India Love

On Tuesday, the English teachers in my group led a workshop on 'interactive teaching': teachers from 50 different KV schools in Delhi (there are 65, so we had good representation) came to listen to, question, interrupt, and challenge us. Neelam Katara, one of the chief KV education ministers (not sue what her official title is) opened the ceremony with the lighting of a lantern with five wicks, as an offering to Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the arts. So much ceremony. :-) We talked a little about our own schools and public education in the US in general, and then modeled a few lessons using differentiated instruction, and collaborative and visual learning. Teachers seemed genuinely interested in learning what we do (in spite of the flaws we and they pointed out, they were really curious about DI), but many felt that it 'just isn't possible' given their larger (45+) class sizes.

And, not all of it is. The schools here are resource poor; teachers don't make photocopies, and there isn't a giant sticky note in sight. Kids have textbooks, workbooks, and notebooks, pens and pencils, but that's about it. India spends 3% of its GDP on education (I'm not sure what the figure is in the US, but this seems low), and parliament only just passed a law making primary education here compulsory, and requiring every primary school to provide clean drinking water, toilets, and a library. A START. But, Neelam pointed out that even if a few teachers try something new, more will experiment as a result. In this way, the KV schools are a lot like our own public schools. Change is glacially slow. My hope is that more younger people will join the teaching profession; the teachers in the KV schools are almost all older (45+); programs like Teach for India are a start, though teaching, esp. in the government schools, is still seen as a low-wage, low status profession here.

I have one week left here: just enough time for last minute gift giving (so many people to thank) and purchasing; a few henna tattoos, shipping; sari fitting (!!); maybe a cooking lesson or two. It's been a totally exhausting, mind blowing, frustrating, alienating, awe-inspiring, and generally overpowering experience. In spite of the general craziness, and the difficult poverty I knew I would see, there's also a terrific energy here, a kind of controlled chaos that keeps things from spiraling *totally* out of control. Today, on a *long* bus ride back to Delhi from Agra, I looked out the window in amazement; for just a second, everything and everyone--the cars, trucks, rickshaws, autos, cows, horse carts, street vendors-- seemed to have their own, perfectly timed, very Indian, rhythm.