To all that are following my blog I apologize for not writing in a couple of days! It has been quite a busy week and I never expected to be this busy! Where do I begin...
My volunteer placement has been in Pappankalan, (West Dehli) also known as the slums which is about an hour from where we are living because there is so much traffic. It is literally a stand still for about 15 min!
It is really eye opening to see the sights all around Dehli as we drive to our placement everyday. I gotta tell you, I have never seen so much extreme poverty in my life. There are so many tents, shacks, and people sleeping on the side of the road! There are also so many people here that you are constantly seeing people walking, and riding their bikes on the side of the road. When you are stopped at a stop light you will have kids b/w the age of 7-11 coming up to the window of your car asking for money, or a lady holding a baby asking for food. It is really quite sad. We have been adviced not to give these children or begging women money. As it is an oragnized crime here in India where they are using kids to make their money for them. (If you have ever seen Slum Dog Millionnaire you know what I mean).
I am so grateful that I am working with Jackie at my volunteer placement. Jackie is from Queens, NY and she is an ESL teacher! We are teaching English to children ages 6-13 so being paired with her is so PERFECT!! I have not taught in 6 years, so she comes with great ideas to teach our students. We work so well together, that she loves to dance and have fun with her kids! I love to dance too, so she actually busted out her ipod today while the students were eating their lunch so we could listen to some Jai'ho (song from Slumdog) a little Punjabi MC and...a little "Who Let the Dogs Out"! It was fun!
However, our placement does not come without challenges and difficulties. We are teaching at an NGO called VIDYA. Our classroom is a very small confined room (maybe 10' x10') with absolutely no windows, no desks or chairs for the students, (we all sit on the floor), with a few posters on the wall of the students art work, small portable blackboard and a fan. It is so HOT in the room that we are all drenched in sweat (students included) by the time we are done teaching. Plus, the diffulty that we found the first couple of days is what do you plan for the kids to do when you have no idea what they know already? Plus, the school doesn't have any teacher books or any resources to use, and the women in charge at our placement wants us to make worksheets for her teachers to use when we leave.
Therefore, Jackie and I have been extremely overwhelmed with all that we have to do for this placement. We have to figure out what they know, what we need to teach, make it interactive, with little to no resources and on top of it all create worksheets for the teachers. Not to mention that we are part of the CCS program so as soon as we get back from our placement, there is lunch, an educational lecture, and before you know it, it is time for dinner and we have to plan our lesson for the next day! Not to mention planning our trip for the upcoming weekend as well. When are we suppose to go sight seeing and see Dehli too!! It is craziness. However, it is the first week and we are adjusting to all of this. Hopefully we will get it all under control next week....
Sounds like a healthy challenge. I think the fact that you are both so motivated and full of ideas will already put you in the right direction. Maybe you can have them work on a couple of group activities with different focuses to see where they collectively struggle the most and where they seem to breeze through.
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