I should not have left this post until the end. That is, I should not have tried to fit an entire seven months’ worth of teaching successes into one small text box. It should have become a trilogy, or at least its own small chapter book. In writing this post, I realized I have about thirty of my “best” pictures from the classroom to share and a million and one words to say about my teaching here. It’s a good thing there are so many positive things to share, though, of course. It’s a true reflection of how I glow with joy every time I think of my students, the projects we’ve done together, and the progress they have made. I know much of my blog has strongly reflected my concerns and challenges with teaching here. It’s time to talk about the successes. Despite the chaos of the Nepali education system, I still look back on every day, or almost every day, with laughter, love, and hope for the future.
To begin with, the last three or four months have been a million times easier than the first few. Living in a new place and entering a new education system really did require a steep learning curve. And somewhere around November, more so around January, I finally felt like I had it made. The students knew the songs we sang each morning by heart. My second graders were used to the routine of receiving stars for homework and losing stars for misbehavior. My first graders, though still chaotic, grew accustomed to the activity books and started finishing them faster than ever. They grew to know the instant I picked up the pink bag that I was handing out candy for finished work. It's amazing how fast first graders will stop talking when they know they are going to get candy.
My first graders' progress in English skyrocketed at some point. Though I’m not sure when. While reading story books my students started putting together words that we had learned separately, like “cat sleep!” One of the most amazing feelings was watching their thought process as they matched words to pictures or filled back through the activity books to find answers. I quickly learned to always provide the answer to each question somewhere in the book, so that when they asked how to spell something, I could tell them to look in the book, instead of wasting time giving them the answer. My students learned to teach themselves, to find their own answers – an important skill in a class of forty students.
I learned how to check the copies quickly, sometimes flipping through them quick enough to finish in my 30 minute free period, more often than not taking them home with me and continuing to check until the sun went down. I’ve poured heart and soul into creating books, cutting out animal shapes, drawing coloring sheets, and writing out grammar quizzes for longer than I can remember. It’s hard to imagine back seven months ago when I wasn’t so intensely involved with my work here, as it feels so normal now. No matter how exhausting, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. When you care, you but in your heart and soul without question.
Another great success took place in a classroom with significantly less screaming, fifth grade. After spending over four hours grading the second fifth grade exam it became quite obvious to me that the students had passed the test merely by guessing (many of the questions are true/false or fill in the blank). Almost every student had a very mixed outcome - some able to answer the very difficult vocabulary questions but missed all of the simple present tense questions, some able to guess the present perfect but unable to write even one complete sentence in a "letter to the principle." Only three or four students out of eighty correctly answered the questions: “What did you do yesterday?” though they could answer “How many fish were in the pond?” – a reading text question that had been drilled into them without most actually having understood the story the question stemmed from. I was done. This was ridiculous. It was a complete waste of time teaching textbook material, when students had such low levels of English that they had to guess their way through present and simple past tense.
So, I finally asked if I could teach grammar – and only grammar. To my surprise, my co-teacher agreed. We’ve had a very successful two months focusing on present tense, present continuous, yes/no questions, negative, and past. The students were asked to make their own sentences, instead of copying out the book. Students wrote about themselves, tested their knowledge through games, and over the last few days crafted letters to my mother’s fifth grade class in the US. Fifth grade became one of my favorite classes, and though many of them are still very weak in English, I feel so much better knowing I gave them a fighting chance; that someone finally sat down with them and said “let’s go back to present tense.”
 |
| Me with my fifth grade students |
Finally, my very favorite teaching success, besides my activities books and songs, revolves around one specific item:
crayons. If I’m remembered for anything at my school, it’ll be that I gave out chocolate and crayons. Chocolate, as motivation and as my last resort for dealing with discipline. And crayons, for everything else. For the past few months, my goal has been for my students to create. This is something that is almost entirely left out of the Nepali education system, at least until high school. Students rarely ever create anything that is their own.
So each day, I carried a bag of crayons with me to class, and often small sheets of white printer paper too. If I didn't bring the crayons to class, my students would be asking for them. We cut and crafted and colored, and put a good portion of the things we made on the walls (turns out it's totally acceptable to glue things to the walls in Nepal). I couldn’t have been more proud of my students in seeing their work.
