Mahachaap and Dumre

After the long break for exams and holidays I have now started a busy period which is set to continue as time is rapidly passing by. I am now 2/3 of the way through my placement with only two months to go!

A warm greeting followed by a tough meeting at Mahachaap.

The day after my visit to Bagnas (Wednesday) I visited Mahachaap, not for a days teaching but to have a meeting with the committee about working together in the future. Unfortunately this school has received promises in the past (not by us), that have not been fulfilled. This has left them very wary of outside organisations. It was important for us to meet with them and be clear about what we could do for them. I’m not going to go into the details behind this but after a long meeting which was rather intense at times. I was handed a microphone to answer a number of questions with more than 100 people watching – it felt very much like a press conference and I did not really enjoy the circus it became. However five hours after arriving we set off again, pleased with the outcome that they were happy to work with us in the future. It was certainly one of the hardest days I have had though since I have been out here. 

I was relieved to finally reach a resolution with Mahachaap and hope we can now look forward to a bright future working with them.

Continuing with the busy schedule I caught the bus down to Dumre school the next morning, one of the newest schools we have begun to work with, where I met up with Saran who had come straight from his village nearby. It was my first time back here since Barbara, Alan, Elaine and I visited right at the start of the trip. With only a day and a half here because of the tight schedule I got straight on and did as much as I could with them. 

We started off in Year 1 with the body parts lesson that has proved so popular with other schools. The classroom in Year 1 is probably one of the best I have seen in terms of display work up on the walls and there were pictures the children had done of butterflies hanging around the outside of the room along with a number of different posters and charts. I encouraged the teacher to lead some of the lesson with some ‘show me your nose’, ‘show me your toes’ etc. with the children doing some actions like squeezing their nose or wiggling their toes. Dumre seems to have some good, creative teachers who are always looking to improve and willing to take on new ideas which is great to see. 

Other lessons on my first day included measurement and friction which I have previously taught in other schools and both of these proved popular and the students really got involved. I also had to get information on the school to support us in our aim to get them a UK twinned school. I made sure to compliment the Year 1 classroom for the excellent display work but asked why other classrooms didn’t do the same. The response was that they would like to put up more display work but the other classrooms are not secure and so displays have been previously damaged by people out of school hours.  Perhaps helping to raise funds to make the classrooms secure would be a good fundraising project for a UK school once they get twinned – it is a very sad reason not to be able to display children’s work.

The next morning I worked with the English teacher who was teaching the story of the Horse of Troy. It was basically a read the story and then answer some questions about it – a fairly boring exercise. I suggested to the teacher that the pupils could act out parts of the story but he said they would be too shy. He did have a good point with that and although it would be good to do one day it’s probably too big a step for now! Instead I got the pupils to break the story down into six sections and create a story board with a picture and a sentence for each part of the story. The idea being that this would give them a good understanding of the story and could lead to some good display work. I demonstrated the idea on their new whiteboard and they did produce some good work. A learning point for me is not to do a demonstration drawing – I did one quick picture using stick men and consequently every one of them in the class drew all their pictures with stick figures – it is hard to break their habit of copying things out exactly! 

After that lesson I did the ‘Alien Soup’ exercise again which again worked well. By the end of the lesson which I carried out mostly outside I seemed to have twice as many pupils watching as I had started with (where they were supposed to be I’m not sure!)!  

I also paid a very quick visit to the nursery to demonstrate the number mats. Lots of the children though seemed to be utterly terrified of me though! They are usually a bit shy but normally get over that when their curiosity of the new games / resources overcomes that. Some of them with a little persuasion did start to get involved but a number of others seemed in utter fear and backed themselves into the wall refusing to move. I didn’t think I was that scary looking but maybe so! I’m sure in time they will enjoy the number mats and other resources once the scary foreigner has left!!

After a really busy week where I had visited three different schools I only got Saturday to rest before I was back to Mahachap with for a couple of days before I had to get the bus to meet Rob (my friend from Worcester uni joining me for my final two months) in Kathmandu. For a school that had been rather unsure of us only a few days ago at our meeting, the welcome they gave to Saran and I was phenomenal. There is being tikka’s and then there is being Mahachap tikka’d! They plastered the red powder all over our faces and donned us with countless amounts of garlands.

I was eager to get on with as much teaching as I could and the teachers were very good at coming along to the lessons which was really good to see. Having not taught in this school before they had lots of my usual lessons: labelling body parts, twinning dictionaries, odd and even, measurement and alien soup. I got more display work up as well and got the nursery looking a bit brighter with number friezes and alphabet posters.

The school are very keen to see some use made of land they purchased around the back of the school. This land was originally earmarked for a building project but at this time the funds are just not available and so the land is currently not being utilised. Having had some conversations with people back home I am going to see if they can come up with some kind of a plan to make best use of the land, even if it is just a temporary measure, whilst funding is not available. It is important for us to give the schools a sense of responsibility and not just to rely on hand outs. We want to help them to be self-sustainable and to work with them rather than for them. We hope that if the school can come up with a good proposal this would make a good project for a fundraising drive. I have been given an estimate that to dig out the land so it is flat and usable may only be in the region of a few hundred pounds so hopefully this is achievable. 

The send off I received from the school was also amazing and involved lots more red tikka powder. I am looking forward to visiting again in a few weeks and hopefully to try and make the best of their situation with the additional land they bought.

I am now looking forward to my trip to Kathmandu and meeting up with Rob. In my head I split the six months into three sections where I was with Barbara, Alan and Elaine, then the middle part on my own and finally this last part with Rob. I thought this middle section would be harder without any English company but in actual fact I have met so many people and made so many friends that has not been the case. I have not really had a chance to be lonely either with such a busy schedule and regularly talking with my family at home has been great. That said, it will be great to have Rob out here to help out and to have a conversation without any language barrier!

The next part of the blog will be written along with him as a joint account of the remaining two months out here. I will leave you with a few more photo's of Mahachaap.

Best wishes

Andy. x