Jheksang

The following day we made our way back down the rough track in a jeep, stopping halfway back to the main road at Shree Rakama Devi Lower Secondary School, twinned with Hayes Park Primary School, London. 

From the road it was a short but steep climb up to a shop, located just below the school, where we could leave our things and have a cup of tea before starting the day. Children slowly trickled into school and once again were fascinated by my rugby ball and so before the school day had begun we were already playing various throwing and catching games. By the time the school bell rang there were about 15 children playing but many more watching. 

On hearing the bell the children scarpered at an astonishing pace and we made our way up to the school playground where the children had gathered for their early morning assembly. My arrival was met with a round of applause and the customary tikka and flower garland. It was an altogether more calm welcome than some of the previous schools but I was quite happy with that, and as I remember reading in Jonny’s blog last year it was good for my shirt as well which usually gets coated in the bright red tikka powder!

I met with the headmaster first of all to go through the formalities and gather up to date information about the school and catch up with how they were doing. I started my teaching programme with a visit to class 5 to create dictionaries for twinning before heading to Class 1 where I started doing some simple preposition work with actions but it soon became clear that they were not ready for this so I changed tact and did some basic number work with them in English. This also proved quite difficult. I gave them a number card each and wanted them to try and get themselves in order but they looked at me completely blankly. Eventually with support from the other teachers who were watching (I was pleased with this as we are trying to encourage them to come and watch the lessons) we managed to get them in order. I then called out the numbers which they repeated and tried to get them to hold their card up as we called out their number but it ended up with almost all of the cards held up simultaneously, except of course the one which was supposed to be held up!!!

Making twinning dictionaries.

After that somewhat disappointing lesson I moved onto Class 6 to do some measuring and varied it slightly by getting them to estimate and measure various objects in the room. This is a lesson the children really seem to enjoy and it was clear their estimations were improving as the lesson progressed. 

Being measured!!!

Before having lunch Saran and I spent some time in the playground, having brought along a skipping rope and of course the rugby ball. The rugby game soon descended into a free for all and was getting rather rough but the children seemed to love it. They are amazingly tough too as on at least one occasion one of the boys went flying to the floor only to get up, dust himself off and carry on!! After a short while though I did decide to introduce them to a more gentle catching game before any of them really got hurt!!

The rugby got a bit rough at times but the children loved it!!!

The shop / school canteen.

The afternoon of school was cancelled with a dance programme held instead. I’m not sure whether this was because of me but I think there was some form of staff meeting anyway. I would have preferred to have got more teaching done, particularly as Saran had had a call to ask if he could come back a little earlier as his son was not feeling too well. I did say to Saran that he should go but I don’t think it was too serious and said that he would stay but we were going to have to leave at lunchtime the next day. For the sake of 2 short afternoon lessons it did not make sense for me to leave separately but with the dance programme as well it meant that my potential lesson time was reduced further.

The dance programme was quite short and there seemed a real reluctance from any of the pupils to have a go, they were understandably quite shy! I however didn't get a chance to be shy and once again my dancing efforts were to the amusement of all who were watching!!!

After the children had left for the day the teachers took me for a tour round the classrooms which were mostly in a reasonable state, he worst ones being the Year 1 and 2 classrooms, although in comparison to some others I have seen, even these were not too bad. There were some cracks in the wall but, not being a building expert, it was difficult to determine how much this would affect the buildings structure. 

The one area which really needs attention is the lack of fence where 3 classrooms entrances are separated from a fairly steep slope by only a small pathway. Whilst not a sheer drop, a fall could certainly cause injuries as apparently has been the case in the past. There is some money available for this, kindly raised by their twinned school, Hayes Park Primary. Having now obtained bank account details (the school only very recently set up an account) the money for this has now been transferred and I will monitor the progress of the fence. 

The pathway we hope to get fenced to prevent further accidents.

After the tour I packed an overnight bag and, rather than stay in the shop, we made our way to a nearby village where there was the, seemingly obligatory, dance programme taking place. It is accurate to say the village is nearby but the distance is almost entirely upwards. After a tiring and very steep, hour long climb, we eventually arrived with only the glow of one dim torch and a few mobile phones, lighting our way along the rocky pathway. 

It was, however, well worth it. The village really made us feel welcome with some delicious food and lots of dancing and merriment!

The following morning we set off back down to the school, a much easier trip in the light and entirely downhill! It is really quite incredible that for some of the children this is the walk they have to do every day to school.

A lovely evening...and a good turn out!

I took Class 4 to begin with and we discussed typically Nepali things which they then, drew and labelled and I have now mounted onto backing paper and will be put up in their classroom(due to a lack of time this had to be done back in Tansen). I saw one poster up in all of the classrooms, a really nicely drawn prepositions poster, but like so many other classrooms, the walls of the other classrooms were bare. I am going to really try and focus on this from now on and made a start with putting up an alphabet chart in Year 1.

I then taught class 3 body parts, with a puzzle and by singing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’. We also did some work on colours. 

