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Back to the Books…
Six months ago, I would not have predicted that I would ever be writing these words, but I do believe that teaching is becoming more natural… and even more enjoyable. It seems that this teaching thing is actually do-able! My biggest leap forward as far as personal progress is learning the wonderfully fine and precarious art of lesson planning. Lesson planning is really the bones of any class-- and without a sturdy skeleton a class will fall into a pile of mush. While I had assumed that this mush was an inevitable by-product of inexperienced teaching, it seems that I have gained some experience and I feel that I have been able to establish structure and support in my classes. Now with this lesson planning insight, I feel like I have more of an ability to assess what I am teaching my students, how much they're probably getting out of it, and to look for areas I can improve on. Also with time comes the wonderful bonus of established routine, which, like in any job, creates a little order into a classroom's
natural state of chaos. I feel that daily routines, test routines, and homework routines all add to my ability to actually implement all the ideas I have on paper as lesson plans, and the increased smooth running of the classroom can be felt by students and teacher alike.
In addition to the rigors of grammar rules, short stories and "understanding the texts," I have tried to fill my lesson plans with some opportunities for creative growth. Increasing the students' creativity has been my number one teaching goal; in the Nepali pedagogical system it is not always easy, but it is the most interesting and rewarding part of teaching for me. To take a current example, I have asked my students in Class 8 to make a radio show as project work. I thought the radio show would be helpful on a number of levels. First, it would encourage them to learn to speak with emotion instead of droning out passages. Second, it gives me a chance to do an oral evaluation instead of the normal written assignment for project work. And finally, and most importantly, I hoped the students would be excited about their radio shows and produce creative and interesting work. They are most definitely excited and have dragged in an armload of the latest Eminem and Shakiyra for our listening enjoyment, howev
er, as is typically the case, technical difficulties are slowing down the production of 100FM LMV. I have asked the students to come in after school to do the taping (most students do not have access to cassette players with record functions outside of school), and as I write this report I have been called out six times to assist with the technical failures of the infamous and ought-to-be-retired school ghetto blaster. The most recent crisis appears to be that four students' work, which was "just coming ma'am" is now completely erased. The mysteries of such a crisis are yet to be explained, and I am sure that after listening to the blank tape I will uncover something…
Despite the confusions of dead batteries, side A versus side B, and the RED record button, I feel like the radio show is a big hit primarily because it allows me to interact with the students on a non-traditional level in a situation that is developing their creativity. The students are really into their radio shows, and are especially excited by the prospect of being broadcast to a listening audience of thirty-two of their peers (I promised to play the shows in class), and concurrent to their amateur DJing they are leaning to apply English in a real-life and creative manner. As a final aside, I would like to share the highlight of the radio show experience for me-- an a capella version of Aqua's Barbie Girl dedicated to Jessica-ma'am.
Along the musical theme, I asked the students of Class 5 to write songs for project work and to perform them for the class. Class 5 loves to sing (as my parents can attest to after the abundant serenades they received while visiting my classes!) so I thought song would be an effective way to have to students use English in an original and creative manner. In addition, it incorporates rhyming, repetition and all sorts of "poetic techniques" that we have been studying in class. Unfortunately, I will admit the results of the songs project work were mixed. Teaching is a learning experience for the teacher as much as the student and I learned a few things after the songs fiasco. First, for a class that loves to sing, asking them to sit still and listen to others sing is pure and utter torture! The fun Listen-to-Classmates'-Songs Day became If-You-Talk-Again-You're-Out Day, and in addition, while the majority are music lovers, there were a few shy students in the class who barely eeked out the words to their
songs, let alone sang them loud enough to be heard over the constant shuffle made my a room full of ten-year-olds. On a positive note, the songs were really good. One boy wrote an ode to his mother to the tune of Shaggy's Angel. Another girl wrote about her cat to the tune of 'Do' A Deer. And of course, the Nepali classic Hotel California was worked up to "Welcome to my school, my LMV School." Very nice!
At the beginning, a lot of my frustration with teaching was coming from interacting with the students only as an authority figure who gives knowledge, and so I have been looking for ways to develop in them a sense of their own capacity as givers of knowledge. I believe that by creating environments where the teacher is not standing at the head of the classroom and where there is no red-checking-pen right answer, the students will gain a sense of confidence in themselves as intelligent producers of knowledge. I hope that creative project work such as radio shows and songs are encouraging the students to realize their own knowledge potential. I also hope that such activities will make them enthusiastic learners to motivate them to learn English on their own to be used in forms other than grammar quizzes and spelling bees. Teaching is not about passing information, but about inspiring learning, and I hope that creative and fun activities are inspiring my students to be enthusiastic learners.
Extracurriculars…
Although I often feel that I am always at the school, we just had a string of vacations for the major holidays of Dashain and Tihar. The Dashain break was absolutely amazing as my parents were able to come and visit. My parents, Alison and I moved out of the smog of Patan and Kathmandu and visited the mountains up close and personal. We went trekking for five days near the Annapurna circuit, from Pokhara to Ghorepani and Ghandrung. Trekking in Nepal is not like hiking in Colorado, and the foothills we climbed would probably make the Rockies blush. We worked muscle groups that had lain dormant in my calves for so long that I had forgotten about them and we saw sights that made the leg sores and blisters fade into insignificance. The mountains were absolutely incredible. And below the mountains, the valleys stretched so far it was hard to imagine they would ever end. The sight of the mountains gave me an energy rush that replaced the struggles of three months of teaching and I feel like I came back from
our trek with a renewed energy for life in Nepal and at LMV School.
