Hi Everyone,
Sorry that I have been out of touch for the past week. I have been super busy with my first week of school and was away for the weekend so have not had a lot of time to blog. I also must mention that for some unknown reason the Internet fails to work well at night, which of course is really when I have time to get online and blog, so it proves a little hard. Any who, I am trying to catch up today and will post two posts! First I wanted to write about my first week of school as I have been getting many questions about it!
This past Monday was my first day of school and I was both excited and scared for it! I am currently working with another volunteer named Luiz from Brazil who has been here for two months. I was happy to hear that I would be working with him at first to learn about the class and see how he runs things. What I first realized about the school was that there was not a set group of kids, it is more informal in the sense that they come whenever they can. We do have about 5 regulars who come every day but we also often get new children who come, which proves hard in terms of levels and lessons. I leave for work around 9 and get in a Tuk Tuk, which is an auto rickshaw that drives me to the slum. We arrive there around 9:15 AM and walk to our classroom, which is actually just another shack in the slum. We ring the bell thing once we get there and slowly the children trickle in. At about 9:30 AM we start the class. Luiz is really good with them and yet also has them under control, which I am extremely happy about! He has them come in and put there shoes all in a row and go into formation. He uses the military terms, Attention and At Rest with them, which they seem to love. Then we do a Hindi prayer and the Indian National Anthem. We then spend about an hour stretching and doing some yoga with the kids. This part of the class is just as important as the actual learning because most of these kids do no get any form of exercise and it is good to get their blood moving. We also do a short hygiene lesson with them by bringing them out to the tap and washing their hands and then cutting their nails. The hygiene lesson is the most important thing we do because most of these kids are extremely dirty. Their hair is usually matted and greasy and they wear the same clothes everyday. Living in the slum, they are extremely susceptible to water born diseases and illness. Of course, as they are generally not clean, they are even more susceptible. Thus, I take this part of the class very seriously! After this we have been splitting the children up into two groups, ones under 6 and ones over. I have been taking the bigger kids as Luiz is leaving and I will have to be head teacher. I do about a half an hour of English and a half an hour of Math. This is the hardest part of the day for me because, while we have already split up the kids, even though they are over the age of six, this does not mean they are at the same level at all. Children in India are required to go to school starting at age seven, however, of my 10 older kids, only 2 actual go to "real" school. Thus, I have kids who can barley say the alphabet and kids you can read English decently. Same goes with math in that, I have two kids who can do multiplication and some that don't know what a plus sign is. My mother has been giving me some good pointers on how to deal with the situation of different levels, but not having kids come everyday proves so hard. After the lesson we do some games until the class is over, around 12:00 noon, and then prepare for family visits.
I would say that the family visits are my favorite part of the day. After each class we go to one family a day, one of our kids families, and see the lifestyle they live. We ask questions like how old the kids are, whether they go to the government school, how many siblings there are, and how they feel about education. For me as a Sociologist, the family visit is so intriguing to see what home the kids come from and why they act the way they do. It seems to have proved that the kids who are disciplined have younger mothers and are generally the oldest, while the well disciplined ones have older siblings. Almost all of the mothers of the children I have visited had their first child at 15, so it seems completely understandable that they would lack the knowledge they need to raise a child. Most of the homes are one room shacks where the entire family lives. They usually have a court yard where they do most if the cooking and washing. It really makes you think about how lucky we are to have the lives we do.
I feel that perhaps the most important thing I could do is try to give them a good basis for discipline and education; and attempt to give them time to be children, exspecially the girls who often can not come to class because they have to work in the rag field or watch their little siblings. One of my favorite students is a little girl about the age of eight named Pooja. She is so sweet and has a passion for learning but can barely come to class because she is always with her little brother who is about 6 months and is not toilet trained. In the slum they can't afford diapers so instead the infants just run around pants less. Thus, we can't let them into our classroom because there are just to many messes. However, we let Pooja in on Wednesday because we felt so bad and of course, guess who got peed on lol! Of course I feel like I don't want to turn her away but how can I make an exception for her and not the others, as most have some little brother or sister who they are supposed to be watching. I just wish I could give them each a better life but I just have to hope that what I am doing with them is making a small dent in their lives, allowing them to see they can achieve what ever they want!
That is it for now folks! Going to have dinner and then try to post about my weekend trip to Pushkar, so stay tuned!
Hope all of you in the States are doing well and surviving the frigid winter that I hear you are being attacked by!
