Find Someone Who...

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I arrived to Munirka today with a plan to play “Find someone in the class who…” with the women. I created a list of criteria that I imagined more of them could relate to before heading out there (find someone who is married, who has children, who likes to dance, who has seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai-one of my favorite Bollywood films, etc.).

It went very smoothly, in spite of the incessant interruptions by the young grade school girls, who wanted my attention all to them. I think this is one of my greatest internal conflicts, as an English teacher here in India – should I devote my attention to the students who desperately, and sometimes obnoxiously seek to get it…or to the students who almost hide from me behind their stitches? When should who get what amount of my attention? I admit that it’s so much easier to give it to the women who demand it…women like Lata, or young girls like Nisha, who distract me when I am trying to give attention to the girls who are falling behind on that day’s lesson.

They often urge me to continue, to move on to the next activity, or to come away with them and do something different altogether. These girls are so eager—too eager perhaps, that I often wonder if the have even given themselves enough time for the lesson to sink in. However, even though focusing my attention on them is certainly the path of least resistance, I feel drawn to the girls who avoid me. I always think of Pooja, Krishna, Arti and Soniya,  ~14 year old girls who hide behind their friends who know more English then them whenever I ask them a question in English. I also think of Kavita, who I did not have a chance to meet with today, as she preferred needlework to combating for my attention.

These are the girls that I want to give my time to. Danielle, another volunteer who teaches with me at Munirka usually focuses her attention on Lata and Rajkumari, two excellent middle-aged women who are anxious to learn English in order to keep up with their children’s English education. Since Danielle is here for a shorter period of time, she wishes to focus on them…which I understand, but I wish we could have a third teacher, or a better system set up, so that we could break the girls into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. Lata, Rajkumari, Parvesh and Shabnam fit in the same approximate level. The younger girls are in the most beginning stages, and then there are girls like Kavita and Babita, who would highly benefit from a teacher that could focus on reading comprehension, since they can read and understand, and even hold brief conversations. Perhaps I will pitch the idea of breaking them into levels for the next group of volunteers that arrive next week. Maybe I can even request a third teacher to join me? If not, I’ll work on developing another system. In any case, I suppose this is the nature of teaching as a volunteer…you have so many students in one classroom of so many differing ability levels with the subject matter, that you end up being spread thin, and having to choose one group to focus on. I hope I can battle this trend.

Pardeep, Me, and Babita

 On the upside, I spent the last hour of my morning getting to know Babita and Pardeep. Babita is a 17-year-old girl, and today was the first day I met her. She spoke English at the advanced level, and could understand most of what I was communicating to her, even when she had trouble finding a word or expression. I’m hoping that if she shows up on Monday, I will be able to unofficially dub her my assistant. Pardeep is 11 years old, and he is the funniest little boy ever. He kept asking me random questions about life in America: are there homeless people there? How much was your camera? Are your children going to be white or black, since you are black and your husband is white? It was hilarious. He also kept asking me about Justin Bieber, who apparently is really hot here in India. He told me he wants to be like him. I told him that was fine, but that he’s too young, so I don’t really know his music. That blew him away. I love how frank people here can be. It’s refreshing.

That’s all for now. No crazy weekend plans yet, except shopping...so I’ll post again soon.