Teaching – 10/19/14

                I’ve heard my whole life that teaching is hard and I always thought that I had a pretty good handle on what that meant: kids not listening, hours of work grading/planning, etc. Additionally, I tutored a good deal in high school and thought I had a feel for what teaching is like. The truth of the matter is that you really can’t know what it’s like to be a teacher until you’re thrown into a classroom and start teaching.

                The first week at the South Point School has been a whirlwind. I found out on Tuesday that I was teaching 3^rd graders English and 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 12^th graders math and then started classes Wednesday (the very next day). Sure, 13 years of schooling prepares you a little bit for being a teacher – after all I remember the teachers/teaching methods I enjoyed/found effective – but so much of teaching happens behind the scenes and I am woefully underprepared when it comes to teacher preparation. What the heck does a class plan even look like? How do you make/keep to a schedule to fit all of the necessary topics in before the end of the year? When should there be quizzes? tests? projects? And to top it off I have to do some of it in a language I just started learning a month and a half ago (the school is technically an English-medium school, but 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders just don’t know that much English). Not to mention the fact that midway through the third day with my 12^th graders I learned that I have to prepare them for the Indian equivalent of an AP exam by the end of February (except in India the test holds even more weight because college acceptance is based completely on exam scores).

                It’s a lot to take in, especially with such little guidance from anyone at the school. Part of my stress comes from the sheer difference between classroom environments at South Point and those back home. This point relates most directly to my math classes, although I am sure I could find traces of this same theme in my 3^rd grade class as well. Anyway, at the school children are encouraged to learn at their own pace – something that in theory I am not opposed to in the slightest (I was a tutor for years. I get the need of kids to learn at different speeds) – but the way in which this policy manifests itself in the school is so incredibly foreign to me. Basically, each kid teaches himself/herself out of the textbook and asks the teacher whenever he/she encounters a topic with which they struggle. This a) makes kids who are all in the same class be on multiple different sections, heck, chapters, b) allows students who don’t want to learn math to not learn any math, c) makes the teacher explain the exact same problem 10 different times to 10 different kids, and d) fosters an environment in which those who are struggling get left even further behind.

                After the first half week of working I had pretty much decided that after the next unit test in my seventh grade class I would have formal lessons and keep the kids on relatively the same page. During a conversation over lunch I brought up my plan to another teacher and she was shocked by the proposition – how could you make a class learn things together when some kids will inherently pick it up faster and others slower? Said teacher went on to describe that the current system functions the way it does because of lack of incentives/disincentives. At least in my school back home, if you were disruptive in the class you were sent outside or called to the principal’s office or assigned detention or given a lower grade or had your parents called. Here, the school has a policy that forbids sending kids out of class or to the office and it completely lacks any sort of detention system. Grades hardly matter when it comes to progressing to the next grade level and many/most parents just don’t care how their kids are performing in school. How, then, are you supposed to convince kids that they need to sit down and be quiet in class to learn?

                The answer to this question is externally incredibly easy: gain the students’ respect and trust. If students respect a teacher, they will jump through the most ridiculous hoops to please them (I know I did for those teachers who gained my respect in high school). BYP students from past years have left notes that the most important thing they developed while working at the South Point School was relationships with the students. Sammy (BYP 2013-2014) very astutely wrote in his advice to future BYP teachers that the most effective way to discipline students was to first get to know them outside of class and then use this familiarity to call out kids when they were being disruptive. The immediate problem with this solution is time – so far I have not had the time to spend time with students during lunch or breaks to talk to them and learn about their lives/circumstances (I haven’t even taught 5 days yet for goodness’ sake). Additionally, the language barrier (and current state of my half-deaf right ear) inhibits my ability to talk to the kids. Sure, I can play games with them and say “Hello! How are you?” just fine, but I still feel like I’m not being as effective as I could be in my exchanges with them. Again, the remedy to this concern is time: time learning Hindi, time becoming less of a stranger to the students, and time talking/interacting with everyone. I just wish I could be a better teacher now.

