So, teaching…(frustrating, rewarding, annoying, funny, confusing, awkward, intense, dal-bhaat, strctured and unstructured, winged and non…-winged?!) I personally feel there is no other job on the planet that can give you this many feelings (believe me I could have put more) all in the space of a simple english class lasting 45 minutes. Each one is a rollercoaster and what will work for class 4a, will not work for 4b…even though you think you can make some improvements in the next lesson and it ends up in a sham with you searching for back-up plans, as 30+ students and perhaps 2-3 teachers sit on, watching you struggle…bit like car crash tv.
I know im a nervous public speaker. Some people said it didn’t show on Tommy and Nicola’s Wedding day, some people did. I think there were two reason’s for the different opinions:
1) Its an Irish Wedding…flooded with alcohol…and
2) The jokes were shocking enough fooling those who thinks it takes a brave and confident man to say such things in front of 200 people.
Either way, I do believe that after 4 weeks of teaching, I am much more confident speaking in front of people and even better fooling them into thinking I know what I’m talking about. Toni and I have been in the same class for 4 weeks, and we have different teaching methods. Toni likes the children to have fun, act, draw and as I see it ‘make noise’ etc where as I like the children to be quiet, don’t shout out and if I see one of them tear a text book page I feel like throwing them through the window. I know it’s the exact same in the UK with children and books, but children in the UK have a Government that will pay for the books, schools here get their funding from enrolment fee’s. Fact remains, the school we are teaching in now is quite an expensive school to enrol a child and it annoys me when a spoilt child tears a text book that doesn’t belong to them. Personally I think if a child rips a text book they can keep it and replace it with a new one. In this country I think it would stop even the spoilt kids tearing one. Another thing that gets on my goat (English colloquialism for “that really frustrates me) is when im teaching a class and I see somebody write on a desk. That’s another classic case of “Man throws child for 3rd floor window.”
I think il just rant in this blog. I think the season is changing here, monsoon is ending, ive had food poisoning this week and I do not feel good at the minute so I think I deserve to rant.
Rant 1 – difficulty with non-native toungue teachers. Example word: Shepherd.
Nearly everybody in the UK can say this word (barring those that cant) and we all know it is pronounced shep herd. Easy.
Or not. If you follow the phonetics way of teaching, and merely teaching grade 1 students this word, then you will not know it is an exception to the ph rule. (Photo, Philosophy, Phucking Phonetics) and I witnessed a teacher teach her class this word (Topic my village) as Shef ferd.
We were only there to watch the class, get a feel for the teaching style, but Inside I had a Whoopi Goldberg moment “WAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT aaaaa MINUTE.”
I had to jump in, that is something that needed to be straightened out there and then otherwise
!) it would have bugged the hell outa me if I didn’t
2) Mistakes at the basic level will cause a lot of difficulty in the future.
It was difficult explaining to seven year olds and the teachers but it got through and the teacher was rather helpful we explained it, after all…how was she suppose to know?
Rant 2 – American English
I know there are many different versions of the english language but If a school is to teach in English then they should at least pick a version and stick to it. Too many times have I seen kids spelling favourite; favorite and colour; color whilst other children spell it English (UK) and both are marked correctly. There’s no consistency, they should have picked a version of the language and stuck to it. Instead, Toni and I come along and decide we will implement it. English UK. Spent a class with every grade explaining the differences and told them if they spelled either of these words in the American way they would have to write it out 100 times with the correct spelling. It started a chain of gasps but maybe the shock/fear factor would work. After 4 weeks I havent seen it spelt incorrectly yet, maybe it worked.
I could rant for weeks about the number of things that are difficult about teaching the english language in a school such as this, but teaching does have its plus points. Holidays, more so in any culture or country, Nepali’s like their holidays. We taught 18 days in August due to the number of holidays that occurred and at the end of september they have their biggest festival Dashain, which is a full 2 weeks holidays for the school meaning we have 2 weeks to do whatever we please.
We have decided that we will trek to Annapurna Basecamp. At 4130m high it will be a challenge and to get to it, it will take maybe 5 days, walking 6+hours per day then maybe 4 hours to get back down because of the valleys. You have to go up to go down, to go up…and repeat numerous times. We will also spend a few days in Pokhara. This is a small town that is very touristy, because of its scenery of that Annapurna Range from Phewa Tal (Large peaceful lake where boatrides and watersports are the attraction,) and its proximity to the mountain ranges for trekking, hiking, mountain climbing and other mountain sports like paragliding. I for one cannot wait until the vacation begins.
Nepal has still issues with Strikes. There has been two bus strikes since we have arrived here, meaning that children are unable to get to school, leading to the school closure and a day off on holiday. We don’t normally find out about any of these things until the morning, just as you are getting ready for school.
Other than teaching we have been spending our time at Kathmandu International Centre. Both of us are working on our fitness to be able to climb to ABC. Its difficult and I actually look forward to going to the gym whilst im here. It will also help when we are spending our time on the beaches of thailand in the coming months.
We visited our old families and Sirutar that we spent 10 weeks in last year. Not a lot has changed there to be honest. The school is still not finished because the funding ran out and the community is not pulling together to finish it off which is rather disappointing. The blood sweat and tears that went into to building the school over the three years that Platform2 and DFID funded the project has seemed to gone to waste and I got rather pissed off at it all. The problem was I didn’t know who to be angry at, nobody to vent to or argue about with it because Toni felt the same way. Its just a shame.|
We did get to spend some time with the families that were so kind to us (cough dal bhatt, 2 x 70 days) and let them know what we were doing, and it was good spending time in a community that we had lived with for so long. Visiting Sirutar we also go practicing trekking or hiking. Managed a 7 hour hike which we both felt quite good about and this gave us the confidence to plan the trip to ABC. The reason we chose ABC over Everest Base Camp is because we do not have to take a flight, it will be cheaper, and we have been told that EBC is the highest dumpsite in the world and that the ABC trek is beautiful and you eventually arrive in an Amphitheatre, surrounded by mountains.
This weekend we will be going to Chitwan National Park, on an elephant safari, canoeing and jeep safari. It will be the most different thing we have done in Nepal and at this point we are sick of going to Thamel and getting hassled by the same people over and over again who want to extort us from our hard earned rupee’s.
I apologise that this has taken me so long to upload. Ive had computer difficulties that have still not be resolved. The next blog should be after Annapurna Base Camp.
Until then folks, happy reading!!
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