Beautiful Himalayan views - but we earned them - it was a steep climb!

Love these trees!!

I hope to see more like this!!

Finally I taught Year 2 odd and even numbers and I was really pleased with how the lesson worked. They seemingly had little idea when we started. I demonstrated the concept to them by giving marbles to each child and showing them that if they could put equal amounts of marbles in each hand they had an even number – if they couldn’t it was odd. I asked them if they had an even number to stand on one side of the class and if they had an odd number to stand on the other. I then gave them one more marble each and they picked up they had to swap sides. If I gave them 2 they stayed where they were. At the end I wrote the numbers 0 -10 on the board and they came out and circled the even numbers and then to reinforce this I went through the flashcards and they shouted odd or even to me. There were of course a few mistakes but I really felt that they had a good understanding by the end of the lesson which I was really pleased with!

I was rather rushed off as the jeep arrived to take us back to Tansen but feel that on the whole it was a really good visit. There was, I think, only one lesson where I was left to take the children on my own and hopefully this shows the teachers are interested to learn and adapt to a more interactive approach to teaching.

Surrounded by children who all wanted their picture taken!!!

Angakhola

My first visit to a school after the strikes and elections was to Shree Amrit Higher Secondary School in Angakhola (Twinned with Kings Lynn Academy, Norfolk). Nepalese schools work slightly differently to UK schools, as far as I can see, and when they say higher secondary it means that all years are taught up to Higher Secondary, so there is a wide range in ages - anything from 4-17 all in one school.

I was certainly feeling nervous about my first visit to a school since the others left but really was looking forward to getting down to work. The jeep journey took us along the road to Pokhara for 45 minutes or so before turning off and driving another 45 minutes or so along a rough track. We were heading along the bottom of a valley with farm land separated into small strips and a small river just down below us.

The welcome I received was once again amazing, though this time my hands filled up with petals from the flowers presented to me even quicker as it was just Saran and I. The children lined the path up to the school and I lost count of the number of times I was 'Namaste'd', tikka'd and presented with flower garlands. This was followed by a dance programme where I was hauled up to dance with a few though by now I have lost all sense of embarrassment and just go for it!! It was really very special with the drums beating constantly and being showed by flower petals from the balcony above us. After a while though it got rather hot dancing in the sun so we retreated to the staff room and the children returned to their lessons. In the afternoon I did my fact gathering and was shown round the school.

Another truly amazing welcome followed by some not so amazing dancing from me!

There are a number of very good classrooms but also some that are pretty poor. As always seems to be the case the best classrooms are reserved for the older children. I tried to encourage them that they should use the best classrooms and library wherever possible as there seems to be times when these are empty (the children in the eldest two years do not study full time). They assured me that they do use the classroom for lessons though I did not see this during my visit.

The main school building.

 There has been a lot of work done in levelling out playing areas for volleyball and other games and this seems to be a really good use of funds as the school sits up on a ridge and before there was apparently no flat areas at all on which they could play.
                                                                                  
The main building of the school is quite old and their biggest concern. It is constructed of clay and mud with wooden beams supporting. It looks in fairly good condition but they say that structually it is quite weak. The building that appeared poorest to me was opposite the main building and was constructed by brick but the classrooms were dark and the interior walls were not built up to the ceiling so you could clearly hear what was going on in the other classrooms. The one classroom, class 6, in particular was very dark and very small for the number of pupils crammed into it. 

Some of the levelling work that has been undertaken - this seems to have been a wise investment.

Above - two of the not so good classrooms - the lower one makes it look much lighter than it actually was.

Above: The newest and probably the best classroom.

Nursery finishes early so the boy has to wait for his brother/sister to walk home

 

The following day I finally got to do some teaching. First of all I started with Year 4 and we made mini dictionaries containing typically Nepali items with a picture of each item and the English and Nepali word written underneath. I was surprised by the length of time it took them and we actually had to extend the lesson into the next period to get them finished. The children worked hard though and enjoyed using the colouring pencils I provided and produced some nice work. They have a tendency to keep rubbing things out, often when there is nothing wrong with what they have done and this normally makes it look messier! I had to try and persuade them against doing this! I was pleased with what they did though and hope the pupils at Kings Lynn Academy will like them.

After this I taught measurement to class 5 and got them measuring each other and looking to see if their is a relationship between height and arm span (they should measure the same). It is clear the children do not do this sort of activity very often as it took them some time to get the hang of it but after a short while they were quite enthusiastic with it and were able to measure fairly accurately using the tape measures I provided.

I taught Class 8 next and we learnt about prepositions and I got the children out of their seats and making up actions to go along with the sentence I asked them to say. I got them working in groups and after they presented their actions and sentences to the class. They were rather shy to begin with but I hope that more work such as this will help build their confidence to speak in the classroom.

