Okhaldhunga

Okhaldhunga 

I spent the last week, mon-fri, at Okhaldunga school.

I like this school a lot, the village in situated in a remote hill area, it is one hour jeep ride on the road then two and a half hours though the hills then a 40 min walk. It is a proper beautiful area though. You can go trekking in any direction from the village, either though jungle or along the top of the hills, now I’m saying hills, as that is what they are called here, but they’re mountains really. It is just in Nepal it has to have snow to be a mountain.

Unfortunately, mostly for you Phoebe, the camera I have been using courtesy of my sister, has stopped working. It has been getting worse for a few weeks but now the battery will not hold any charge. So no photos this week, well I did get a couple before the battery went for good.

I did go Monday to Friday but due to travelling time that means I only get three days teaching. Here’s what I got up to:

Tuesday

·         Yr8 X2 – Twinning letter, describing and drawing the village and school;

·         Yr9 – discussion and dialogue about jobs and plans for the future e.g. move house, get married;

·         Yr7 – Bingo and countdown numbers game;

·         Yr5 –prepositions.

Wednesday

·         Reception/nursery – playing with the toys I took, face paint, animals, blocks, balls and musical instruments;

·         Yr1 – Animals and face painting;

·         Yr2 – Shapes, colouring and face painting;

·         Yr3 – Fruit and veg and face painting;

·         Yr4 – Fruit and veg and face painting.

Thursday

·         Yr6 – bingo and hangman with a animal theme;

·         Yr5 – Bingo and face painting;

·         Yr4 – prepositions.

Now I know that is a lot of bingo and face painting but once the word spead they kept asking for it, and the bingo really helps with number name. The face painting is just fun. Actually even the yr8 and 9’s did a bit of face painting in the evenings, only the boys though and normally very make-up based face painting.

They did have dancing programmes every night but as I was ill with a cold, and the nighttimes are freezing there, they stopped about half ten. They had three with Nepali and Hindi pop music, I’m not that much of a fan of these as I don’t like the music, and I think that everyone that knows me knows I don’t dance. The other night, Wednesday I think, they had a Nepali programme about Holi, now if you don’t know Holi, it is the one where they throw paint at each other. They did use tikka powder here instead and not so much throwing but it is two people and they put the tikka on the head like normal and then throw a load at each other, then the people change. It was really fun especially as I got to tikka other people. I think my shirt is now ruined though but it was a charity shop special so it’s expendable.  Also on the last night two of the kids who came to the evening programme asked to play bingo, then I had to go inside for some quick food and I came out to find only 7 out of the 40ish children still outside. The rest were playing bingo upstairs.

Next week Mahchap again, stay tuned for the update.

Bagnas

Bagnas

So I got back to Bagnas this week. It is a very small school around 55 children; however, there couldn’t have been 40 there on any day I visited. The teachers told me that often children have to stay at home to do work, mainly farm work I think.

Day one

Year 1, 2 and 3

We did some animals names and posters, preposition games using animals and mini posters, matching and memory games then had a bit of bingo. Now on my own with these guys it was rather difficult to get them organised, as they really crave praise for their work. So i’d be talking  to one kid on how to improve their poster and have swarms of others around me shouting that they had done their work. I can tell them to sit down in Nepali but as soon as I moved to someone else it just happened again.

Year 4 and 5

I got the twinning letters sorted which discussed the Nepali festivals of Tihar, Dashian and Teej. Then they wanted to play some bingo, these guys put old women to shame with their enthusiasm for bingo. The children are great in this class their English has come along a lot since my first visit in October and most of the time they could understand what I was after. Although I am still fighting a losing battle against not just copying the text of the information sheets I gave them, but then when you spend most of the time copying or repeating it is rather innate.

