Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Day 15 or the day after Aarushi makes friends her own age

Day 15
I’m feeling kind of bad that I don’t post every day. I think maybe I’ll write every day, and post every other day because sometimes I have emotions that I just can’t do justice too the next day. Yesterday, I was very happy. I went to the school at 10:30 after having woken up ridiculously early about twelve times, and successfully traveled there by myself by rickshaw. I walked into a classroom filled with small children with uniforms and little notebooks, with diagrams on the board of a clock, and watched as a large British fellow became very frustrated asking them what time it was on the board. I noticed a skinny boy sitting to the side, who was watching the classroom activity. I later found out that these people were 18 and going to be my fellow teachers. The large, frustrated one was William, and the skinny, side-sitter was Lorcan. I would later meet Lucy and Saurabh. Lucy is strawberry-blond, cheerful and slim. Saurabh is Iranian, lanky and quiet. It was interesting to meet people who were my own age.
The children, themselves, were very rowdy and had little command of the English language. We get a few classes every day and yesterday we got Classes 3 and 1. The frustrating thing is the fact that some of the children are really intelligent and understand everything, and some don’t get it at all and copy from their friend’s papers. As we check their work, we give them stars, but they forever ask for us to write our name, to draw pictures of an ice cream cone. It’s so endearing that it’s so difficult to tell them to sit down and be quiet.
I decided to stay with the school, because I thought they could use my help. The children were rowdy, and didn’t seem to understand everything. Sometimes I felt like the people teaching would hesitate and not know what they’re doing. I thought that my creativity could help. At lunch time, we went out and I got to know the people in our group. I found that they we shared a lot of musical tastes, in fact more than I share with a random sampling of my peers from school. Because I didn’t have the keys to the apartment, I caught a rickshaw to the office.
To my sleepy dismay, Akshay didn’t have the keys, and sent me away with vague instructions to go to MG Road. So I went and sat in JavaCity, this coffee house, and I got some weird burnt brownie with ice cream. The walls at JavaCity are covered with pictures of Ray Charles and framed comics. I could see a window to the upstairs that displayed some board games sitting on tables. Because I was uncomfortable and just wanted to go to sleep, I went upstairs. I failed to use the bathroom which was disgusting, and then settled on a beanbag and watched as some people played Halo. I heard some vague American accents from across the room, and looked to see a boy and a girl, sitting with a small group. I talked to them and their names were Dayorsha and Arjun. They invited me to join their Halo game, and I said okay. They invited me over to their apartment to eat with their group, and it was really nice. We went to their friend Devak’s house who lived above them and their friend Rajiv played guitar while I sung, and then Arjun rapped to the piano’s beat boxing. They were really knowledgeable about Bangalore because they come once every year, and got me a pre-paid rickshaw back to the office. Unfortunately, when I got there about 30 minutes late, Akshay had left, and gone to look for me at MG Road. I hung out in the office with Tinny who asked to see some of my writing, because I showed Malvika my incomplete college app essay and she was impressed with it and apparently had told people about it, so I emailed her some articles I had written.
When Akshay came, he wasn’t particularly happy, but we went to McDonald’s where for once, he got food and I got nothing, except for a badly packaged coke that was supposed to have been a Fanta. He gave me my own set of keys, though, so that’s good, and I think he’s going to activate my SIM card.
This morning was even worse than yesterday morning; I had fragmented dreams about little girls and rickshaws and little girls driving rickshaws and I kept waking up and coughing and checking my iPod clock and trying to go back to sleep until I couldn’t anymore. I hate that feeling. You’re awake but you don’t want to be, but you can’t stay asleep. You’re too tired to get ready, but too awake to stay asleep. So I’d been told to be there at 10:40, so I got there ten minutes early, and saw Hema, who told me that I should come at 10 o’clock everyday from then onwards. After everyone shuffled in (minus William who had become ill the night before), they had a discussion with us about how to teach the children, and what to teach the children; they told us that we should make a notebook of what the children have learned everyday, and that we should strive to be kind and less disciplinarian. The problem is that we don’t know Tamil, so it’s hard to communicate with them on a basic level, even to tell them what we’re learning. We have to make gestures and use very simple language. Apparently, before I had come, people had complained about the children in the volunteer classes being too loud.
So today, with a renewed energy, we began to plan. We decided numbers for Class 2, and days of the week for Class 3. We decided to divide them into groups in order to get more one-on-one attention to each student. When Lorcan and I went to teach half the class numbers, we had found that Class 2 already knew their numbers. So we started on colors, which they caught onto very fast. That was fun, though, as I think at first they didn’t understand completely, but very quickly caught on as I related one blue thing to another blue thing. The problem was that they understood things quite well and then became bored. When we tried to play a game with them, the boys ran around the schoolyard and wouldn’t listen to us. Other than that, the children seemed to enjoy the games we played, and I asked them their names and told them our names. I think that helped too, because no one has known any of their names before.
The next class we did was days of the week; Lorcan and I were with the boys. Unsurprisingly, the kids already knew their days and months, but didn’t recognize them in English, and didn’t know them out of order. The problem, I think, is that the kids only know them through rote memorization, but don’t understand their importance. So I got out a calendar and tried to get them to associate days of the month, making them say, “First of January”, “Second of January”. Few children understood it, some of them thinking I wanted them to count, but one did, so I pulled him up to the front and had the children listen to him. He seemed to really like that, and the students seemed to want attention too, so they copied what he was doing. Then we progressed to February. Then class was over and the kids became wild again, shaking our hands, and telling us “Good Day, Madam/Sir”, which is pretty much the extent of their English vocabulary, which is much better than I thought. I asked the boy who understood the months what his name was, and he said, “Madam, my name is Rajkumar, madam!” and he became so happy, and thanked me about fifteen times before leaving.
I became depressed at lunchtime because I was sad about the kids, and worried that they wouldn’t learn anything. Saurabh told me that they were learning, just very slowly, and I should give it time and patience. I've also begun to realize the difficulties of working with others, who have somewhat different ideas sometimes about how to go about teaching kids. I became even more depressed when I realized I didn’t have my keys, so I left right away to go home, just in case Samrat or the maid were still at home to let me in. When they weren’t, I went to Indian Express and got them from Akshay. Then I went home and slept for about 8 hours, which was very refreshing, although I don’t know how I’ll wake up tomorrow to leave at 9:30.

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