Respect and School

It's a little unnerving sometimes how respectful the students are at school. When a teacher, or really any kind of authority figure enters the room, they all arise without hesitation and they greet whoever it is with a chorus of good morning or good afternoon. If a teacher is already in the class---it doesn't matter whether the teacher is already teaching or not---they ask for permission to enter before they set a foot inside the room. The students know my name is "Camila" but always address me as "m'am" or "miss." All males are "sir" as well. Students don't slouch (they can't really, they're sitting on benches---there's really, much to my dismay, a deplorable lack of good comfy couches, beds, chairs and soft pillows in this country!) and they don't ask to get excused from class ever. No one gets "checked" out from school. (!) If students miss class, I've found it's been because they've been working in the rice fields. Even our principal wasn't there yesterday because he was doing the same thing. When students are called on or volunteer an answer, they stand and answer and only sit when the teacher allows them to (sometimes this is the thing I forget. . . I move on to something else and this poor child is still standing because I didn't excuse them.) When the class is over, the teacher leaves the room and the children all stand up and say "Thank you" in unison.

At the beginning of the day, the students from nursery on up to about class 8, join together in the dirt courtyard that separates the primary grade and secondary grade buildings . The buildings are almost open air, with cement floors. They do not have electricity nor even glass windows. Of course there is not air-conditioning nor plumbing as we know it. The secondary building where I do almost all of my work is not even finished. The first floor has 4 small functional classrooms and then there's a cement staircase leading up to a very unfinished second floor/doubling as roof. We go up there and sit on benches just to feel the cool breeze and to look at the rice paddies below. I cannot believe that no child has fallen off the top because it's just a straight drop!

Like I was saying, at 10 in the morning most of the 300-number student body line up in perfect lines and they practice their "attention" and "at ease." They do some stretches too. So cute. All of this is happening in Nepali so I really don't know everything that's going on, but I know that the PE teacher at my school (who is totally into this whole militaristic type of thing) would be drooling if he could see little 3-year olds in school uniform doing stretches in unison.

They also sing the Nepali national anthem every morning! The students seem to love to sing---the people as whole, actually seem to love to sing---but they are not so hot on keeping a tune. I thought I might have the chance to teach some music while I was here, but right now, the immediate need is for me to teach English (there isn't a piano here either which doesn't completely rule out teaching music; it would just be a little harder). They don't have arts or sports classes or electives; everything is pretty no frills utilitarian. And yet the kids are happy and they never complain. They are always telling me how they like this teacher, or they think that teacher is funny. They go to school through most of the summer, and students from class 8 and up go to school 7 in the morning and stay until 5, sometimes 6 in the evening, and still they do not complain.

Right now I am teaching English conversation classes for classes 8, 9 and 10, and I am teaching an English grammar class for class 7. I think that they are also adding an additional English grammar class for either class 5 or 6 to my schedule because there are some there are some teachers out on training. I am happy to be busy because I had so much free time when I first arrived at the project. I am having to create the curriculum for the English conversation classes and that has already been challenging; I would be scared to death if I hadn't taught English class on my mission (especially) or if I weren't already a teacher. It is also difficult to plan because the English speaking skills vary so much from one student to the next. For the advanced grades, most of their courses are even taught in English. I saw their their written exams and their English was beautiful! But some can speak a fair amount, and many cannot really at all. English is used a lot in Nepal in general---but always with a LOT of holes and grammatical mistakes in it (you would die seeing some of the signs in print or things on television; you would think that there would be someone in the country to proofread!)---so it's also hard to gauge what they really know and what they're faking, etc. For the other classes, there are no extra books so I am basically winging it the whole time, as I show up to class and borrow books from the children as we go along. Again, if I didn't practice this teaching thing everyday anyway, I would be drowning!

Despite still being somewhat speechless about the whole respect thing, I still much prefer teaching my kidlets in America. For anyone worried that I won't come back, thinking that I've found my teaching paradise here in Nepal, well, you definitely don't need to worry about that.