Village Outreach

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.

This is the deaf/mute girl that was learning the alphabet quickly.

                                                          

A Walk and Some Snaps

Instead of grabbing a taxi yesterday, I decided to walk home from school.  Had a great time interacting with people on the street and got some great snaps.  Amazing the ingenuity of the people here in Kolkata to get things done and combine old world technology with new world applications.  It was exciting to walk the streets and experience the sights, sounds, and smells of Kolkata.  It helped me to really get a feel for the heartbeat of the city and the people who inhibit it.

Chalk, Chalk, and more Chalk

I know that today I went through more chalk then I have ever used in my life.  My poor students had to keep going to find more chalk.  Getting them to talk and ask questions was a bit of a challenge today, but once I got them started they were actively engaged in the class.  They are used to listening, writing, and standing to read whole paragraphs, so my style is a bit different for them.  We are slowly getting used to each other and I am learning from them and have some higher, different expectations for my students when I get back to California.  Did a few demonstrations and modeling today in class and I think I kept on the timetable for completing all of the necessary coursework.  As one Indian teacher told me today, it is very difficult for them to incorporate modeling, group work, etc. when they have such a tight schedule to keep and so much curriculum to cover before each state or national board examination.  I hope that I can give them some quick ways to incorporate some different strategies and I am taking away some of the ways in which they are able to have students understand and work with a lot of content and knowledge.

Today, I really saw how each grade level is integrated into the grades above and below.  Looking at the curriculum, you can really see that each year builds upon the information from the year before.  The system is different in that each year they study all of the sciences and continue this each year until post-secondary.  It is easier this way to build upon prior knowledge, but it is also very content heavy with memorization.  I wondered today if the students actually understand the information they were reading, or if it was just memorization without comprehension of the topics.  I will explore this further in the coming weeks.

Staring with Questions

I had an entertaining day today working with the students and officially leading one class and co-teaching another class.  I also helped several groups of students work on the synopsis for their environmental and energy use projects.  An interesting aspect that was also apparent in Vietnam, is that the students do not ask questions and when I asked them for questions today, they just stared.  So, I told them that I could stay quiet too and then I stared back at them for about a minute.  Then, they finally began to ask questions and to answer my questions.  It was a fun time.  I did some exploration of the material with them on plant circulation and transport systems using some diagrams and strategies to see what they already knew and to review the material.  Once they figured out what I wanted from them, all of the students were really engaged in the discussions and writing down the information.  I hope that they can learn from me and that I will also learn many things from them.

My Teaching Schedule

The students are divided into houses similar to the British school system and within each grade, the students are divided into class groups (W = White, T = Tulip, etc.).  The teachers have about 5-6 classes a day with about 40-50 students in each class.  They see the 7 - 10 year students 2-3 times a week and the 12 year students about 4-5 times a week.  The 10 and 12 year students are sitting for open examinations at the end of the month, so the pressure is on for them to learn all the information and prepare for the exams.