Leapfrog

Day 1:

Caitlin and I woke up, ate breakfast, washed the dishes, and we were just settling for the peaceful half hour wait for our coordinator when he knocked on our door with an upbeat “Ready to go?” Caitlin was not, as she was still in her pajamas, so I covered for her a bit and then we headed out. We weren’t given much information, just quickly shepherded into a waiting car, Caitlin and I in the back and our coordinator in the front passenger’s seat twisting around to smile at us. This is the same coordinator that hadn’t told us that the bus would drop us off at a different bus stop than the one we left from and hadn’t mentioned how to get back to the house from that stop, leading to the previous getting lost situation.

We watched the school children walking to school, all in very proper uniforms with the girl’s long dark hair done up in looped braids hanging like basset’s ears from the sides of their heads. We passed the Tea Estate and the closest “market” (we are outside of Palampur and we need to go all the way in for a proper market) and crossed over the many terror-inducing narrow bridges regularly crossed by giant trucks.

All the while our (hopefully) earnest coordinator is giving me conflicting advice on how to take the bus to my school the rest of my stay, while Caitlin made confused faces at me in the backseat. We turned off the main road and onto a little red dirt side road, pulling up to a bright green school in a couple minutes. Caitlin and I looked at each other in the backseat and shrugged our shoulders- we didn’t know where we were going, but we didn’t expect to be launched straight into work on our first morning. She stayed in the car as she is doing a medical internship and I was ushered inside. It immediately became clear that I was starting my first day. There were many people rushing around and speaking very fast hindi, perhaps trying to find a place for me. This part of the program is quite noticeably underprepared.

I was introduced to a beautiful Indian lady in vibrant green was fussed around in a very school-administrator way. It turns out that she was building a schedule for me, and when the first bell rang and the white-shirted scamps taking a test in the hallway had dispersed, she took me to the 4th graders classroom where I was given the teacher’s name and sat in the corner.

I first saw the 4th graders, then the 8th graders, then the 1rst graders, then the 3rd graders, then the kindergarteners, and then finally the 7th graders. The teachers in the kindergarten, 1rst, and 3rd grades just let me have the classroom, which was odd, as I am much better equipped to handle older learners. I got through just fine, but the other classes, the 4th, 8th, and 7th grades were a different story. I just sat in the back of the classroom quietly disagreeing with the grumpy teacher. There is a very different style of teaching here, completely rigid, with memorization and slaps on the back of the head. It is not how I would choose to do things.

Day 2:

The main surprise of day two is that I was completely abandoned in the classroom for all but one of my six periods. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be useful at the school, but I guess giving regular teachers a break is an important function…

When I got to the school I waited patiently during the daily test until once again the bell rang, (it’s not a bell it’s more of a bashed up gong) and headed to the 4th grade classroom, after being assured that I had the same schedule as yesterday. As I walked in the classroom I asked my escort where Ushma, the grumpy english teacher who had made me feel so unwelcome the previous day, was, I was informed she was not coming. So I walked into the classroom, asked where the students where they were in their books, and began teaching. I taught all of my classes on my own day 2, and I think I did quite well.

Palampur is incredibly beautiful, with layers of mountains encircling the twisted roads and lush greenery. There are sloping green mountains, which loom gracefully, but are miniaturized by the himalayas stretching into the clouds behind them, with their craggy snow white caps visible only in the clear morning.

Day 3:

I continued to teach my six classes on my own on Wednesday. I especially got in a rhythm with the 8th graders, they had the best grasp of english, and I think we developed the best dynamic. The little one’s still don’t realize that I don’t speak Hindi, which is inconvenient. Being at the school really makes me think about the role of education, and the different needs of students, and the needs of a community in a school, somethings I’ve pondered before, but never with the desperation that classrooms without doors lends.

That afternoon we went to the market, for what would hoped would be the last time, and were extremely successful. We got peanut butter! There were other purchases too, but they were not as important as peanut butter, which feels like a hug from home and a saving grace and is just the best. The quiet success of the day was the bus, which in both directions took us the entire way, not something to be sneezed at, as sometimes the trip takes two legs.
A quick side note- Caitlin brought an adult coloring book and a set of colored pencils with her and it has been a real boon to our unbearably slow dial up situation. Sometimes the internet takes 5 minutes or more to load one google search.