First days of teaching

Teaching at Sacred Heart School is definitely a challenge. I'm teaching English and Australian Geography to students within Class I up to Class VII (six year olds to thirteen year olds). Although this is an English medium school, and anyone caught speaking Nepalese or Hindi is fined 10-20rupees, their pronunciation and accents are pretty difficult to understand.

The students are not taught to raise their hands quietly if they have a question or if they know the answer, so shout “Miss!” as loudly as their little lungs can possibly manage. And if I do not acknowledge them, they walk up to me screaming “Miss!” and tug the edge of my salwar kameez. They get distracted easily and the lack of space in the classroom limits the amount of activities to play. However, giving out stickers gets them back on track. But there are some kids (Class III especially) do not understand the concept that one has to be good to receive a sticker so continually shout and move around the classroom and expect a sticker. I feel so terrible for yelling at them to be quiet, one time I yelled so hard my throat hurt at the end of the period, or punishing them somehow (asking them to stand in the corner or to stand outside) but the culture is so different that this is hardly a punishment. Their punishments are physical beatings which I am most definitely not going to do. However, Jordan and I sure did get it good as other volunteers are considering leaving their placements due to the brutality of punishments (backhands on the face, hits on the head with thin bamboo sticks and severe verbal abuse are among the punishments done to children as young as 8 for making a simple grammatical mistake. I heard that the teacher pointed at an eight year old boy and said, “This boy is evil as he comes from Bangladesh. He will never be a good person and is lower than everybody else.”).

One of the biggest differences between Australian children and Indian children is physical interaction. Over here, when the kids do not get along well; pulling, pushing, grabbing, punching, slapping, elbowing, kicking and hitting no matter the gender is something so common inside and out of the classroom. However when they do get along well, physical touch between the same sex is regularly seen. Both boys and girls of all ages are seen holding hands, arms around shoulders, hands on waists, linking arms or are somehow physically connected. One time in Class VII, I saw a boy continually kissing the cheek of his friend, who was a boy. It's a bit strange and I guess kind of cute to see. Also, I noticed that all the kids love dobbing on each other. There is no sense of group harmony, except for older classes, as each child is looking out for themselves.

“Miss! He's using a pen!”

“Miss! She's not sitting properly!”

“Miss! They put paper on the floor!”

“Miss! He's sleeping!”

“Miss! She drank water without asking!”

“Miss! He rubbed his drawing out!”

Honestly, it gets pretty annoying. What happened to backing your friends up? What happened to the idea that dobbers are teacher pets? Guess that's only back in Australia.

Whilst teaching there have been some absolutely pure gold moments such as a little boy randomly krumping in his chair, a little girl giving me the most seediest smile ever revealing her front two teeth gone, the little ones talking to me in supposed English but sounds like a whole other language leaving me with a blank expression, a stray dog randomly trotting into the classroom, a kid randomly getting out of his seat and marching up and down and around the room and a girl suddenly jumping out of her chair and dancing like Beyonce. For some reason, these moments make me laugh uncontrollably. Maybe it's because it's so random and unexpected that I don't know how to react but through laughter.