                Another concern in the back of my head is just my capability to effectively teach the subjects that have been chosen for me. Yeah, I technically know all the math that the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders are learning, I just have very little recollection of how that information was initially taught to me (how are you supposed to explain why you find the area of a rectangle the way you do without bringing in even more complicated math?). Even harder, I know English and English grammar well enough (even if you can’t tell from the haphazardness of the grammar in my blogs, oops lolz), but I have no idea how to teach it to someone else, especially to a 3^rd grader who doesn’t understand 90% of what I say anyway. I know I’ll figure it out soon enough, but this is more just an open invitation to all of the teachers who may or may not be reading my blogs to give me any sort of guidance.

                All of this rather pessimistic writing isn’t meant to be pessimistic. I’ve had a blast the past week starting to get to know my students – the good ones I can count on and the devilish ones I have to look out for – and getting my feet under mean as far as what I should be doing in class every day. It’s been exhausting and I swear that the 8 hours I get of sleep a night are somehow transformed into a mere 4 hours. Teaching, planning for teaching, Hindi class, and doing Hindi homework feel like the only things I do besides eat and sleep at the moment, but the busy rhythm is also strangely nice. Besides, I have weekends to hangout and recharge and spend more quality time wreaking havoc with my host brother Deep.

Tonight, we buy firecracker – 10/12/14

I’ve gotten to know my host family a little better in the past two weeks that we’ve been in Banaras. Madhu, the 16 year old sister, is really nice and always talks to me about things are fairly relevant in my life (ie service placement pros and cons, university admissions, wear to buy a nice sari, etc.). My host brother Deep, however, is much livelier and wants to do less talking and more doing. When Dolly-ji first gave us our homestay assignments she told me that my host brother was going to be a handful, but I never really appreciated those words until he dragged me around the house to play cards, video games, and set off firecrackers.

The first few nights I played cards – namely ERS (a game where you slap cards), War, and Set (a game where you find patterns in cards). I would normally win ERS and Set, but Deep will probably never forget that I lost to him three times in a row in War. The whole time we played cards Deep would ask (demand?) “After we play ‘Eyes Closed’ okay?”. At the time I had not been sleeping well at night and I was barely conjuring enough energy to play cards, let alone run around with my eyes closed and try to catch Deep. Finally, after three days of avoiding the game and going to sleep, I relented and played with him. I think we played about six rounds before I called it quits (Madhu also played with us). I thought this would be the end of Deep’s shenanigans of late night game play, but just as those days were ending, he started up with a new request/demand.

“Tonight, we buy firecracker. Go to roof and explode!” The coming of Dewali also means tons and tons of firecrackers/fireworks being sold. Every night Deep implores me to walk with him to the nearby store and get some. Some days we do, others I tell him I need to sleep (which is true, I’m trying to get over an ear infection after all). When we do procure firecrackers, Deep wastes no time in setting them all off. In the alleyway by our house, on our roof, in the courtyard in front of a nearby temple, everywhere. A small crowd of children inevitably joins us and Deep never fails to remind me to “keep firecracker away from naughty childs.” We use sticks of incents to light the firecrackers from a safe distance and then Deep yells “Run! Run! Too dangerous!” even when I am already 15 feet from the blast zone.

Last week I went with Deep to a festival that occupied the main street near my house and I watched him get ice cream and buy little toys to entertain himself. He proudly points out all of his friends that he knows and brags about the money that his grandparents give him to spend on whatever he likes (mostly firecrackers as far as I can tell). Deep loves speaking broken English at a rapid-fire pace that is virtually impossible to understand. Sometimes I can’t even tell if he’s speaking in Hindi or English! Usually he tries to cover himself by ending his sentences with “No more English. Sister translate. I’m very much tired” after which he continues in speaking in broken English because he can’t go a minute without talking.