In class two and three, my students created beautiful calendars on which they mark the date every day. In addition to our new “January, February…” song, this finally gave the confusing English Calendar some meaning for my students. In class two, we’ve also decorated the wall with the names of fruits and vegetables, the Nepali national symbols, and other coloring pages. I’ve spent much of my timing coloring with class two, as usually I have them at the end of the day – and by that time, all they and I alike want to do is color. John joked with me that that might be my Nepali equivalent of putting on a movie – but I still feel like any time them can create something of their own it’s a worthy lesson. And now they know the colors extra well :)
My class two also created their own mini books, following the format “On Sunday, ____. On Monday, I _____” ect. This helped them to put together their own sentences. They also bravely each read aloud their book to the class. This was definitely one of my favorite projects.
Lastly, a new addition to my schedule: Creative arts. At some point, one of the teachers at my school asked me what I thought she should do in Creative Arts. She’d studied Nepali after graduating high school and had no experience or training in teaching the arts. Join that with a complete lack of materials, and she had no idea how to teach the subject (I wouldn’t either if I was in her position). So, for the past two months, twice a week I join in on a Creative Arts class with class four – which also keeps them from being too jealous that they were the grade I somehow left out of my schedule.
We’ve done some really fun projects, the majority involving crayons – another reason why I’m going to be remembered as the crayon girl. We’ve created a puzzle-style “welcome” poster that we posted on the wall. Students have cut out their own snowflakes, colored art that focused on negative light (the tree drawings), and tried some of the coloring projects I remembered doing as a kid in middle school. One of my favorite projects was where the students colored a heart and wrote inside of it what was in their heart – their favorite activities, people, food, and places. Whenever we could, we glued their work to the walls. Nepali culture is very joyful, it was my determination to allow them to show it visually in the classroom as well. The class gave me a break from class one – which was needed, going in there three times a day was much too exhausting – and gave them a needed break from memorizing, allowing them to just be kids, and to create something of their own. The excitement, joy, and expression I saw in that class will stay with me for a very long time.
Other successes? My students learned addition (finally). My kindergarten students were exposed to what could have been their first-ever story book ever. My class three students actually learned how to be quiet for a few minutes and enjoyed my games so much that they continued to play them once I had left the class. My class 2 students have played Simon Says type games to learn body parts more times than I can count and all passed my General Knowledge exam with flying colors.
I taught simple multiplication in less than a week and my first graders understood it (many of them anyways). One of my co-teachers has been coming early every morning for me to help her learn English. Another co-teacher has picked up my songs, games, and teaching style incredibly well and has promised to continue to use the material I leave her when I go. I often hear “wake, wake, wake up” in a sing-songy voice coming from far off classrooms. First grade students that couldn’t (or wouldn’t) write any English at the beginning of the year are now starting to complete the activity book I labeled “Advanced.” ALL of my fifth graders now know how to answer the question “What did you do yesterday?”
I’ve never lived and worked so long in one place before. I’ve never been in and out of the same concrete classrooms for so many days in a row; Never had such a strong memorization of my students’ names and faces.
If you have to leave a place – leave it successfully. Saying goodbye is going to be hard, but my heart will be warm, knowing that what I'm leaving behind, my impact, will be more than just a few laminated teaching materials stocked in the library. I hope they'll remember me as clearly as I'll remember them. And I hope the songs, and the example I set for what teaching can be, will continue to ring through those concrete walls for many years. Gosh - I miss them so much already <3
It was an era of having a little sister and a newborn baby brother for the first time. Of loving every time a neighbor questioned in amazement how I'd managed to learn Nepali in such a short amount of time; An era of bus rides crammed next to locals, where I was either straddling a goat or handed a stranger's child to rest on my lap. An era of photocopies and lamination. An era of handing out chocolate and activity books and taking deep breathes in the thick of chaos. An era of loving new things, of tremendous learning curves, of humbling beginnings. 
.JPG)
