Starting
a month ago, everyone at the South Point School started focusing on Open House.
When Ben and I asked if other schools also have Open House, the other teachers
would always reply that Open House is a strictly Nirman thing here in India,
but that schools in the US also have it (probably a residual of Nita Ma’am
having very Western ideals for schooling). The thing is, Open House at South
Point is so different from any Open House that I’ve experienced in the US.
The first
week of December was the monthly exam week (also when a minimum of 2 projects
were due for each class) and the two weeks following that were basically
academic-free for the students (of course, all in the name of Open House
decorating). The week immediately after exam week I could sometimes get my
students focused enough to do something academically productive, but the week
of Open House was pretty much just time for students and teachers to make
decorations and projects for the looming Open House. One day I walked into the
third grade classroom ready to teach a lesson on homophones, only to find that
the board had been replaced with a replica of a waterfall made out of all of
the desks and chairs in the classroom and a blue sari. I really didn’t know what
to do with the kids considering they had no desks or chairs to sit in and ¾ of
their classroom was dominated by this display, so we went to the library and
read story books. This was on Monday and meant that I still had to figure out
what to do with my third graders without any classroom for 3 more days (we
ended up doing a lot of charades and drawing). The whole ordeal was organized
chaos and I was so confused as to what my responsibilities as a teacher were
supposed to be.
Originally,
Ben and I were in charge of a game stall for the event and we spent a fair
amount of our planning times thinking of games, making posters, and figuring
out prizes, only to be told 4 days before Open House that there wasn’t actually
going to be a game stall (such is the nature of the school). Sometimes Ben and
I would walk into class to find that that grade’s “class teacher” was standing
in and that we had a free period. Equally likely, however, was that we would
have to randomly sub a class for a class teacher who wasn’t going to show up to
another grade’s class. The result was a really random schedule that sometimes
left me wondering what to do with myself and sometimes rushing around like a
chicken with its head cut off.
The
actual event of Open House was really fun. Since Ben and I didn’t have as many
responsibilities as the official class teachers (class teachers are kind of
like homeroom teachers), we got to walk around and see all of the work that the
students had done, as well as eat and play at the food stalls and game stalls
that the kids had made. In fact, open house was more like an annual carnival
than an open house, except that everything going on at the carnival was at
least partially created by the kids. I got to meet parents of some of my
students which was really fun, and I even found out that one of my fifth
graders is from Spain and speaks fluent Spanish! The whole school was decked
out in decorations and all of the students were so excited to show off their
work and take pictures with me.
The
Monday following Open House, I was kind of expecting another academic-free day
for the students since the entire school was still unusable from all of the
Open House exhibits. In addition to that, school would be out that Wednesday
anyway and there’s not a whole lot that you can do in two random days before a
long break. The first half of the day I didn’t even get a chance to go to any
of my classes since the whole school first took a tour of the different
classrooms to see the different displays and then went to clean everything up.
Right before lunch, a notice went out to the teachers that we had to give
holiday homework to all of the students, which I started doing from 4th
period on, and that class teachers had to make plans for Christmas parties in
their classes for the next day. I wasn’t too concerned about the periods that I
had missed giving holiday homework to because I would have a chance to give the
classes I homework the following day. At least that’s what I thought before I
got a notice three-quarters of the way through the second to last period of the
day that said the following day would actually be a holiday for the students
(teachers would still come in to submit final grades). This random holiday-granting has happened on
multiple occasions and I just do not understand how a school can run like that,
especially since it would seem that later in the year there aren’t days that
make up for the other days off (and that teachers still always have to come in
because otherwise they wouldn’t be working enough hours to make their salary). 
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