Saturday, August 31, 2013

Home Again

While I was in India, I saw teachers writing lesson plans in minute detail, by hand. At the Bhavan's Sri Ramakrishna Vidyalaya, an assistant principal showed me a massive binder of lesson plans, including the plan for the lesson that was in progress. While I greatly admire these efforts, I am also very happy to be able to use my computer and keep my lesson plan files online, only printing out when it is really necessary.

Looking around my portable, I also noticed that while the walls were painted (an effort in which I was assisted by family and a friend) in green and yellow, I noticed that the bookshelves were the same light gray. They are now a shade of orange that I feel matches some natural flora. You know those brown rolling book carts? Okay, I covered the front in a curtain made from Rajasthani fabric. And the blinds...yellowing, broken in places, eternally dusty despite the best efforts of Mr. Talgo and his cohort, they were hardly even adequate to keep out the intense Florida light when I have film clips or pictures to show. Soooo...Hector Javier of the teacher's resource store, run by Broward Education Foundation, very kindly gave me some rolls of fabric when he found out I am a drama club sponsor. Some of the fabric I have used in the Kiva as a backdrop, but there was so much left over that I could whip together some curtains for my classroom, and then some.

This has made me reflect that while my Indian colleagues are certainly maintaining rigor in their classrooms, and the students demonstrate respect for them at all times, standing and chiming, "Good morning, Ma'am" when the teachers enter the room, the magic of a bright, friendly and print-rich classroom is mostly non-existent over there since it is the teachers who do the class change, and not the students. Color means a great deal to me, not just as an eye-pleaser, but also as a mood changer. When I finished painting, though, I noticed that somehow I had painted the Indian flag right into my classroom...

About a year or so ago, I met through e-Pals a school librarian in a rural area near Mumbai and slowly we have become friends, sharing personal as well as professional details. I suppose if I had had a choice about where I was going during my TGC fellowship, I would have visited her school. She has just written to me proposing a partnership...I really think that this reflects a characteristic of culture: that it is important to develop a real understanding between teachers before plunging into a joint project without the basis of a relationship.  To be continued...

No comments:

Post a Comment