Yesterday we spent the day meeting with various teachers to figure out our elective classes. I am most likely taking Yoga in the mornings, and then alternating between Bollywood dance and jewellery making in the afternoons. I also want to take Hindi lessons, though Vedika (my host sister) has been very patient in teaching me the letters and some basic words. Last night my mom, dad and Vedika had some sort of party to go to, so I got to bond with the 17 year old tenant who is living in my house- Sweety. She is currently studying at the university in Banaras (=Varanasi) to be a doctor. I am so impressed with how mature she is and that she is able to live in such a crazy city by herself at such a young age. She has big ambitions and is truly the sweetest girl. We have a pretty severe language barrier, but I reassure myself that I am just helping her with her English as we struggle through conversations. Last night she came to visit me in my room (after knocking on our shared window between our rooms) and told me about her family and how much her parents are giving up to send her here.
My time in my homestay has made me truly appreciate the life I have at home. I know it sounds corny but it really took me stepping into another family's life to fully understand how much I have that I don't even think about. These people are always so happy, and it has made me realize that people really only need the basics to live fulfilled lives. In America there is an overall mentality that more is better, and I've decided that isn't really true at all. My time here has reminded me of a Happiness lecture I had freshman year in Lifespan Development. We learned that more money only impacts the happiness of the poorest people, and that after a certain level (one that most of us would consider pretty low) it makes no difference. I love that Vedika doesn't think twice about not having a DVD player or iPod and sings her own music to perform her Bollywood dances for me.
Today was my first day at my "internship" at Little Stars School. Nikki and I decided that we both wanted to teach there and so we headed over together after my 7am yoga class. Unfortunately they weren't really sure how to use us, and I spent the first hour teaching a basic addition lesson to a kindergarten class. Normally I would have loved it, but the kids didn't speak any English, so it was very frustrating to try and help them when I couldn't really explain anything. The teacher then asked me to call them up one at a time to the board to count things, and so that took at least 30 minutes. I struggled to understand why she found this to be a productive use of time since there were over 30 kids in the classroom. After that I met up with Nikki who had a sort of similar experience with the 4 year olds when she tried to teach Old MacDonald. We asked the principal if we could work with older kids who spoke more English and so she put us in a 1st grade classroom during their "social studies lecture".
The "our helpers" lecture consisted of the teacher writing questions about various occupations on the board and then having the kids answer out loud. Then the kids were to write down the questions and answers and we were supposed to check their work. The teacher's English was not very good and so there ended up being a lot of misspelled words and grammatically awkward sentences. My favorite was "who does the cobbler do?", answer "fixes shoes". It was hard for me to fix the children's work because so much of what they were copying was completely wrong. One girl wrote "delivers" instead of "dilivers" which was on the board and I had a small moral dilemma over whether I should correct it to the wrong thing.
I really wish that I could get involved in curriculum development and some of the actual teaching. I also appreciate all of the worksheets I completed in grade school, because it is very inefficient to have the children completing work in notebooks which then have to be individually checked before they can move on to the next exercise. Hopefully we will be able to work with middle schoolers tomorrow and actually do something that feels a bit more meaningful.
My time in my homestay has made me truly appreciate the life I have at home. I know it sounds corny but it really took me stepping into another family's life to fully understand how much I have that I don't even think about. These people are always so happy, and it has made me realize that people really only need the basics to live fulfilled lives. In America there is an overall mentality that more is better, and I've decided that isn't really true at all. My time here has reminded me of a Happiness lecture I had freshman year in Lifespan Development. We learned that more money only impacts the happiness of the poorest people, and that after a certain level (one that most of us would consider pretty low) it makes no difference. I love that Vedika doesn't think twice about not having a DVD player or iPod and sings her own music to perform her Bollywood dances for me.
Today was my first day at my "internship" at Little Stars School. Nikki and I decided that we both wanted to teach there and so we headed over together after my 7am yoga class. Unfortunately they weren't really sure how to use us, and I spent the first hour teaching a basic addition lesson to a kindergarten class. Normally I would have loved it, but the kids didn't speak any English, so it was very frustrating to try and help them when I couldn't really explain anything. The teacher then asked me to call them up one at a time to the board to count things, and so that took at least 30 minutes. I struggled to understand why she found this to be a productive use of time since there were over 30 kids in the classroom. After that I met up with Nikki who had a sort of similar experience with the 4 year olds when she tried to teach Old MacDonald. We asked the principal if we could work with older kids who spoke more English and so she put us in a 1st grade classroom during their "social studies lecture".
The "our helpers" lecture consisted of the teacher writing questions about various occupations on the board and then having the kids answer out loud. Then the kids were to write down the questions and answers and we were supposed to check their work. The teacher's English was not very good and so there ended up being a lot of misspelled words and grammatically awkward sentences. My favorite was "who does the cobbler do?", answer "fixes shoes". It was hard for me to fix the children's work because so much of what they were copying was completely wrong. One girl wrote "delivers" instead of "dilivers" which was on the board and I had a small moral dilemma over whether I should correct it to the wrong thing.
I really wish that I could get involved in curriculum development and some of the actual teaching. I also appreciate all of the worksheets I completed in grade school, because it is very inefficient to have the children completing work in notebooks which then have to be individually checked before they can move on to the next exercise. Hopefully we will be able to work with middle schoolers tomorrow and actually do something that feels a bit more meaningful.
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