School at Rising Star

We have spent several days helping in the Peery Matriculation School here on the Rising Star campus and like everything in India, it has been an interesting experience.  I have helped out in my children's classes quite a bit in the past 10 years so I thought it would be about like that.  You would think that by now I would have learned to never assume anything!  Anytime I have any preconceived idea what something will be like, I am wrong.

We were each given a schedule of which classes to attend, or students to tutor.  The first day one of the teachers handed me the book and asked me to teach a few pages.  The concept was easy, putting information in a chart, but the content for the chart wasn't easy for me.  We were supposed to graph different foods and more than half of the foods on the list I had never heard of before.  Kind of hard to make a good graph when you don't know what category to put something in.

During a class with the UKG (Kindergarten), the teacher handed me the book as I entered and told me to teach about living and non-living things for 40 minutes.  Not to hard of a topic, except that the English of the UKG children is very limited and I had no preparation time.  We used lots of actions about eating, drinking and breathing.  I had Jenna with me so she was my example of a living thing and we used a chair as an example of a non-living thing.   Each child had to decide whether to give Jenna or the chair some food.  We sang lots of songs with actions, well I should rephrase that, I sang while the kids followed along with the actions.  I don't know how much they learned, but we had fun.  

Other times I have tutored an individual child.  Some of those have gone well, like when a little girl figured out some math problems or I helped a little boy memorize some passages about India.  Others haven't gone so well, like trying to help a girl with very limited English in 9th grade biology.  That subject is challenging enough for me (and I think I have a pretty good grasp on English), so I can only imagine how hard it is for her.  I have also worked with a few children who have attention problems so it takes a little creativity to try to keep them focused.  I have helped a few children with their environmental studies.  Today we were talking about occupations by looking at pictures.  Once again, not to hard of a concept, but when you don't know what the picture is it becomes a bit more difficult. I learned that a dhobi is a person who does laundry by hand.  I guess I didn't realize that was an occupation!

After every two classes the children have  a 10 minute break to go outside on the lawn  where there is no playground equipment or anything to play on.  And have I mentioned that India is hot?  Not quite like recess in the schools I attended.  

The children all have uniforms and shoes seem to be optional.  The windows don't have glass, but are open to the outside to allow some air movement.  The floors are all cement with no rugs or carpets.  They are all very simply furnished with wooden desks that two children share.  But the school is good and the children are learning.  They are being given a chance in life through education.  

Seth in front of the school.  He did his BSA Eagle project for this school.  

The Drinking Fountain.  The metal cup is attached to the faucet. I Don't know if the cup ever gets washed.  

One of the lower grade classrooms

One of the upper grade classrooms

Seth in a hallway.  The hallways are covered, but open to the outside.

Seth with some kids during break time

Me with some of the girls during break time

Seth and Joe with a bunch of kids during break time.  They love to have their picture taken, but don't like to stand still!

Joe playing leapfrog with some boys during break time