As of two minutes ago I am no longer an English teacher.
In other news, yesterday I saved a poor little bat from drowning in the swimming pool.
Saturday 25 April 2009
Monday 20 April 2009
The Century
You wil notice that with my last entry I completed
"THE CENTURY"
100 blog postings.
It's up to you how you celebrate really. Perhaps you could get the neighbours round for a drink, or if that's not your thing, maybe you could just spend it with your family.
I hope it's been interesting. I think there's probably quite a few more to come.
"THE CENTURY"
100 blog postings.
It's up to you how you celebrate really. Perhaps you could get the neighbours round for a drink, or if that's not your thing, maybe you could just spend it with your family.
I hope it's been interesting. I think there's probably quite a few more to come.
Sunday 19 April 2009
Heat
At the moment we have this hot wind named Lou. It comes straight off the desert and really slaps you in the face. It also dries out your mouth when you are playing football.
Heat does funny things. A guild of small insects have decided it is nice to meet just outside my door, so when I go out of my house I get a face full of flies. There is also the occasional massive grasshopper to spice things up.
To be honest I really don't know what I would do without the swimming pool. If I didn't have my daily routine of cooling off by racing the little kids at swimming and pretending I'm incredibly fast I think I would probably have freaked out in the heat and smothered myself in cold mashed potato.
Last night I was too hot to sleep so I had to get up at 4am and move out onto my balcony with my duvet. I didn't sleep very well there either.
Cold sensors are like everything else in the body though, they need excercise, and right now they aren't getting any, it's absolutely ROASTING.
I'm looking forward to getting to Goa, it will be cooler there hopefully. Did you know I'm actually about 90km away from the hottest place in India?
Heat does funny things. A guild of small insects have decided it is nice to meet just outside my door, so when I go out of my house I get a face full of flies. There is also the occasional massive grasshopper to spice things up.
To be honest I really don't know what I would do without the swimming pool. If I didn't have my daily routine of cooling off by racing the little kids at swimming and pretending I'm incredibly fast I think I would probably have freaked out in the heat and smothered myself in cold mashed potato.
Last night I was too hot to sleep so I had to get up at 4am and move out onto my balcony with my duvet. I didn't sleep very well there either.
Cold sensors are like everything else in the body though, they need excercise, and right now they aren't getting any, it's absolutely ROASTING.
I'm looking forward to getting to Goa, it will be cooler there hopefully. Did you know I'm actually about 90km away from the hottest place in India?
Saturday 18 April 2009
Sir please beat me
Gyan Prakash is different from the average student.
He's really badly behaved but it isn't out of being obnoctious, it's out of being completely intense and highly strung. One minute he is absolutely despairing that he's not being picked when he has his hand up, the next he is absolutely pleading to go and drink water. He is absolutely desperate to impress me. He cannot stay in his seat even though you can see he is trying. In other words, if he was in the UK he would be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Today he was lying on the desk crying because I wouldn't let him go to the infirmary for a fever which he didn't have, so after a while I gave up and let him go.
He came back having quite obviously not been to the infirmary. I carried on with the class making it quite clear that I knew full well he hadn't been anywhere near.
Then about 5 minutes later, he stood up, came to the front and said, "Sir beat me."
I said "What?"
And he told me to beat him or take him to the principal because he was lying that he had been to the infirmary.
To start with, it's quite an incredible achievement for him to be owning up to misbehaving like that. But when I looked at him and told him that I didn't want to beat him, I just wanted him to understand what he had done and improve on it-- I understood from his reaction what was wrong with beating.
All other punishment he has ever known has been a quick beating to get him to stop, and no one has ever really asked him to try and do better. It's always-- "Do this or I'll hit you"
The kids are not taught to 'try to behave'. They are taught to 'try to avoid being beaten'. Big difference.
He's really badly behaved but it isn't out of being obnoctious, it's out of being completely intense and highly strung. One minute he is absolutely despairing that he's not being picked when he has his hand up, the next he is absolutely pleading to go and drink water. He is absolutely desperate to impress me. He cannot stay in his seat even though you can see he is trying. In other words, if he was in the UK he would be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Today he was lying on the desk crying because I wouldn't let him go to the infirmary for a fever which he didn't have, so after a while I gave up and let him go.
He came back having quite obviously not been to the infirmary. I carried on with the class making it quite clear that I knew full well he hadn't been anywhere near.
Then about 5 minutes later, he stood up, came to the front and said, "Sir beat me."
