Trying to teach English and enjoying it

I think it is about time to write something about my volunteer work here in India. This is my eight week of teaching Maths and English in Bindraban governmental primary school. The school has classes from 1st to 5th grade and it is about 10 children in each class so the school is not very big. There are only three teachers at the school which makes it 0,6 teachers in each class. The first four weeks we were four volunteers in this school and right now there is only me. We teach English and Maths to 1st and 2nd grade in the morning. In the afternoon I teach English in bridge class for girls from 5 to 18 years. The school is quite nice, but if someone had picked it up and placed it somewhere in Norway it would of course not meet our standards; It is amazing what you can get used to. There are only three classrooms so we are two classes in one room and one other class always sit outside. The students have reading books for Hindi and copy books and they are supposed to have pencils and rubber, but I never understand where all the pencils and erasers disappears. So every day we bring a box with pencils, sharpeners, erasers, chalk and colours together with English books, Maths books and the worksheets,memory cards and flash cards we make all the time. The children have desks and plastic chairs, but there is no desk for the teacher in our class room. By the way, there is one thing I never can get used to; the concrete floor is so uneven that all the desks are (how to say...) tilting. It is really annoying me, but the children don't seem to worry about it.

I never planned to work with kids here in India. I wanted to work with women empowerment and that's why I chose India and this particulare camp. The information we got before we arrived recommended to prepear by learning some songs and games in English for the children, but of course I didn't do this because I was not supposed to work with kids. Well, now I have learnt at least five songs for kids in English and even more playground games, and the songs are haunting my brain 24/7:

"Say good morning, say good morning.
How are you? How are you?
Time to start the lesson, time to start the lesson.
Now, now, now. Now, now, now.
Namaste! (Shouting)"

In the beginning I didn't understand how I was going to survive working in the school. I did feel that it was getting a little bit better every day so I hoped that after a while I would feel more comfortable (as you can read in an earlier post of my blog). I was right, but it took me about four weeks before I felt comfortable. After three weeks I felt that it was OK to go to work, but that I couldn't teach the children anything and I still wanted to sink into the ground every monday morning. Many of the volunteers are working only for three weeks. I am very glad that I stay here for as many weeks as I am. I think that it makes a big differense. I guess that this is not that important if you are doing other things like construction work, environmental avareness campains or when working with animals, but at least I think that it is important when working with and being so close to young children.

So I never planned to work with kids and now I have been with them monday to friday for eight weeks and what has happened is that I look foreward to go to school everyday! I don't have to prepare so much now as in the beginning because I basically know what I am going to do the next day. I know the children and I know what to expect from them. This means that I know that they are going to drive me crazy when we play Memory cards by picking up the cards before we have started playing, I know that they will bite of the tip of their pencil, tilt their head to the side and ask; "please, ma'am, please, sharpener, please", I know that they will start to work in the back of their English book and match the picture of a cat with the word "butterfly", and I know that if I have their attention for five minutes it will be a miracle. But I also know that they will shout my name when I come into the classroom in the morning and give me high five, I know that I will have five kids hanging in my arms when it's playtime, I know that they will help me carrying the little blackboard when we go outside, and I know that they will proudly bring me their book and show me when they have finished an exercise.

I have eight students in my group in the morning class which last from 9:45 to 12:00. We have devided first and second class into three groups and one volunteer is responsible for each group. I am teaching the group with the slower children and this means that I teach basics like ABC, counting the numbers 1-10 and 2+2=4. Some of the children know most of the letters but don't understand spelling and some of the children have problems with following the dots to make an A. So the day is spent by practising writing letters and number, playing Memory game, recognise and match letters on the blackboard and counting stones. In the afternoon, 15:45-17:30, my two Norwegian room mates, Ida and Sirvej, and I teach English to girls from 5 years to 18 years. In this classes we focus on conversation in English and to actually use the language. We have one topic every week and the topics have been my self, family, hobbies, clothes; so really basic English. The girls know quite many words, but they don't speak much. We have a project executive who helps us to translate Hindi and English and in that way we can have conversations. The girls are quickly bored and prefer to play badminton, but we try to keep their attention at least the first hour. After that it's PLAYTIME:-)