Travel blogging. This year it has taking me longer to get started. I don't know why. Maybe it is because I don't have Quincy with me and I don't feel the urgency to write everything down for both of us or it might be that I am a little lazy....probably both. I have decided to start. Most of the subjects will be random and many of the pictures inserted will have already been posted on facebook. I have been pretty good at posting photos from my day so my family and friends know what I have been up to. What is missing is the stories and some of my thoughts. This is what my blog is for.
India has been different for me this time. It hasn't been about playing with little kids all of the time or bonding with a volunteer group. It hasn't been about feeling like I have to experience every moment doing the same things I did as a short term volunteer last year. Don't get me wrong, if we have an odd day off at the school I have jumped at the chance to go with the medical team. I do love spending time with the leprosy affected patient.
This time I have focused on other things. It has been more about the big kids and spending time with the Indian teachers and educational staff. How will I meet their needs educationally to push them a tiny bit forward before I leave? I have been teaching the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders English. They are some pretty amazing students. Each school day is packed well into the evening. They have different activities in the afternoon that they are involved in and homework time at night. I have witnessed some dedication to studies that put some of our U.S. students to shame. These students do it without parents making them. They know that life will look different for them in their futures by studying hard and getting good marks. By acquiring fluent English it opens up opportunities for future jobs that they wouldn't get otherwise. This skill will move them up the caste system that the Indian government claims doesn't exist anymore. We all know it does and all of the kids have felt it being part of of leprosy affected families or low income villages. Many of them have big dreams of helping others with the skills they acquire. This generation will help to change the world.
As a short term teacher, what can I bring? I struggled with this for the first two weeks I was here. I experimented with each class and tried to evaluate the level they were at in their reading and writing. What I realized is that the range within the classes was from a second to fourth grade reading level. Many of these kids have been in Rising Star for less than three or four years so they didn't have the opportunity to be around many English speaking people prior to arriving here. Rising Star is unusual for an Indian school. We get this huge influx of American volunteers that the kids get to interact with unlike outlying villages. They experience native English speaking people on a regular basis. This makes all the difference in their language acquisition journey. In outlying village schools, exposure to this is rare. Resources for learning is limited and a positive learning environment is unusual. Rising Star is an oasis for these kids. There are many ways to improve it but they are on an upwards path. At the heart of it is people that care. I am one of them and working at trying to find where I fit into this complicated puzzle.