I said "What?"
And he told me to beat him or take him to the principal because he was lying that he had been to the infirmary.
To start with, it's quite an incredible achievement for him to be owning up to misbehaving like that. But when I looked at him and told him that I didn't want to beat him, I just wanted him to understand what he had done and improve on it-- I understood from his reaction what was wrong with beating.
All other punishment he has ever known has been a quick beating to get him to stop, and no one has ever really asked him to try and do better. It's always-- "Do this or I'll hit you"
The kids are not taught to 'try to behave'. They are taught to 'try to avoid being beaten'. Big difference.
Friday 17 April 2009
Beating
A computer teacher has just lost his job for beating a child with a stick.
Perhaps I should tell you what the school is like where beating is the disciplinary measure.
The same scenario arose the other day in two different classes: my class, and a regular teachers class.
1: My class
Sir can I go and drink water?
No, sit down
Sir please
No
Please sir
No, sit down.
Please sir, I'm very thirsty sir.
NO.
Sir...
NO, SIT DOWN. How many times have I said that now?
2: School Teachers class
Sir can I go and drink water?
(teacher shoots up from his seat, raises his palm, child cowers) WHY YOU ASK THIS? WHY YOU ASK TO TAKE WATER AND ALWAYS WANTING TO GO HERE AND THERE? THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR TO DRINK WATER? GO! SIT!
I should explain, that wasn't the man who lost his job, that was a fairly normal scene.
There are two main differences. 1) The teacher was very aggressive, while I wasn't. 2) The child sat down instantly in the teacher's class, but it took me 5 tellings before he sat down in my class and he asked again in a few minutes.
Basically, the children don't do ANYTHING unless there's a chance of getting battered if they don't obey. If they are asked in a normal tone, they just ignore you.
To make things even more interesting, the 12th class students are now on hunger strike until the band teacher apologises for hitting one of them.
So yeah, the discipline is a mess here.
Perhaps I should tell you what the school is like where beating is the disciplinary measure.
The same scenario arose the other day in two different classes: my class, and a regular teachers class.
1: My class
Sir can I go and drink water?
No, sit down
Sir please
No
Please sir
No, sit down.
Please sir, I'm very thirsty sir.
NO.
Sir...
NO, SIT DOWN. How many times have I said that now?
2: School Teachers class
Sir can I go and drink water?
(teacher shoots up from his seat, raises his palm, child cowers) WHY YOU ASK THIS? WHY YOU ASK TO TAKE WATER AND ALWAYS WANTING TO GO HERE AND THERE? THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR TO DRINK WATER? GO! SIT!
I should explain, that wasn't the man who lost his job, that was a fairly normal scene.
There are two main differences. 1) The teacher was very aggressive, while I wasn't. 2) The child sat down instantly in the teacher's class, but it took me 5 tellings before he sat down in my class and he asked again in a few minutes.
Basically, the children don't do ANYTHING unless there's a chance of getting battered if they don't obey. If they are asked in a normal tone, they just ignore you.
To make things even more interesting, the 12th class students are now on hunger strike until the band teacher apologises for hitting one of them.
So yeah, the discipline is a mess here.
Monday 13 April 2009
Wrong stuff
I have been trying my best to share a little bit of my knowledge with two people- the music teacher and the geography teacher.
The music teacher cannot be helped. I tried teaching him "Hey Jude" but he is so insistant that he can guess the tune without letting me help him that it was an impossible task. That's ok though. No harm will come of him playing Hey Jude wrongly.
The geography teacher scares me a little bit though.
He was making a presentation on poverty which consisted of statistics he had dropped in while flicking through wikipedia pages like you would flick through tv channels, and when I asked him if he understood them he said "no".
You hear a lot of distortions of the truth from Indian people about their country, perhaps that's where they all come from; teachers who teach without thinking.
The music teacher cannot be helped. I tried teaching him "Hey Jude" but he is so insistant that he can guess the tune without letting me help him that it was an impossible task. That's ok though. No harm will come of him playing Hey Jude wrongly.
The geography teacher scares me a little bit though.
He was making a presentation on poverty which consisted of statistics he had dropped in while flicking through wikipedia pages like you would flick through tv channels, and when I asked him if he understood them he said "no".
You hear a lot of distortions of the truth from Indian people about their country, perhaps that's where they all come from; teachers who teach without thinking.
