After waking up early again this morning, I headed out to the village outskirts of Kolkata with the girls and 3 teachers from my school and 2 of the teachers who came with me from the United States. It was a very enlightening and insightful day. The girls go out to the government schools in the villages every six weeks and teach the children in various villages outside of Kolkata. Some of the villages are right off the main road, while others are a 20 or 30 minute walk in from the road. The bus (no AC) drives along the road and drops off a few of the girls at each village, sometimes with a teacher, and they walk into the village and work with the children there on math and English.
I interacted a lot with the children of the village, taught a few lessons to give the girls a break, and generally just watched what was happening in the classrooms and in the village. Got quite a few good snaps today and saw another side of Kolkata that I had not seen before and definitely had some experiences that I would not have gotten any other way. Watching the village children today was a lesson in how to make learning happen with nothing except minds and a willingness to do it. These children have nothing and yet I saw them learning multiplication, translate Bengali into English, and demonstrate true comprehension of what they were taught. Recitation and group learning appears to be a key component of how these students are able to recall information in detail. I am seeing many things, learning much more, and contemplating how to incorporate some of the best that I have seen into my own classroom when I get back.
I interacted a lot with the children of the village, taught a few lessons to give the girls a break, and generally just watched what was happening in the classrooms and in the village. Got quite a few good snaps today and saw another side of Kolkata that I had not seen before and definitely had some experiences that I would not have gotten any other way. Watching the village children today was a lesson in how to make learning happen with nothing except minds and a willingness to do it. These children have nothing and yet I saw them learning multiplication, translate Bengali into English, and demonstrate true comprehension of what they were taught. Recitation and group learning appears to be a key component of how these students are able to recall information in detail. I am seeing many things, learning much more, and contemplating how to incorporate some of the best that I have seen into my own classroom when I get back.
 |
| This is the deaf/mute girl that was learning the alphabet quickly. |
No comments:
Post a Comment