 

So much to do, so little time to do it – 10/14/14

                This is another topic that I’ve already talked a little about, but since arriving in Varanasi it feels like we have even less time to fit everything into our busy schedules. Now that we have gotten our service placements and all my schedule look something like:

                                                7:00 AM: Meet in program house for breakfast/morning meeting

                                                8:00 AM: Ben and I arrive at South Point School

                                                4:00 PM: Ben and I finish at the school

                                                6:00 PM: Hindi class

                                                8:00 PM: End Hindi class and go home

                                                9:00 PM: Dinner with host families

                                                10:00 PM: My unofficial bed time

Of course, each of us has a slightly different schedule. For example, Jenny has to leave at 7:30 AM to catch the bus to Kiran and Alex doesn’t eat dinner until 11 PM (don’t worry, though, he has nap time at Bal Ashram). As you can see, this agenda doesn’t leave too much free time. We always joke about how we’re expected to consistently update our blogs, skype with friends and family, upload pictures, go shopping for clothes & other necessary items, explore the city, drink chai on the ghats, prepare for our service sites, study hindi, write yaks/group updates, wash our clothes/go to the dobi, practice yoga, journal, and do it all while getting enough sleep to keep energized throughout day. I’m not complaining about the multitude of things I want to do while I am here (I’d much rather have the problem of too much to do rather than not enough), but it’s certainly require a lot of prioritizing.

                Since coming to Varanasi all of us have gotten sick in some capacity. It all started with Chase having a sore throat that she then gave to me and Alex, who then spread it to the rest of the group. I got an ear infection from the throat sickness and both Ben T and Stephen have recently developed a cough. Chase was throwing up yesterday and in general our group energy is in a current slump. I reckon it’s probably a mixture of the increased work, the crappy city air, the abundance of cow dung we are in contact with every day, and the rainy weather that’s come in as a residual part of the storm hitting farther south. This is just a gentle reminder to friends and family back home that we are all trying to stay connected and sometimes it’s just hard to get to an internet café when you’re running errands all over Assi.

Levels – 10/13/14

                I’ve already briefly described biking here in the city, but the other day Caleb-ji had such a good thought I am going to write about it again. Biking is a lot of fun, but it’s also pretty stressful. You have to be on high alert the entire time. Besides, you never know when a cow or water buffalo might come charging down the street or when a motorcycle may come careening down an alleyway and onto the road. We each find ways to process the multitude of sensory input barraging our brains and maintain sanity where lack of order abounds. Caleb-ji, however, has created one of the most entertaining methods of coping.

                The whole premise of his method is that we are all characters in a video game set in Banaras. The goal of the video game is to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, while also staying safe (you do only have one life after all). In this game there are different levels of difficulty. They are as follows:

Level 1: You are the sole biker on the road

Level 2: You plus pedestrians                     

Level 3: Level 2 + other bikers

Level 4: Level 3 + cycle-rickshaws

Level 5: Level 4 + cows

Level 6: Level 5 + motorcycles

Level 7: Level 6 + auto-rickshaws

Level 8: Level 7 + cars

Level 9: Level 8 + subji-walas on the side of the road

Etc. Etc. Etc.

The levels keep intensifying in difficulty as more of each of the above listed items (and other unlisted ones) crowd the roads. On a single ride you can encounter a broad range of levels, quickly changing from Level 3 to 10 to 6 in less than a kilometer. Thinking about biking like this helps keep you focused on the roads rather than on the latest daydream in La-la Land. Over the course of the year I’m sure our perceptions of what is a “Level 1” street will change, just as a “Level 10” street might seem like a “Level 6” in a couple of months. (To be clear here, even though the above list is technically the definition of the various levels, they are more based on overall difficulty in navigating a given road than on the system described above. After all, each road will always have at least one cow on it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automatically a Level 5). It’s quite a silly thing that we have created, but it’s also a great tool to describe how our bike rides of the day have gone.  

