Skip to main content

Whack-a-Mole


Isn't he darling? We do a lot of drawing here to cement in their minds different concepts and words. For example, today for English class, 4th standard drew Spiderman standing and sitting to learn those two words.

Whack-a-Mole.

We just found out the government did not own the land "sanctioned" to us for the new school. Who owns it? Our very reasonable neighbor who lives in a big house next to the slum. His son is studying at MIT, so our neighbor "gets" Americans and we talked for a long time (in English). He offered to help us buy another piece of land in the area for the school. We'll see where that goes.

That same day (yesterday, Sunday) we found out we had royally ticked off our landlady. She was furious with us for cleaning out the room she is renting to us to serve as the office (top right). She is kicking us out entirely on Wednesday, out of the office and, it appears, out of the school. She has already hired a contractor to build a one-room apartment next to the shed for the school where preschool is help. The contractor came by today during school and very apologetically explained this to out teachers. A nice man, he looked completely stricken when he saw the school. Looks like we'll be hosting all the teaching materials in my car and teaching out under the sky for a while. We'll figure this out. Every day has been a crisis.

Last week, the gas for the stove was not working and we were about to go caveman style to cook. Then the water truck didn't show up to replenish our tank of water, so again the school lunch was in jeopardy. Kaplana called in a tanker truck and saved the day. Before that, it was our government teacher, Vijaya (more on her next post). We had a tough time integrating her. She doesn't really speak English and has a strong bias against teaching English in standards 1-5. There is a lot of pride in promoting Telegu, which they call the Italian of the East because it is rather lyrical, up and down, sounding.

Whack-a-Mole will continue, and all of the above was no surprise. These kinds of projects unravel all kinds of challenges as you get in there and tug around. Kalpana is always the angel during these crises.

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a Message

Popular posts from this blog

On Monday, August 18, I was so happy to return to see the Rainbow School. The teachers have made a plan to shift from Telugu to English medium. My friend at Pratham, one of the largest education NGOs -- serving 5 million children in South Asia and Africa -- agreed to help my teachers. My co-partner, Kalpana, is taking the lead on a facilities upgrade. She will oversee an upgrade to the preschool and main building. Kalpana and I have found donors in India and the United States. The children were sharp, completely up on their marks. The teachers were creative, driven, relentless. More to come!
Post a Comment
Read more

"A" Grade

Our partner, Kalpana, reports exams are over. This year, the Rainbow School won "A" grade for student performance up from "B" grade in 2009. CONGRATULATIONS TEAM!! HUGE WIN! This means that the team is providing high quality teaching in a very sustainable way. Congratulations teachers! Congratulations Vijaya Madam! And thanks to all the partners, the Rainbow School is very lucky to have wonderful, wonderful partner organizations like WIM, Lion's Club, and the Naandi Foundation. Here are some of the students, taking part of their exams in the courtyard, back in 2009. Next steps: Compete with the local budget private schools, win best government primary school in the state, and English + Telugu instruction
2 comments
Read more

New Headmaster

Today we heard the news that our headmistress, Vijaya Laxmi, will be moving on to a new school. This suits the team at the Rainbow School very well, they needed a leader who was interested to engage the community. We do not know who our new headmaster will be, but we understand it will be a very senior man, one year from retirement. He will come with a junior who will take on the headmistress role after he leaves. More will come from our great, fabulous Mandal Education Officer, Jaganmohan Chary. Here is a picture of our first headmistress, Usha Rani, who was a stellar leader and has volunteered to help with the transition to the new headmaster.
2 comments
Read more