After lunch I took Class 3 and having seen them chanting the names of some fruits and vegetables the previous day I built on this with a few activities before they picked a fruit to draw and label in English and Nepali and I later stuck these up in the classroom. Nepali classrooms have a tendency to be utterly bare and this is a big thing I want to try and address. Children's work should be displayed in order to give it a sense of purpose and make them take pride in their work. It will also help brighten up the depressingly drab classrooms!

Class 3 making fruit / vegetable pictures which I put up on display.

The final period I worked with Year 9 and did some more twinning letters. There has, according to them been no twinned letters sent since the last time Johnny was here so hopefully we can get this started again. I was really pleased with their efforts and they produced some good letters, all written in English.

In the evening I stayed at the School chairman's home and it was a quiet evening, as had been the case the previous night. It was a nice evening though and I played with the rugby ball with the chairman's daughter and we played a game of pick up sticks which I had brought along (a really fun game requiring a lot of concentration and a steady hand). The food was really good and as usual loads of it. I probably had the freshest chicken I have ever eaten (I saw the poor thing pecking in the yard a couple of hours earlier!).

Playing pick up sticks!!

Couldn't leave this picture out!!

In the morning I packed up my things and we got a local jeep which took us to our next school visit at Jheksang. As a parting gift I was given what looked like an enormous orange picked off their tree (this actually turned out to be a grapefruit and was really delicious). It was a really good first visit, albeit a rather short one, and I look forward to returning here for a longer stay.

Waiting for elections and strikes to finish...

Hello everyone,

It was a strange few days after the other members of the team left and I couldn't really throw myself into teaching as the transport strikes continued to keep me away from schools and in the days after the elections the schools remained shut for a further few days. 

I did however keep myself busy with making resources and getting other things sorted out. Checking schools first aid kits is one of my responsibilities and my experience so far has been that they are rather sparse to say the least! With that in mind I met up with Ramlal, a pharmasist in Tansen and also chairman of Bagnas school. I asked him to make up sme first aid kits with all of the necessary items that should be included and I will be providing each school with one of these.

Another success has also been sorting out a permanent office for us here in Tansen, which was managed through Sagar, one of Saran's friends and also the chairman of the Montessori school which we visited a few weeks ago. He has been a huge help so far in so many ways. He has given me contacts for some of their schools suppliers, who can produce really great quality teaching resources. Just visiting that school a couple of times has given me ideas and inspirations to create my own resources. The office we have is small and currently a bit of a mess but in time I hope to transform it into a really useful base for us. For now though it is proving useful as a storage centre and has helped to free up some room in my bedroom which, to put it mildly, was becoming rather cluttered! The office is only costing us Rs 1000 per month (about £6.25!!) so I think we got a pretty good deal. In time we will also have internet and powerpoints in this room included in that price!

It may not look much at the moment but i'm confident we can transform this into a really good office and a permanent base for Manisha UK.

One afternoon I visited Tundikel, a large flat sportsfield, perched on a ridge at the bottom of the town. There is a dusty running track around the outside and you often see early morning walkers getting their daily exercise. There are also football pitches, though with very little grass, and aside from that not much else but dry, browned grass areas. It is a really nice place to visit though in late afternoon with lots of young people playing, street vendors selling foods and cows and goats grazing on the dried grass. I went with Bzoo and her two sisters but we were soon joined by some other younger boys, intrigued by the odd shaped ball I had brought along. We played for an hour or so with the rugby ball enjoying the late afternoon sun which seemed to make the whole area glow a warm golden colour and with the views of Tansen above it was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. One particularly funny moment I enjoyed was when Susmi, Bzoo's sister, was proudly telling me about how the cow is Nepal's national animal and right on cue the lusty cow infront of us mounted his female companion and left us all in fits of laughter, and Susmi a little red with embarrassment!

Top left: Playing with the rugby ball on Tundikhel, Top right: Bzoo's friends' son - he got rather attatched to the rugby ball. Middle picture - the municipality building with Tansen and Shrinigar hill behind. Bottom: View up to Tansen from Tundikhel - at the top of the tree line, just to the right of the centre you can see the tower which we sometimes climb for sunrise.

The following day there was a music concert down at Tundikhel which we visited but apart from the odd cow wandering around and a crazy man dancing, it was not exactly Glastonbury. We sat and watched for a while but the people performing didn't seem to be really ready and would play a few notes then it stopped. We wandered off and came back about an hour later but there didn't seem to have been much progress so we left it!

Tansen music festival - not sure Glastonbury has anything to worry about!

Thankfully the elections are now over and all the craziness is behind us. The last few weeks has been full of parades and government speakers which has been of some interest but thankfully the disruptions are at an end for now!

I am now looking forward to continuing my visits to schools with Shree Amrit (Angakhola) and Rakama Devi (Jheksang) next.

I will update further after my visits there.

Andy

The election caused a huge amount of disruption and despite it all being rather interesting and mostly good natured there was also some trouble (thankfully nothing too serious in Tansen) and so there was always a heavy police presence. I am relieved that the election has now passed and I can get back to teaching!!