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!!!