*This blog is written by Kat who is currently working as a volunteer for Friends in Khajuraho Association and has taken on teaching English in Tikri as well*
Walking along the garden path and up the ill-formed stone steps, the smiling family greet us each day with a chorus of ‘namaste’ or ‘good morning’ from the more confident pupils, a rush to prepare the classroom, and a cup of sweet chai. Their home consists of two rooms with one bed, a couple of chairs and household objects such as clothes and cooking materials. In the early mornings the children are either rocking the just-got-out-of-bed look, or are bright-eyed and combing recently-washed hair. In the late afternoons we welcome the goats when they come home from grazing and only leave when it is too dark to see the board (which has meant resorting to using torches once or twice!). With their mother watching from the step in the corner, the atmosphere moves comfortably between that of a living space and an orderly classroom.
The age difference, spanning from one cheeky five year old girl to a
hard-working eighteen year old, has resulted in a couple of disagreements over
erasers or ‘whose book is whose’, but overall it does credit to their family as
the siblings are kind and look out for each other. I think the children enjoy
the opportunity to think and focus, as one afternoon I remember two of the
girls looking sullenly at each other with red eyes, but within twenty minutes
their dryer eyes were darting between the board and their books, scribbling
down words.
We teach four times per week to a large family and a couple of their neighbours. I do an hour of English, then Vijay does an hour of Hindi. Initially I joined in the latter (I’m a beginner as of moving to India!), but recently some new and more advanced students have joined the class, so I use this time to give them extra tuition. My focus is on beginner lexical sets and we’ve covered animals, colours, numbers, fruits, vegetables, family members and pronouns. Each week I add in a few key phrases such as introductions, however in reality full sentences are too complicated for the vast majority. Most of the children struggle to remember or even read out words of three or four syllables (which I think is due to under confidence and a lack of concentration – both of which we’re working on through encouragement and repetition). Therefore, rather than start on grammar I wanted to build up their confidence with vocabulary, so we practice lots of spelling, drilling, copying words and word searches. When we covered prepositions I made sure to use all the previously mentioned sets of words, and of course draw some pictures on the board – imagine cats in boxes and apples next to bananas. Our only resources are pens, paper, the board and a few handwriting books, so I’ve developed a newly acquired talent for drawing cartoons of elephants, which the children find hugely amusing (but my lions need some work!).
In the first few weeks it was difficult to measure improvement, and not because they’re beginners, but because most of the children hardly attended school and when they did the level of teaching was poor. Their lack of education is apparent in a number of ways in the classroom. Before I begin I’d like to write a quick note about my observations. I’m new to teaching English and I haven’t studied psychology so my interpretations are informal and still developing.
Firstly, they struggle to recall information, even during an activity
when the answers are on the board. I believe their teachers prioritise
learning by rote rather than instilling an understanding of meaning and
thus creating a lasting memory of word groups. It will be a slow process
to overcome this, with lots and lots of encouragement. Over the last
few weeks however I have been able to mention some words, in particular
animals, fruits, colours or prepositions and they are excited to
remember them.
Secondly, despite knowing the
alphabet (and even some still make mistakes) they often can’t adapt
their knowledge of letters into reading a written word and speaking it
out loud. I found this quite shocking at first, that a teenager who
attended English classes throughout his schooling would know the sounds
of ‘b’ ‘a’ and ‘t’, but be unable to connect them and say the word
‘bat’. This indicates a potential difficulty in transferring knowledge
from one activity to a new setting. I’m working on it by correcting them
while pointing to the written word and repeating syllables when I
introduce new words.
Lastly, their ability to comprehend instructions or grasp the aim of an activity is poor. I’ve seen this in direct contrast with the children I teach in the Khajuraho Old Village. Many are from slightly better socio-economic backgrounds and live in more accessible locations, so they attend better schools on a regular basis. Even with my lack of Hindi, in the Old Village if I ask the pupils to read out loud, drill words or complete an activity on a sheet, such as a word search or true/false statements, they eagerly get started. In Tikri they often look up at me hopefully, but they don’t have experience of classroom conventions so they aren’t ready to take on new activities. For this reason when we start a new drilling sequence or I’m asking each student for an answer, I’ll start with their cousins who attended a school in Delhi and have recently moved back to Tikri. They can understand what I’m looking for and the others have a moment to catch up. Nevertheless, I’m happy to say that this issue has improved! I’ve seen more engagement from all of the children and a willingness to try more. While the oldest boys may still sit at the back of the class, they no longer avoid eye contact and stare stubbornly at their books. At the beginning Vijay often had to step in and prompt their cooperation but now they look up more and join in with their siblings. There was a particularly inspiring morning when one of them picked up my ‘Guide to Beginner’s Hindi’ and started to copy out a whole paragraph of his own accord.
The second noticeable improvement is in their handwriting and written work. Some of the pupils, especially the older boys who work for the family rather than attend school, rarely pick up a pen during the week so this is an opportunity to practice. A few weeks in I led a handwriting session marking their alphabets and some sentences out of ‘five’. I gave most a ‘three’, and sometimes that was perhaps too generous, but this past week I genuinely gave everyone a ‘four’ or ‘five’. I was so pleasantly surprised when each child brought up their book – it really made me smile! Through these hours writing simple words they’ve not only improved their handwriting but also learnt to look more closely at the board and see how I form the letters, and to re-produce them correctly. This is a small indication that hopefully their attention span and critical thinking skills are slowly improving.
Of course I hope to see more improvements and changes in the pupils as we enter the next stage of teaching! I’m really enjoying it and I’m so grateful to the family for their warm welcome and uplifting smiles. Now it’s on to the world of verbs as we continue to teach in a simple room on the outskirts of a poor village with goats in the garden, parrots flying over, and monkeys on next door’s fence.
