teachers offered to find me a good Nepali husband (he even asked if I had any specific criteria), we drank tea, and then we left.

When I was in Cameroon, our group used to say “if you’re not having a good day, you’re in the middle of a great story.” While today was not good in the way I might I have designed it, it was spontaneous and joyful in a lot of other ways. And it is most definitely an incredible story.