Day 3

Nursery and reception re-caped parts of the body then played body games and sung body related songs. Then I got them to drawn round each other on A1 paper and colour in and label parts of the body and clothes. Finally, we did some face painting which was proper funny, although I demonstrated on myself and let one of the kids have a blast with my face (the picture only shows what I drew with no mirror). They teachers did remind me to wash it of but I needed to rush back and plus I had a motorbike helmet on; however, I forgot and went for a wander round town for a while looking like a nutter with a green coloured on beard.

pre green beard

Day 4

They had a celebrated today as the school is in its 26^th year. However, it was on Nepali time so instead of the 10:30 start it was 12:30, but I spend the time teaching some of the children to skip backwards and to cross the rope over in the air, two skills I never knew I had, and I also spent some time failing to play badminton. It was only a short ceremony with the usual speeches and dancing, then all the children who had performed in the tops three in different subjects/years/gender/and some more categories were presented with workbooks and pencils. I think everyone ended up with something. I did see one girl with 8 books though.

"I'd rather eat my book"

It’s been a good week.

Laharepipal

Laharepipal

I also managed to get two days at Laharepipal this week, I was meant to be going there two weeks ago, then a week after but due to visa issues and really low child numbers I couldn’t go.  Now Laharepipal is a really poor school they have nothing. There are no teaching resources - not even paper or pencils, the teachers are very rarely paid, there were no medical supplies at all but I’ve sorted that, about three quarters have uniforms but most are in a dire state and, also, the teachers often have to go around Tansen asking for money to feed the children – and I’m talking about just bread and tea. Now not all schools give children food but at least the children have breakfast or can bring some food with them. However, here though the families are so poor the children rarely ever get breakfast, most only eat once a day. So a bit of food in the day makes a lot of difference to their ability to learn. A lot of the children come late to school because they have to clean or act as servants in other people’s homes. This is mainly the reason why when I went I took three huge bags of oranges, some bananas, a load of tea and sugar, and 10 loaves of bread. The problem is here they don’t have any cooking facilities so they can’t make a huge pan of curry or something on the cheap. Furthermore, as they have to scrape the money together on a daily, well normally not every day, basis they can’t buy in bulk and get a discount. Fortunately, their twinned school, St Pauls primary, have sent them £830 which should keep them in food for a good while and get some children a uniform. I know that a uniform doesn’t seem that important but when you think that is will be the best clothes the children own, it makes sense.

 
I managed to get the twinning letters done though and I took the school a load of sports equipment which they went mental for. Additionally, I had to give them some money to tide them over for the week food-wise and for the exams they are taking next week, the school didn’t have any money to print the exam papers for the children. One more thing, the blackboards here are dismal, you can’t write on them, so I spent the afternoon with some of the teachers painting them. Hopefully, next visit I can actually use them. 

Araybhangjang

Araybhangjang

A lot of schools are closed this week for winter holiday so I want off to a new school in Araybhangjang, well I’ve been here once before actually but only for a lesson. It’s a higher secondary school and offers +2 (like our collage but you can only do business or teaching). The school is good and the level of the teachers education is high, many have masters and almost all of them have B.ed’s; however, it is a government school so that is what you would expect.

I managed to get three days there and taught class 3-10 and class 12. I’m sure you wanna know what I taught so here you go:

·         Year 3 – prepositions, including little preposition posters and naming animals;

·         Year 4 – prepositions, including little preposition posters;

·         Year 5 – fruit and vegetables and the ‘I went to the market game’;

·         Year 6  – fruit and vegetables and shop role play, and bingo;

·         Year 7 – asking other people about what they want to do when their older and why;

·         Year 8  - countdown game up to 100, and asking other people about what they want to do when their older and why;

·         Year 9 – countdown game up to 1000;

·         Year 10 – expressions and reasons why magazine people could be feeling like that, apparently it is usually down to their boyfriends/girlfriends;

·         Year 12 – we spend 4 lessons across two day having a debate about should people eat meat, I had to spend one lesson explaining the concept of debate, two on preparing arguments by going through research and the final lesson actually having the debate.