Besides trekking, the other major highlight of our trip was our visit to the Royal Chitwan National Park. Chitwan was not exactly at an energy peak while we were visiting, but we did keep it interesting with several adventures-- the most notable of which was the elephant ride. The four of us and a friendly Brazilian woman mounted two hatti and plowed off into the Nepali jungle. The elephants stampeded through the brush and were undaunted by the apparently to-be-used-only-as-guidelines trails as we forged our path. The goal of our ride was to spot rhinos, and spot them we did! We saw a total of eleven rhinoceros, none more than 10 meters away, roaming around like they lived there (smile). Eight of the armored giants were wallowing in a drinking hole and frolicking-to the extent that four-ton animals can frolic-with each other in the cool pond. Seeing rhinos at the zoo, even the wonderful (ly neglected) Jawalakhel Zoo, does not compete with seeing rhinos in their natural habitat from the perch of an elep
hant's back!
After my parents left (sniff), Alison and I had an adventure of our own in the town of Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha. We went down to Lumbini with a student/ friend of family to help out with their post-monastic-prayer rock concert in celebration of the First Anniversary of the Shanti Stupa or Peace Pagoda. We stayed at the Japanese monastery affiliated with the pagoda rising every morning at 5 am to do meditative chants and eating dinner with the monks at night. Due to our early morning activities, I must admit that I was not all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the actual celebration, not to mention the fact that it was mostly in Japanese, but it was interesting to watch the monks from Tibet, China, Sri Lanka, and Nepal do their different chants. During the ceremony, they released colored flags over the pagoda and the monks all made a processional march around the stupa's base. And afterward, of course, was a lovely concert with a nice cover of Hotel California, heartily appreciated by all the
attending monks and nuns.
In addition to mountain gazing on our trek, the cold of a mild Nepali winter is moving in. Although my finger joints are stiff and morning showers colder, the mountains can now be seen from Kathmandu and it is a reward which is, in my opinion, worth the bite in the air. The cold air has begun to nudge the clouds into hibernation in the hollows of the mountain valleys leaving the tops of the mountain peaks to loom above Kathmandu like guardians keeping watch over the valley. In the early morning, the mountains are a soft pink that turns orange with the minutes as the sun comes up; in the afternoon the mountains are blue, sometimes a blue so light that it is difficult to tell the difference between mountain and sky. In the nighttime, the mountains are dark gray masses against a lighter gray sky. While at first I was amazed by the Nepali clouds which seemed to bigger than any I had ever seen in a never-ending sky, now I am awestruck at the magnificence of the Himalaya that grow longer and brighter as the wi
nds blow colder and colder. For me, one of the greatest rewards of spending a year in Nepal, is being able to experience the changes of season from the rice-planting clouds to the post harvest peaks. The natural beauty of Nepal is a sight not to be missed and never to be forgotten.
Besides vacation and mountain watching, I have also been developing a social life here. Mostly my activities include going to a meditation class, where I am the only Sri Chinmoy school of meditation groupie and have therefore been eagerly embraced by his more ardent followers. Guru Chinmoy himself currently teaches meditation to the UN ambassadors and so lives in New York, but his followers are beginning a going-to-be-active chapter in Kathmandu. In a small world sort of coincidence, my guru works at the same school as the parents of Pranita Sharma '02, a fellow Grinnell classmate, and I will be meeting her parents on Saturday when I visit the home of Guru Prajapati, also teacher of math.
In addition to meditating, Alison and I have been working on getting ourselves invited over to friendly Nepali homes to be stuffed in the traditional Nepali style with copious amounts of wonderful food. Another note to future fellows: in order to refuse seconds (or third, forths, or fifths) a hand must be physically placed over the plate and left there until the serving dish and its enthusiastic distributor are a minimum of five feet away. In other words, more is better if you are a guest in a Nepali home and so be prepared to come into the situation with an open mind and expandable stomach. In addition to being daal-bhaated to the point to exploding, we have also gone on an entertaining walking tour of Kathmandu and surrounding areas with a couple teachers from the school, met some fellow Americans, and explored the culinary delights of momos at the local Bakery Café.
Closing Remarks…
As the second of these reports, I find that the writing is harder because nothing seems as dramatic, which is a very positive thing. Teaching is no longer an entirely new adventure threatening to wear me down class by class; living is no longer as stressful and I feel very at home with the Situala's; and even my digestive track is becoming adjusted to rice after rice after rice. Overall, I am starting to feel quite comfortable here. As far as teaching is concerned, I feel that I have come a long way and learned a lot. (I have a lot of advice to give to prospective fellows including to make sure that the kids have two copies, to not bend the cover of the teacher diary backward because it will rip off, and to use the tail of your sari as a "muff" when it gets really cold. In addition, I would advise next year's fellows to start with tough discipline and get more lax (it doesn't work the other way around), to observe other teacher's classes at the beginning and note not only how the teachers but also how the
students behave, and to worry less about how much you are teaching as how effectively you are teaching.) I have learned thus far ample and invaluable knowledge about teaching, and I know I am learning more and more everyday. I also feel I have gained a deeper and stronger appreciation of Nepali culture and life. Although life in Nepal has daily ups and downs, my emotional connection to the country is growing from foothills into mountains!
-Jessica Schmidt
November 2002
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