Chaos in the classroom
Today, I flew solo teaching my class as my two assistants were off in Delhi…wow was today a challenge!
It started well enough, but then the students began trickling in at no particular time and any lesson I had planned started going straight to hell. By the end of the day, when one of the groups in my class wanted to spend the entire time practicing their dance, I was more than happy to let them go just to have less children to have to corral…and then, at the very end, the eight that were left with me were still a handful!
Still, overall I think the students learned some stuff. They were introduced to Sudoku, which they had never seen before but two of the girls took to it like it was natural. And, at the end of the day, I showed one of the +1 boys a simpler way to solve systems of equations which I promised to teach to the class tomorrow.
After our school day, I spoke with two of the boys. One of them I needed to speak to about his behavior. I’ll hope to see a change, tomorrow, but I’m not sure how effective my talk was since I didn’t hit him (that seems so strange to say). The other, I let know how bright he was (he really is) but he tends to cheat and I told him that he is intelligent enough to do the works if he would just stop being lazy and cheating. He was a little shocked and told me that no one had told him that he was smart, before. So, hopefully I’ll see a change in him, too!
After we left Gyandeep, we were expecting a lecture on India’s educational system, but the lecturer had to cancel. So, one of the CCS employees led us around her village, Targit, and showed us what even MORE rural village life is like (some houses with no electricity, none with gas, recently installed plumbing. It was pretty amazing and eye-opening. Although, as it stands, Palampur is definitely not a metropolis. Sure, there are many cars and a market with packaged goods, but no street names and no accurate map of the area (which, as an aside, is making my check-ins with FourSquare very challenging).
In personal news, the home-sickness I usually get when I travel hit me nice and hard today. I never know exactly when it will hit, and it hit a little earlier than expected, but I’m glad that it’s here: that means, if history serves, that in a day or two it will be gone. So, until then, I’m still experiencing India to the extent that I can, but I’m also spending a little more time chatting on Facebook and the like.