Some balloons, and a performance of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

As anyone who has ever heard me talk about teaching would know, I love the babies and the littles. So to my delight last Wednesday I got to spend the morning in the nursery at Debvari school, not so much teaching the children (as my Nepali is currently limited to ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ and ‘honeybee’) but playing with them. This was to hopefully give their teacher some ideas about teaching engaging lessons such as using cards to get the children talking, using construction cubes to identify colours and strengthen fine motor skills, teaching them a song, and pretending to be different animals. We finally unleashed all mayhem on the class when Saran whipped out some balloons. In all honesty we lost them at that point, so we let them run riot and trample us chasing balloons around the tiny classroom.

After this, I asked via Saran if she could teach so I could get a feel for how the nursery is run. After a few fast words in Nepali, the children all cracked out their copy books and started furiously writing down the English alphabet, some from memory, most peering at the paintings on the wall to help them. There was some definite resentment about putting the balloons away. Needless to say the teaching methods here are very different to those in British nurseries.

We went to visit Papaldanda the next day with armfuls of books to work with the children in the nursery. Barbara and I aped around making fools of ourselves to the hysteria of the children, and showing the teachers how to use resources to count, talk about colour, and doing lots of work with an alphabet foam mat. We watched some lessons in the afternoon, and I was fascinated to see the teacher’s toddler following her around the class. At one point he climbed on top of a desk and other than scooping him back onto the floor, both she and the students completely ignored him. Barbara tells me that it’s very common to take your children to school with you, especially in the village schools.

More teacher training on Friday, we went back to Debvari to work with the nursery, class one and class two teachers. I talked about using lots of different activities to break up the day, and we gave them a table of ideas to use. The three teachers were brilliant, taking on our ideas, and then we went down to a classroom show them what we were talking about, playing with balloons, alphabet shapes, and jigsaws. I gave the performance of my life when I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to a large crowd of children and teachers with as much gusto as I could muster. I’ll be expecting that Oscar any day now. The schools have now broken up for Deshain, the Hindu equivalent of Christmas, some for as long as a month, some for a couple of weeks.

Barbara, Janaki and I have big plans for a trip to Pokhara, and I must confess I’m looking forward for a few days of downtime. We’ve had such an intense few weeks with school visits, training, not to mention settling into a new country, and I’m feeling particularly sluggish because I’m definitely not drinking enough. I can practically hear my mother recoiling in horror at that last sentence. I keep being woken up in the night by the sounds of bugs hurling themselves at my window, and the spiders here are bigger than my hand – I physically shudder each time I see one hanging in the middle of its enormous web.

Oh, and this week, after giving a lot of big talk at dinner one night that I ‘never get bitten,’ I have been chewed to death by some particularly mean spirited mosquitoes. That’ll serve me right. It’s like that time at Delhi airport when I blithely said, ‘Oh we’ve had such an easy journey so far!’ Only to be sent packing to Kolkata on our doomed flight to Kathmandu.

H x

A birthday, a new school, and a lot of head teachers

We celebrated Barbara’s birthday last weekend! The Bashyals surprised her with a cake and I bought her the most ridiculous party hat I could find, and we had an evening of take away food and local beer, shared with a very well dressed Swiss couple. Me and Barbara had spent the Saturday morning working and planning the head teacher’s session, before going out to stretch our legs around Tansen.

While Barbara knows Tansen like the back of her hand, I am quite sure I’ll be losing my way around its winding streets for some time. 

We walked up to Srinegar Hill and though it has rained quite heavily since we arrived, (Dhani had already rescued me from falling flat on my face on the steep and very slippery slope up to the homestay that morning) the sun beat down on us and we were quite hot by the time we reached the top (i.e. I was a sweating mess). As we watched, gaps in the clouds revealed the pink and yellow shapes of mountains, though I could never be sure if I was looking at shifting clouds or solid rock. I’m promised that you can see nearly the entire Annapurna range on a clear day, so I’m sure I’ll be back up there for another gawk before long.

We made our way back through the town, and it was almost eerie seeing everything shut up and closed except for a few food stalls. Saturdays are rest days, so the children are home from school and most of the shops are shut tight. Children raced down the steep streets, pausing in their games only to shout: ‘Where are you from?’ I feel like I am asked this question a hundred times a day, I might start fibbing and telling people somewhere exotic like Hawaii or the Seychelles.

On Sunday we visited the Devbari school in Tansen, just down the hill from our office at the Red Cross building. We met the head and his deputy who were fantastic, so forward thinking and grateful that we were there. They were arguing for more continuous assessment instead of the painful exams the children have to endure each term (Abhi, the Bashyal’s son, is currently doing an exam a day for seven days – and he does this four times a year, a whole month of exams in the school year that might be better used for teaching and revising methods perhaps?). They were also eager to create a science laboratory in the school, and said that a teachers training is never done, and every single member of staff at the school, both government and private, could benefit from extra training. Barbara and I left quite pleased and hopeful.

On Tuesday we held a head teachers meeting at Rock Regency, a hotel in town. Eighteen head teachers and deputies came to see us, and Barbara asked them to organise their priorities for the children (things like success, exam results, happiness, safety) and discuss what had gone well in their schools over the last year, and touched on early years practices. I stood up and spoke about utilising the libraries more successfully, making sure that the teachers are sharing books with the children, and most importantly, are listening to the children read and checking their reading ability and engagement with the stories. We want to ensure that teachers are not just sat passively in the corner of the room while the children read silently on the floor. I was so hot as I spoke, not nervous so much as just very aware that everybody was looking at me, I was astounded to see that some people were even taking notes! After this little rush, I had to go and turn the fan on to calm down, and everyone laughed at me.

It was agreed that Barbara, myself, Saran and Sagar - our champion translators and the core of Manisha Nepal Palpa - deserved a slap up lunch to celebrate. We might have had to wait over an hour for our food, but to pass the time Sagar was telling us about Russia in the early nineties (all vodka coupons and swimming in frozen lakes) so I decided to have another crack at War and Peace that night. I think I made it through about five pages on the kindle before falling asleep. Sorry Tolstoy.

And one from last week with Ann!