Life in the City – 10/8/14

                We are all settling into our new lives here in Banaras. We have our new names, new host families, new bikes, new service placements, and a new Hindi guru. Our Hindi names are as follows:

Alex: Abhishek (Meaning “the act of coronation”)

Ben P: Bhanu (Meaning “sun”)

Ben T: Veer (Meaning “strong man”)

Stephen: Shyam (Meaning “Color of Shri Krishna” aka “dark”)

Jenny: Jonhvi (Meaning “Ganga” as in the Ganges)

Chase: Chini (Meaning “sugar”)

Evelyn: Indu (Meaning “moon”)

Caleb: Camal (Meaning “lotus flower”)

Christy: Mishtee (Meaning “sweet” in Bengali)

Dolly-ji named us all throughout our second day in Banaras and it was cool to then later learn the meanings behind our names and ponder why Dolly-ji named us what she did.

                My host family’s last name is Tripathi. I have a 16 year old host sister named Madhu, a 12 year old host brother named Deep, and then a host mom and dad (an uncle might also live at the house but I’m not completely sure). We live in a very tall and skinny house – there are 4 floors that each have a few rooms. My room is situated on the 3^rd floor next to my host sister’s and we share a bathroom. My host dad is a criminal lawyer and my host uncle is a policeman of some kind (my host mom is a housewife). We also have a guinea pig with a name that is very hard to pronounce/understand and a parakeet whose name I’ve never heard them say. I live fairly close to the program house (all the girls do) and am situated right next to a temple that wakes me up every morning. To be more exact, the house is surrounded by three different temples that all love to ring their bells very early in the morning.

                Biking in Varanasi has been exhilarating. As far as I can tell, there are very few traffic laws in India (if there are laws, they can’t be very strictly followed). Motorcycles, cars, tuk-tuks, pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, and bicycles all occupying the same space in a chaotic jumble of horns and wheels. People here greatly prefer using a blaring succession of horn blasts to signal that they are a) coming up behind you b) passing you c) turning off the street d) turning a blind corner or e) just for grins and giggles. It is a generally effective way to manage city traffic, but it’s very confusing and somewhat terrifying at times. You definitely have to be on high alert while biking and it’s really a good idea to wear a helmet, even if you get made fun of by the locals (no one here wears helmets or seatbelts and they give you a funny look when you do). It’s been quite fun exploring the city on bikes. Already I’ve found a splendid dhobi (laundry person), an awesome lassi shop, a superb sweet shop, and the go-to general store near Assi (where we are living).

                After visiting all the service sites and completing a mini application for the ones we liked best, we were each assigned a place to work.

Ben P and Evelyn: Nirman (a school that emphasizes learning through the arts)

Alex: Bal Ashram (an all-boys orphanage/organic farm)

Chase: Guria (an NGO that fights human trafficking)

Stephen: World Literacy Canada (an organization that promotes literacy esp. for women)

Ben T: Little Stars School (a school that teaches impoverished kids)

Jenny: Kiran (a center for the mentally/physically disabled)

I won’t expand more on this because in the future there will be many blogs, yaks, updates, etc. about each of these places.

                Our new Hindi guru, Virendra-ji, is world renowned for his teaching abilities. It’s a fairly unconventional style (at least by American standards) and it’s taken some getting used to. We aren’t allowed to write anything down for the majority of the class because he wants us to focus on listening rather than writing. Additionally, we haven’t really had a single grammar lesson, just starting with a basic sentence and then expanding on that to form new sentences with a similar structure. Sometimes I really really enjoy his teaching style, but other times I just really want to be able to jot something down so that I can go back and review it later on. It will be interesting to compare the academic settings in which I learned Hindi and Spanish at the end of my nine months here.

On to Banaras! – 10/1/14

                Sorry in advance that this doesn’t follow the chronology of the rest of my blogs, but I haven’t had a chance to write about this until now (we’ve been very busy in Banaras, but more on that in another post).

