In my very first week in India, I began volunteering at Golden Jubilee School in Jalna. Just to give a bit of a geographic background, I am staying on the Mahyco research compound in a tiny town called Davalwadi. About a half an hour's drive away is Jalna, a considerably larger town of maybe 400,000 people. Then the largest city near us is Aurangabad, about an hour away and probably about a million people strong.
Anyway, to get to Golden Jubilee School there is a bus that goes directly from the colony into Jalna, as a lot of the kids from around here go to the school. GJS is a really good English medium school, which means slots there are often pretty sought after. The bus isn't your full-sized American school bus or anything, actually its size and shape kind of remind me of the sort of thing that might have followed the Grateful Dead around. Of course, the cheery yellow paint kind of throws that image off. On my very first day, I hopped onto the bus and was greeted by the fairly baffled expressions of ten school children, and the comforting instruction of two teachers who also rode the bus. There weren't really any introductions, my sudden appearance on the bus was just taken at face value. In days to come the kids would get much more bold with me, but for this first day I was welcomed with silent curiosity.
The first day was mainly spent getting acquainted with the school. I started off by observing a Lower Kindergarten class (in India school starts in LKG and then moves to Upper Kindergarten) since I expected I would be working mostly with the younger kids. Right away I was introduced to one of the main differences between the schools here and in the United States- the formality. Anytime I would walk into a room, all of the students would get up from their seats and say "Good morning ma'am" in a chorus of well-practiced respect. This greeting extends to simply passing people in the hallway, where just about every student I see must acknowledge me and refer to me as ma'am. It is a practice that they have all grown up with, but took some getting used to for me as I, a) grew up in an extremely casual schooling environment and b) at age seventeen am not really used to being referred to as ma'am. But eventually I grew accustomed to it, and in fact there is something quite nice about being greeted so many times throughout the day. Walking around the halls here, you never feel ignored or unwelcome.
After some time in LKG, I went to the Jubilee Kids room for the remainder of the day. This is the daycare program at the school, for kids ages three and up. For the first week in particular this is where I spent most of my time, and even now any spare time I get I try and spend with these kids. The main goal of Jubilee Kids is to develop language, because at this point they have only been speaking either Hindi or Marathi at home, but will need to speak English if they continue going to GJS. So it is more or less a complete immersion program, the teachers speaking almost exclusively in English through their daily lessons or stories. The kids have gotten pretty good at comprehension, but they haven't gotten to the point where they can speak it yet.
The reason that I keep going back to the Jubilee Kids in particular, is that more than the other classes I have been helping with, it gives me the opportunity to interact with the kids on a more personal level. A three year old doesn't get frustrated if you can't understand their language, because for the most part all it takes is a goofy face or a big smile for them to warm up to you. The kids are always excited to show off what they know, pointing out the letter J with pride, or announcing that the clown's nose is "red colour." The older kids are interested in me, since I am kind of a surprise to show up in their class one day, but I don't get that excitement and general warmth that I do from spending actual personal time with the younger kids. I will write more about some of the other things I have been doing, but no matter how much I bounce around with different tasks at GJS, I can't imagine a better place to have started than with those Jubilee Kids.
Anyway, to get to Golden Jubilee School there is a bus that goes directly from the colony into Jalna, as a lot of the kids from around here go to the school. GJS is a really good English medium school, which means slots there are often pretty sought after. The bus isn't your full-sized American school bus or anything, actually its size and shape kind of remind me of the sort of thing that might have followed the Grateful Dead around. Of course, the cheery yellow paint kind of throws that image off. On my very first day, I hopped onto the bus and was greeted by the fairly baffled expressions of ten school children, and the comforting instruction of two teachers who also rode the bus. There weren't really any introductions, my sudden appearance on the bus was just taken at face value. In days to come the kids would get much more bold with me, but for this first day I was welcomed with silent curiosity.
The first day was mainly spent getting acquainted with the school. I started off by observing a Lower Kindergarten class (in India school starts in LKG and then moves to Upper Kindergarten) since I expected I would be working mostly with the younger kids. Right away I was introduced to one of the main differences between the schools here and in the United States- the formality. Anytime I would walk into a room, all of the students would get up from their seats and say "Good morning ma'am" in a chorus of well-practiced respect. This greeting extends to simply passing people in the hallway, where just about every student I see must acknowledge me and refer to me as ma'am. It is a practice that they have all grown up with, but took some getting used to for me as I, a) grew up in an extremely casual schooling environment and b) at age seventeen am not really used to being referred to as ma'am. But eventually I grew accustomed to it, and in fact there is something quite nice about being greeted so many times throughout the day. Walking around the halls here, you never feel ignored or unwelcome.
After some time in LKG, I went to the Jubilee Kids room for the remainder of the day. This is the daycare program at the school, for kids ages three and up. For the first week in particular this is where I spent most of my time, and even now any spare time I get I try and spend with these kids. The main goal of Jubilee Kids is to develop language, because at this point they have only been speaking either Hindi or Marathi at home, but will need to speak English if they continue going to GJS. So it is more or less a complete immersion program, the teachers speaking almost exclusively in English through their daily lessons or stories. The kids have gotten pretty good at comprehension, but they haven't gotten to the point where they can speak it yet.
The reason that I keep going back to the Jubilee Kids in particular, is that more than the other classes I have been helping with, it gives me the opportunity to interact with the kids on a more personal level. A three year old doesn't get frustrated if you can't understand their language, because for the most part all it takes is a goofy face or a big smile for them to warm up to you. The kids are always excited to show off what they know, pointing out the letter J with pride, or announcing that the clown's nose is "red colour." The older kids are interested in me, since I am kind of a surprise to show up in their class one day, but I don't get that excitement and general warmth that I do from spending actual personal time with the younger kids. I will write more about some of the other things I have been doing, but no matter how much I bounce around with different tasks at GJS, I can't imagine a better place to have started than with those Jubilee Kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment