Out With the Cold, In With the New

I’ve become considerably busier over the past few months with more projects building on top of each other. These days I’m working very closely with the head teacher and together we’re discussing new ideas daily for various improvements that can be made. I’m convinced I couldn’t have come at a better time or gotten any luckier with my project placement to find myself at a school under leadership that’s happy to promote drastic and positive change where it makes sense. The carpet has been laid in the library, which I used the winnings of the video contest to pay for, and has made a big difference there to make it a whole lot more welcoming. It makes me abundantly happy to have the many eager students stop by during lunch break every day and ask if they can come in. Their interest caused me to set up a separate storybook section so that they can find the books they want more easily. It’s great to see them so excitedly sit down with books that within the classroom it’d be like pulling teeth to get them to pay any attention to. Aside from the library, my teaching focus has been mostly on class 3, who I’m still with for one period a day, and also class 10, who will have to write their School Leaving Certificate exams after about 3 weeks and need to study hard to get ready for them. And then in less of a teaching role and more of an implementation role, other efforts to make the learning environment more child-friendly have been going exceptionally well. The biggest thing is getting the teachers to make lessons more interactive for the students. The traditional Nepali way is to lecture from the front and have students memorize and recite answers all day long. It was a little astonishing at first to find out how very slight a variation from something they’d memorized would have to be for them to have no idea what the answer was. But some new methods we’ve been getting into place have been doing a lot of good, in my biased opinion, because the students are allowed to think more critically for themselves and be more engaged in their lessons. And best of all they’re becoming noticeably happier. It always makes me smile to see them try out their English speeches in front of the morning assembly or hear them still singing and acting out their new rhymes as they leave school for the day.

On another side of things, the head teacher’s growing compulsion to get me involved in absolutely everything he does has had me working all across the Kathmandu valley lately. He does a fair amount of teacher training, so now I also do a fair amount of teacher training. The first one of these, I was brought along to on the pretense that I would be sitting off to the side and observing / taking some notes / providing feedback after the session. Instead what happened was his love of having me get up and do impromptu public speaking kicked in, and I ended up teaching a bulk of the course. Keep in mind, I’m not at all qualified to be doing such things, so I’m sure it can only be bad news for the future of Nepal’s educators. Since that first one I’ve been more prepared (mentally) for how much involvement will be asked of me, though actual preparation is still limited by usually not knowing 1) when we’re going for the next training session until the day of, and 2) which of many possible topics we’ll be presenting on until we arrive at the destination. Luckily, we’ve fallen easily into a pretty fluid team dynamic presentation style that almost makes it seem like we know what we’re doing and thus far it’s been quite well received. This is good news for me because the invitations out to these and all sorts of other opportunities have kept coming, and I’m very much appreciating the chances to see a great variety of aspects of Nepal’s education system. These have ranged from administering listening and speaking practice questions to class 10 students at one of the best private schools just north of Kathmandu to running an employee orientation session for a publishing company (the one that will be publishing the book we’ve now finished writing and are just going through final edits on). Needless to say, though I guess I will anyway, it’s all keeping me perpetually on my toes and exposing me to a great many things I never would have thought I’d get to see.

Festivals have become significantly sparser since the end of November. As it turns out, my arrival just preceded what could be called “the festival season”, and they’re not quite as common during the rest of the year as they seemed on first impression. But today was Shiva Raatri. A big day for people flocking to the Pashupatinath Temple, many having walked for a month from different parts of India, I’m told. But also the day when packs of small children will block off the roads by holding a long piece of string across it and not allow anyone to pass until some money is given. Fortunately, it only takes a couple rupees for them to happily drop their guard, and when I approached one particular mob that included some students of mine, they dropped it before I even reached them (I think in fear of poor grades on their next pop quiz). And of course, the entire extended family came over to our house for a small feast in the afternoon. Then later in the evening people will gather together in the streets clustered around bonfires and dance the night away. Seems like a great way to close out winter and kick off spring, which has definitely been lingering in the air recently. Nights are warm yet again, lush bright green rice paddies have sprouted right up, and it's possible once more to take an actual shower with the water from the rooftop tanks as long as you wait until afternoon when they've had a chance to absorb enough sunshine.