                The transit from Sona Pani to Banaras was long and tiresome, but also really fun and cool in a lot of ways. We started out with a four hour drive from Sona Pani to Khatkudam that most of us slept through because we had been staying up late listening to music at the Sona Pani Music Festival all the previous nights. Next, we boarded a sleeper train that would take us to Lucknow (arriving at 3:00 AM – yuck). Now, having been on a sleeper train in Europe I thought I knew what to expect when we boarded, but India did not fail to surprise me once again. The train was maximally packed with bunks. Down one side of the train were back-to-back triple bunks that ran parallel to the alleyway. On the other side were compartments that each held 6 bunks (3 on each side). I mean the word “compartment” in a very loose sense. There wasn’t anything like a door or curtain to separate it from the rest of the train, rather, the mere layout of the train gave it a more compartment-like feel. I will have to upload a diagram of what I mean because I know that description probably made very little sense and the train was too cramped to be able to take a picture that captured the dimensions of everything.

The next morning we departed the sleeper train at 3 AMish (we were supposed to arrive at 2:20 but trains are constantly arriving late to places) and we waited/slept for our next train in an air-conditioned waiting room at Lucknow. There were tons of people sleeping on the platform outside and we were really lucky that we all secured spots inside the AC room. Even with the AC room being the one of the “highest class” waiting rooms, there were rats scurrying around and darting under the sofa chairs. At 6:30 we boarded the next train that would finally take us to Varanasi.

                Our train departed from Platform 9, which for some weird reason was next to Platform 1 and not next to Platform 8. The group didn’t read signs and so we ended up on Platform 8 on the far opposite side of the train station. In the USA this would mean that you would have to retrace your steps back up the elevated walkway and to the correct platform, but in India you can just cut across all the rail tracks to get to your intended destination. Luckily, there weren’t any trains scheduled to arrive/depart  when we were clambering over the rails to get to the correct platform, but it still was kind of exhilarating crossing the tracks and then launching ourselves (weighed down by our packs, mind you) from the tracks up onto the 4 or 5 foot tall platform.

                The actual train ride was much less fun than our time at the station.  I got a solid 6 hours of reading in to finish A Fine Balance, but also didn’t get to eat much on the train and arrived starving at the program house. The first day we walked along Assi Ghat and then slept at the program house. This is the night that Stephen was attacked by monkeys – a story that I would like to clear up for the parents/friends. The whole thing is a mix of funny and scary, but I just want to stress that Stephen is doing really well and that most of the medical attention he is receiving is precautionary rather than because the doctors here actually think he has rabies/simian b/etc. Additionally, I am relaying the story as it was told to me by the boys who were actually present at the event – Chase, Jenny, and I were all downstairs and unaware of what was going on besides hearing some shouting from the roof.

                Around 6 or 6:30 AM we all woke up and were entranced by the beauty of the sun rising over the Ganges with people bathing on the ghats. The girls, being downstairs, observed the scene from the downstairs of the program house where we had slept. The boys, however, decided to take advantage of their position in the upstairs portion and use the ladder on the porch to get to the roof to watch the sunrise (well, most of the boys at least. Alex was sleeping when the monkey business was occurring). So, Ben T, Ben P, and Stephen were all enjoying themselves immensely on the roof until this one monkey comes and chucks a stick off the roof to the porch. We had seen tons of monkeys in the Himalayas, and there you merely wave your arms or yell and the monkeys flee. With this in mind, Ben T did his famous “langoor scream” (langoors are a certain type of monkey) and starts at the monkey to try to make it go away. Turns out city monkeys and mountain monkeys are very different. At this gesture a whole multitude of monkeys streamed onto the roof in a very aggressive fashion. Ben P quickly scampered down the ladder to avoid the conflict and Ben T moved to defensively swat away the onslaught of monkeys, but Stephen unfortunately had a monkey attack his back, away from where Ben T/P could see that he needed help. Ben T yelled at Ben P to throw the stick back up from the porch and quickly regained control of the situation once he had that with him to shoo away the pests. The “puncture wound” on Stephen’s back is mostly just a scratch. You can see the 5 points where the monkey’s nails first made contact with his skin and then lines about an inch or two long of where it scratched him. Thankfully, this happened at a time when Stephen won’t have to miss many activities for his trips to get shots/pills at the clinic. Princeton and Dragons have both been handling the situation exceptionally well and we are all very thankful for their support and concern for everyone’s wellbeing. Needless to say, I don't think anyone is going to return to the rooftop.

