teaching is learning

It is hard to believe that I will be home in a month.  It is even harder to believe that I have been in India for just over a month.  I have learned more than I could ever have imagined in a matter of 30-something days.  A few of the lessons I have learned so far...

  Joy exists everywhere, you have to be willing to see it!

There are many things that I have come to appreciate about a simpler life that I was initially very overwhelmed by. Take hand-washing my clothes. Whenever I buy a garment that is marked hand-wash only, I bring it to the dry cleaner after a certain amount of wears and then I pick it up a few days later without giving it any thought.  While I brought zero garments marked hand-wash only with me to Shanti Bhavan, all of my garments have been hand-washed.  At first, I hated this task and I remember reflecting with a fellow volunteer that my dryer in Boston runs for 60-minutes while here I spend 60-minutes physically scrubbing and rinsing my clothes.  That is 60-minutes of hard labor right there; think of all the Netflix I could have watched with that time! On Sunday a few of the volunteers and I took our laundry down to the stones to do our washing with the girls.  They meticulously scrub their clothes against the rocks and some even stomp on them to ensure that all the detergent has been rinsed out.  It can take hours.  I would think that any teenager would complain incessantly about this task but not here, quite the opposite actually.  The girls were singing, screeching in laughter, and having water fights.  It was pure joy.  Yes, I experienced pure joy while washing my dirty clothes.

You can teach and students can learn without a smartboard, laptop, or an excess of worksheets. 

As I was planning for my 6th-grade history class I began to feel overwhelmed and drained of creative ways to present the information.  I did not anticipate that lecturing about the Indus Valley Civilization would be highly effective with a group of active 12-year olds nor did I have a projector to show videos or a photocopier to make a textbook scavenger hunt like I would have back in the US.  I needed to think outside of the box.  As I was reading the textbook for the umpteenth time it finally came to me, I would break them into expert groups and teach them two-column note-taking!

The next day I entered my mid-morning class with my fingers crossed behind my back and my notebook in tow (of course I had written out my own two-column notes)!  When I excitedly told the class that they would be teaching each other they all looked at me with confused expressions on their faces, which was not the reaction I expected.  So I changed course.  I began to write an example of two-column notes on the chalkboard, this was a different experience since back in the US I would have distributed two-column note graphic organizers that I had copied and presented my example using a projector, but this method worked just as well.  The students set their notebooks up and got ready to find out who they would be working with as a part of their expert groups.  I told them that I would not be taking complaints about their partnerships and they kept quiet, thank goodness.  After a few minutes of quiet work, they were ready to present their bullet points for their classmates to record.  I have never seen this class more engaged and appropriate in posing questions to their classmates who were acting as experts.  At the end of class, the consensus was that they wanted more activities like this, "Miss, Miss, can we please do this again next class?!"  It was music to my ears.

This short 40-minute class period showed me that it is possible for teachers to teach and students to learn without many of the resources that I take for granted back home.  I will always remember this class as a time when I was fully present and engaged in teaching and learning with my students.  No one was looking at the screen or answering a classroom phone because that simply isn't an option here.

People can communicate without smartphones. 

At night I fall asleep to the sounds of crickets, cockatoos, and other unidentified creatures.  This brings me some comfort as I am accustomed to the sounds of the city back home but night after night I was hearing a whistling sound that I could not pinpoint.  One morning at breakfast we were attempting to name all the birds we hear at night.  I shared that I had been hearing a whistling sound and I didn't know if it was an animal or just the sound of the wind.  A fellow volunteer said that one night while walking back to her dorm she noticed that the security guard in the front post had blown a whistle and shortly after she heard the same sound in the distance.  They whistle to each other to indicate that all is well.  It's similar to the "home" texts we often send each other after parting ways following a social gathering out in the city.  The same message just communicated in a completely different way. 

The most meaningful gifts don't cost money.

Last weekend, my third weekend on campus due to illness, I was beginning to feel a little stir crazy.  Instead of focusing on my desire to travel outside the SB gates I decided to embrace the quiet and enjoy spending quality time with the children.  On Saturday morning 6th graders flooded to the door of the teacher's workroom exclaiming, "Miss, Miss, Miss, come quick, we are surprising Pooh for his birthday."  We ran quickly to the 6th-grade classroom where the students had assembled before their first class to present their dear, Pooh, with handmade cards and gifts.  He was so overwhelmed with emotion that he became tearful.  His classmates spent their limited free time to make him inspiring cards that depicted the Winnie the Pooh character in honor of his kind nature and his pet-name.  I have never seen such excitement from both ends of a gift exchange.  Pooh read every word of the cards out loud as his classmates listened intently to see how he would react to the inspirational phrases and funny anecdotes they had written inside.  These kids are excited all of the time, about what we might consider the smallest things and I am realizing how living with less enables you to truly and deeply appreciate what you are given.