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Condolence visits
At my usual Tuesday/ Thursday night haunt, the Ashok household, the big news was that Arjun, cutest little boy in the world, had been bitten on the arm by the mangy white dog who lives by the basketball court. He now has to have about 5 different injections over the couse of the next month. Over the course of the evening, various different teachers dropped in to see how he was. Not big visits, just five minutes or so. Turned up, expressed concern about the arm, watched national geographic for a few minutes, then said goodbye and left. That's the way things are done in India, if something happens to someone, large or small, you pay the person a small visit just as a token of interest and concern.
Another thing I've grown to really like is the abundance of little compliments you get every day. To start, everyone says good morning and good evening, regardless of how often you see them. And as you walk down the corridor, you get, "Sir, looking so nice." or "Sir nice shoes". Sometimes I get "Sir looking sexy," which is a bit different but I appreciate the sentiment. All the comments are genuine, they aren't said jokingly. They are just nice comments said for the sake of saying something nice.
The senior students decided yesterday, completely of their own accord, to invite me to their hostel to have a sort of "audience with Tom" so that the class 10s could learn a bit about Europe and the rest of the world and practice their English, which is a really good thing to do for their junior students.
It's the complete lack of cynicism they have that makes them so polite and genuine, and that's why I think all this sex obsession and other mindset problems they have are viruses of a sort. They don't actually belong in the Indian people, and I hope someday they outgrow them and are left with their own endearing, excellent nature.
Another thing I've grown to really like is the abundance of little compliments you get every day. To start, everyone says good morning and good evening, regardless of how often you see them. And as you walk down the corridor, you get, "Sir, looking so nice." or "Sir nice shoes". Sometimes I get "Sir looking sexy," which is a bit different but I appreciate the sentiment. All the comments are genuine, they aren't said jokingly. They are just nice comments said for the sake of saying something nice.
The senior students decided yesterday, completely of their own accord, to invite me to their hostel to have a sort of "audience with Tom" so that the class 10s could learn a bit about Europe and the rest of the world and practice their English, which is a really good thing to do for their junior students.
It's the complete lack of cynicism they have that makes them so polite and genuine, and that's why I think all this sex obsession and other mindset problems they have are viruses of a sort. They don't actually belong in the Indian people, and I hope someday they outgrow them and are left with their own endearing, excellent nature.
Monday 6 April 2009
Thursday 2 April 2009
Finished my classes yesteday, got home, told it was holiday tommorrow.
Woke up (by "this is tea"), had breakfast, went back to room, got knock on door, told that they would like another 3 hours of workshop (of course, what else would you want to do on a holiday?), and that I had 5 minutes to prepare it.
Closed door, dropped fake smile instantly, banged head off wall, had no idea what to do, improvised way through reasonably crap workshop.
Went to principle's office and as politely as possible requested IF YOU HIRE AN UNTRAINED STUDENT WHO'S JUST LEFT SCHOOL WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT HIM TO DO BEFORE GETTING HIM TO DO IT????
The thought clearly hadn't occured to him.
Woke up (by "this is tea"), had breakfast, went back to room, got knock on door, told that they would like another 3 hours of workshop (of course, what else would you want to do on a holiday?), and that I had 5 minutes to prepare it.
Closed door, dropped fake smile instantly, banged head off wall, had no idea what to do, improvised way through reasonably crap workshop.
Went to principle's office and as politely as possible requested IF YOU HIRE AN UNTRAINED STUDENT WHO'S JUST LEFT SCHOOL WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT HIM TO DO BEFORE GETTING HIM TO DO IT????
The thought clearly hadn't occured to him.
Ploughing Ritual
It's dry in the East at the moment.
A girl from Assam, who's father was upset by her not being a boy, was yoked to an oxe and made to plough a field in order to bring back the rain.
A number of other villagers including the priest were there to conduct the ceremony as well.
A girl from Assam, who's father was upset by her not being a boy, was yoked to an oxe and made to plough a field in order to bring back the rain.
A number of other villagers including the priest were there to conduct the ceremony as well.
"High School of the Rod"
Here's something funny,
"Dundee" in Hindi means "stick", of the kind you would use to beat someone with, so when I go to "Dundee High School", they imagine it to be like
"THE SCHOOL OF THE ROD" where people get beaten all day
"Dundee" in Hindi means "stick", of the kind you would use to beat someone with, so when I go to "Dundee High School", they imagine it to be like
"THE SCHOOL OF THE ROD" where people get beaten all day
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