Cooking in India – 10/2/14

                I’ve already touched on this subject in one of my earlier blog posts where I wrote about making roti with my homestay mom, but there is so much more to cooking in India than having fingertips of steel to pick up insanely hot food with your bare hands.

                First of all, almost all the cooking I have done/seen done has been conducted on the floor. On a related note, there are no counters anywhere – not in the kitchen, not in the bathroom, not in the bedroom, etc. This has posed somewhat problematic in regard to the bathroom, especially when I was sharing with Chase because neither of us had a place to put our stuff besides the (not always clean) bathroom floor. Usually an abundance of hooks on the walls make up for lost counter space, but at my homestay in Banaras I can’t find a single hook in the bathroom. I’m going to have to ask what the heck I’m supposed to do with my towel while I shower considering there isn’t a separate space for showering (the showerhead is in the middle of the bathroom without any curtains or anything and water gets everywhere). In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a single shower curtain since I’ve arrived in India. Anyway, back to cooking. All of the slicing, stirring, kneading, peeling, grinding, washing, and rolling of food products is performed on the floor (not straight on the floor, there are plates under the food that is being prepared). Actually, most things happen on the floor here. You sit on the floor to cook, you sit on the floor to eat, you sit on the floor to bathe, you sit on the floor to learn Hindi, and the list goes on and on. At first all this floor sitting hurt my American hips and knees that aren’t accustomed to sitting cross-legged on the floor for extended periods of time, but I have since adjusted and now find the floor considerably more comfortable (although, I do admit I would prefer to sit in a chair every once in a while).

                This next cooking related thing is more of an interesting anecdote from a while ago that I forgot to write about until now. On Ben T’s birthday (September 19) we decided that we were going to bake him a birthday cake. As an avid baker back home, I offered my services to the group to come to the program house in Munsiyari an hourish early to bake the cake. Upon arrival at Malika-ji’s house (aka the program house), I realized that there was a) no recipe for me to follow and b) no oven in which I could bake the cake. The second issue was quickly resolved by a solar cooker being brought out for our use, but I have to admit I was a little nervous about just haphazardly throwing ingredients together to make a good tasting cake (I didn’t want Ben to be disappointed on his 18^th birthday now did I). I roughly gestimated two cups of flour, a cup of sugar, two eggs, a cup of butter, a half a teaspoon of baking soda, a quarter cup of milk, and a cup of a raisin/walnut mixture and mixed it all together (adding milk/flour to fine tune the batter consistency). We cooked the cake in a cheesecake pan and proceeded with the impromptu frosting. Since there wasn’t any powdered sugar to make a glaze or frosting, I just mixed milk, butter, and granule sugar together until it was a semi-pasty consistency. Half the cake (well, maybe more of a tart since it didn’t rise at all), was then coated with the frosting and we all sang happy birthday to Ben. The cake miraculously tasted fantastic. It was nice and spongey and the frosting’s crunch (due to the undissolved sugar) was reminiscent of crème Brule. If only all of my forays into recipe-less cooking were as successful as this one…

                At Munsiyari we had cooking lessons that were incredibly fun. We made pakora (the most similar thing to it in American food is the onion ring but it’s not really anything like that either), samosas, and marijuana seed chutney. All of us were quite intrigued by the interesting chutney and a little reserved about trying it at first. We were all assured many times by multiple reliable people that it would not have any effect on us, but we all still giggled when we saw that it was 4:20 PM while we were eating the pakora and chutney. People here love all sorts of chutney. Outside of blueberry chutney with brie I had never really had much of it, but sooo many dishes are served with one chutney or another. It’s one of those words that people here use to describe everything. “Yeh kya heh?” (what is this?) “Chutney.” Or even worse is the word “subji” that just groups all kinds of vegetables together into a single word.