I have recently arrived home from buying pencils (with free sharpener and eraser), hair ties and imitation m&m’s called “Gems” = approximately Rs. 50 all up.
Today is Monday, 12th January 2010. I am sitting at our glass, round dinner table. Bertina is asleep on our couch. Gillian and Alyce have gone to the Internet café. Alyce will head to the hospital.
Every weekday I get personally taken by Sharad to Mother Teresa English Medium School.
I teach the higher standards. How they divide the students into their standards I am unsure of as three of the classes I teach are all from the age of 6 to 8.
School starts at 8am (8.30am) and I do not arrive until about 9am (9.30am). Punctuality isn’t valued in India. I never had any anyways. At 8am (8.45am) the children recite the equivalent pledge of allegiance of India and sing a national song (possibly the national anthem). Then the lessons begin.
When I first arrived I was surprised at the high quality of the school. From pictures I was expecting the children to be seated on the cold floor, concrete walls with no pictures or colour whatsoever and for the children to have limited English. At Mother Teresa, this is not the case. The school is well built of concrete, every room has a black board, every student has English textbooks for every subject, the windows are like balconies and have big corrugated iron sheets as shutters. There are no lightbulbs so this big open space in the wall is practical and important.
When you walk into the school from the side and main entrance, and open the little iron gate on your left is the first junior classroom. The next doorway is the entrance to the principal’s office. This is the front office. All it is are old desks, repaired with masking tape covered with files. Files in India are mainly handwritten into plain, poor quality exercise books but the people take great care with handling these. Sticky tapes to the door is a laminated sign clearly reading “PRINCIPALS OFFICE”. There is a little stool in front of this door which is always getting in the way. I don’t know why the stool is here. None of the children fear sitting on it or anything so it is not disciplinary. I just don’t know why it is there. The point is it blocks the entrance. The office is quite spacious and the Principal sits at a plastic chair behind a desk that is covered with a nice table cloth. She has a black telephone on her desk. In the office with her is a 2 year old student who learns English by pointing at pictures on the wall with a stick. The Principal and the 2 year old speak different languages as it is. So English is their common ground. She seems very fond of him. He is rather cute. On my first day she said “to be a teacher you must imagine what it is like to be that child”. She was very cheery and very nice. She seems like a capable woman to be running a school like Mother Teresa.
Next to the Principal’s office is an area covered by a red curtain. These are the washrooms. I have not been in here. You can smell them if you stand close. It’s not too bad. Just damp.
Directly opposite the Principal’s office are two other junior classes. These students sit on tiny brightly coloured plastic chairs. I don’t teach them but they are simply the cutest.
Up the concrete stairs and through another gate are the classes I teach. Again opposite the stairs are the long drops. These things flush but I can’t use them. Typical Westerner.
To the left of the stairs is one door. Through this door are four classes.
In the first section is my favorite class. (Yes, I have favorites.) 12 students here.
To the right is a solid wall (and a door with a second section and class). 30 to 50 very young (younger than 6) students approximately. I don’t teach this class.
Further along this wall is another door that opens into a third class. Again 30 – 50 kids. I don’t teach here. All younger than 6.
At the back of my favorite class is a paper thin wall which separates these students from the fourth section of the area. 40 – 50 students aged 6 – 8, I teach this class and it is hard work.
From the main door you can see all the way down to the back. To describe this properly I may have to draw it. The point is, these four classes are more or less in the same area and students move around the whole area to go to the bathroom, to get drinks and to come back again. There is a lot of noise that happens in this area which I can see the teachers find stressful. To me – so long as the kids are getting the work done and learning they can be as talkative as they like. I figure – they are only seven years old and probably never get to see each other outside of class. Other teachers do not seem to take my view. Children are punished for moving seats, for being talkative and generally messy. Punishment at Mother Teresa is another story. Let’s just say I wish to pursue a project that introduces a new disciplinary system.
Opposite this large room is another door with tiny class of 7 students. The school captain and vice captain are in this class. I have a feeling these are the eldest and smartest of the children at the school. Their English is excellent. Next to this class is another large class of 6 to 8 year olds. There are about 50 students. It is a fairly small room and incredibly difficult to teach in such a small space but kids are kids and they’re ok.
At a random time, the children have tiffin (recess). As a sign of love or gratitude or respect they give a bite sized portion of their food to the teacher, me. If I get worms – this will be why. Since my first week I have learnt tactics to avoid getting sick from all these random bites of food. Firstly, I remove myself from the class of 50 to the class of 7 or 12. Or I go outside for a few minutes until they forget I am around and finish their food.
The problem is, the food is so yummy I want to try all these home made bites.
Now I have seriously cracked down on hand washing. I feel better about accepting bites now but still wary. I am not allowed to refuse the food. You can only understand this if you are here. It’s like… refusing a nice thank you gift from a poor person. Hard to explain really but I am in India and sometimes it’s just how things happen. You go with it. So hand washing today, tomorrow – hand washing WITH SOAP. Then the next day, hand washing with soap followed by hand sanitizer – another project. (When I say “day” I mean day in India. Day doesn’t always mean 24 hours. Just like 10 minutes means one hour and 3.00pm means 5.30pm. Bottom line is, the food is really yummy and all the children bring very nice tiffin. Today (Monday week 2) I brought tiffin from our cook and gave portions to the children in the 12 sized class (my favorites). This concept was so alien to them. I was returning the gesture. The first three children couldn’t accept the portion but to the fourth child in the row I said the same things she had said to me earlier about taking the food and once she accepted – everyone did. I explained it was all vegetarian. And there was a moment of washed hands swapping my food for theirs as they till gave me portions in return. It was nice....
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