It has been six months since I began working in Bangalore and started writing this blog. If these last few months have taught me nothing else, they have shown me how adaptable and resilient the human spirit can be.
Sometimes, I think back to the day when I first walked into one of "my" schools. I remember getting out of the auto, walking across the road and looking around to find the school. I peered at the names of the stores, most of which had badly peeling store fronts and poorly lettered signs, and none of them proclaimed the existence of the singularly unfortunately named school that we were trying to visit. P1, my now boss, was trying to give me a dose of reality before I signed my contract and I looked at her questioningly, wondering how the elusive school was so well concealed. She smiled in answer to my questioning look, and led the way down a narrow alley.
The alley took us between two dingy buildings, past a one-room house carved out of the back of a building. The house had barely enough room for a single cot and a chair and there were people spilling out of it. In front of the house some chickens and a rooster ran loose. There was a dead rat lying in a puddle of water and garbage just piling up against the wall of the building next door. I looked beyond the rat and the garbage to a door set unassumingly into the side of a narrow, multi-storey building. That was the school? I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
I had, ostensibly, come back home to work and try and use my fine Harvard (and Mount Holyoke) education to set things right! I realize now that I had not a clue and was completely unprepared! My previous teaching experiences involved model pre-schools associated with great research departments in prestigious colleges and universities on the East (privileged) Coast of the United States. The adult-child ratios were dream-worthy, the funds available to create teaching-aids seemingly never ran out, and the parents had any amount of disposable time and income to spend on their three-year old prodigies (or so it seemed!). To go from saying, "Now it is time for you to put away this wonderful, 6 ft square, block structure that you have been working on for two hours and go to circle" to having teachers "afraid children with their eyes" and say, "YAH, put yer books away and go for nature's call!" was a huge change to say the least.
Compare my previous reality to that first school visit and you will understand why the approach to the building nearly had me running for the hills. I was not sure what to expect, but I was quite certain that given the external conditions, there would not be much teaching and learning occurring within the building. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the school and met a firm, kind head-mistress who had once been a teacher, leaving her classroom only to open this school. Her school functioned like clock-work and since that very first day, some of my favorite observed classes occurred in that school. The children are bright, eager and motivated, and despite all odds, are succeeding in a school system designed to make them fail.
It just goes to show, doesn't it? One really cannot ever judge a book by the cover!
Sometimes, I think back to the day when I first walked into one of "my" schools. I remember getting out of the auto, walking across the road and looking around to find the school. I peered at the names of the stores, most of which had badly peeling store fronts and poorly lettered signs, and none of them proclaimed the existence of the singularly unfortunately named school that we were trying to visit. P1, my now boss, was trying to give me a dose of reality before I signed my contract and I looked at her questioningly, wondering how the elusive school was so well concealed. She smiled in answer to my questioning look, and led the way down a narrow alley.
The alley took us between two dingy buildings, past a one-room house carved out of the back of a building. The house had barely enough room for a single cot and a chair and there were people spilling out of it. In front of the house some chickens and a rooster ran loose. There was a dead rat lying in a puddle of water and garbage just piling up against the wall of the building next door. I looked beyond the rat and the garbage to a door set unassumingly into the side of a narrow, multi-storey building. That was the school? I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
I had, ostensibly, come back home to work and try and use my fine Harvard (and Mount Holyoke) education to set things right! I realize now that I had not a clue and was completely unprepared! My previous teaching experiences involved model pre-schools associated with great research departments in prestigious colleges and universities on the East (privileged) Coast of the United States. The adult-child ratios were dream-worthy, the funds available to create teaching-aids seemingly never ran out, and the parents had any amount of disposable time and income to spend on their three-year old prodigies (or so it seemed!). To go from saying, "Now it is time for you to put away this wonderful, 6 ft square, block structure that you have been working on for two hours and go to circle" to having teachers "afraid children with their eyes" and say, "YAH, put yer books away and go for nature's call!" was a huge change to say the least.
Compare my previous reality to that first school visit and you will understand why the approach to the building nearly had me running for the hills. I was not sure what to expect, but I was quite certain that given the external conditions, there would not be much teaching and learning occurring within the building. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the school and met a firm, kind head-mistress who had once been a teacher, leaving her classroom only to open this school. Her school functioned like clock-work and since that very first day, some of my favorite observed classes occurred in that school. The children are bright, eager and motivated, and despite all odds, are succeeding in a school system designed to make them fail.
It just goes to show, doesn't it? One really cannot ever judge a book by the cover!
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