Love Always,
Alyssa
Sorry that I have been out of touch for the past week. I have been super busy with my first week of school and was away for the weekend so have not had a lot of time to blog. I also must mention that for some unknown reason the Internet fails to work well at night, which of course is really when I have time to get online and blog, so it proves a little hard. Any who, I am trying to catch up today and will post two posts! First I wanted to write about my first week of school as I have been getting many questions about it!
This past Monday was my first day of school and I was both excited and scared for it! I am currently working with another volunteer named Luiz from Brazil who has been here for two months. I was happy to hear that I would be working with him at first to learn about the class and see how he runs things. What I first realized about the school was that there was not a set group of kids, it is more informal in the sense that they come whenever they can. We do have about 5 regulars who come every day but we also often get new children who come, which proves hard in terms of levels and lessons. I leave for work around 9 and get in a Tuk Tuk, which is an auto rickshaw that drives me to the slum. We arrive there around 9:15 AM and walk to our classroom, which is actually just another shack in the slum. We ring the bell thing once we get there and slowly the children trickle in. At about 9:30 AM we start the class. Luiz is really good with them and yet also has them under control, which I am extremely happy about! He has them come in and put there shoes all in a row and go into formation. He uses the military terms, Attention and At Rest with them, which they seem to love. Then we do a Hindi prayer and the Indian National Anthem. We then spend about an hour stretching and doing some yoga with the kids. This part of the class is just as important as the actual learning because most of these kids do no get any form of exercise and it is good to get their blood moving. We also do a short hygiene lesson with them by bringing them out to the tap and washing their hands and then cutting their nails. The hygiene lesson is the most important thing we do because most of these kids are extremely dirty. Their hair is usually matted and greasy and they wear the same clothes everyday. Living in the slum, they are extremely susceptible to water born diseases and illness. Of course, as they are generally not clean, they are even more susceptible. Thus, I take this part of the class very seriously! After this we have been splitting the children up into two groups, ones under 6 and ones over. I have been taking the bigger kids as Luiz is leaving and I will have to be head teacher. I do about a half an hour of English and a half an hour of Math. This is the hardest part of the day for me because, while we have already split up the kids, even though they are over the age of six, this does not mean they are at the same level at all. Children in India are required to go to school starting at age seven, however, of my 10 older kids, only 2 actual go to "real" school. Thus, I have kids who can barley say the alphabet and kids you can read English decently. Same goes with math in that, I have two kids who can do multiplication and some that don't know what a plus sign is. My mother has been giving me some good pointers on how to deal with the situation of different levels, but not having kids come everyday proves so hard. After the lesson we do some games until the class is over, around 12:00 noon, and then prepare for family visits.
I would say that the family visits are my favorite part of the day. After each class we go to one family a day, one of our kids families, and see the lifestyle they live. We ask questions like how old the kids are, whether they go to the government school, how many siblings there are, and how they feel about education. For me as a Sociologist, the family visit is so intriguing to see what home the kids come from and why they act the way they do. It seems to have proved that the kids who are disciplined have younger mothers and are generally the oldest, while the well disciplined ones have older siblings. Almost all of the mothers of the children I have visited had their first child at 15, so it seems completely understandable that they would lack the knowledge they need to raise a child. Most of the homes are one room shacks where the entire family lives. They usually have a court yard where they do most if the cooking and washing. It really makes you think about how lucky we are to have the lives we do.
I feel that perhaps the most important thing I could do is try to give them a good basis for discipline and education; and attempt to give them time to be children, exspecially the girls who often can not come to class because they have to work in the rag field or watch their little siblings. One of my favorite students is a little girl about the age of eight named Pooja. She is so sweet and has a passion for learning but can barely come to class because she is always with her little brother who is about 6 months and is not toilet trained. In the slum they can't afford diapers so instead the infants just run around pants less. Thus, we can't let them into our classroom because there are just to many messes. However, we let Pooja in on Wednesday because we felt so bad and of course, guess who got peed on lol! Of course I feel like I don't want to turn her away but how can I make an exception for her and not the others, as most have some little brother or sister who they are supposed to be watching. I just wish I could give them each a better life but I just have to hope that what I am doing with them is making a small dent in their lives, allowing them to see they can achieve what ever they want!
That is it for now folks! Going to have dinner and then try to post about my weekend trip to Pushkar, so stay tuned!
Hope all of you in the States are doing well and surviving the frigid winter that I hear you are being attacked by!
Love Always,
Alyssa
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