In preparation for the workshop, Sarah and I planned and filmed several detailed “mini-lessons” demonstrating specific pedagogical techniques in the classroom. John, meanwhile, painstakingly edited the footage into final form, overcoming many electrical outages and other technological roadblocks along the way. Despite our very good intentions to provide a content-rich workshop, and after hours of working on these films, we came to discover that there was no sound-system in the hall in which we would be conducting the workshop. Further, there was no usable sound system anywhere in the school, or the town, save for the large trucks that drive around and play loud club music in the streets for weddings (I would like to note that we inquired, but those were not available on the day of the workshop, as they were pre-booked for a wedding). So, as often happens in India, we came to accept that we would have to improvise a solution to our problem.

Not knowing much about electrical wiring, audio-sound system setup, or the intricacies of navigating an Indian circuit breaker, we enlisted the help of our coworker, Mr. Dineshbhai Patel. Mr. Patel is a young and devoted computer teacher whose fluency in English is only surpassed by his absolute dedication to his work and the school. I have to admit that, being the one tasked with soliciting his help, I put off the job for a few days. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Mr. Patel could do the job, I knew he could. Rather, I didn’t want to inconvenience him since he already has a very demanding schedule at the school that includes maintaining all the school’s technological resources, teaching classes, and coaching volleyball.

So, after procrastinating for several days, I approached Mr. Patel and sheepishly mumbled something about needing help with a computer problem. Upon hearing this, Mr. Patel ran into the guesthouse where we keep our computers, logged on, checked out what kind of hook-ups my PC had to offer, and then disappeared to the computer lab to assemble some solution. When he returned, his hands full of dusty cables, speakers, amplifiers and other things for which I do not know the name, he motioned that we should wait ten minutes and then proceed to the hall where the workshop was to be held. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical. Half the computer parts he held looked like they had seen the early 90’s and lived to tell the tale. The other half looked like they could have possibly been found on the side of the road. Maybe I was being negative, but I really doubted where this exercise in tinkering would take us.

The ten minutes passed quickly as I fretted about all other technical problems that could happen during the workshop: maybe the electricity will be out all day and the backup generator will not work, and the back-up, back-up generator will be out of fuel? After this fruitless worrying, I proceeded to the hall to see what Mr. Patel did with that jumble of old parts. Believe it or not, he had rigged up a simple sound system for us to use during the workshop. I think it would have been ill-advised to touch it, or to expose it to anything more than a gentle breeze, but still, it worked then and on the day of the workshop.

As the day of the workshop approached, Sarah and I became increasingly consumed by smaller and smaller concerns like, ‘Would we remember how to advance a PowerPoint presentation?’, or ‘What if we fall off the stage?’, and ‘I can’t believe I have to walk around, on a stage, in a saree, for five hours!’. As to the first two points, there wasn’t much to be done – advancing a PowerPoint is a simple as pressing the space bar, so if we couldn’t remember that then we were in a bad place. And falling off the stage, well, it has happened to the best of us, and I personally live to attest that life goes on afterwards. As for the last point – walking around in a saree for five hours, on a stage, in front of a large audience – well, there are many things that can go wrong. The most serious of these problems is related to the fact that a saree is generally held together with one to three safety pins. You can imagine how one misstep could lead to an absolute disaster.

Knowing there wasn’t much we could do, we arrived to the school guesthouse early in the morning on the day of the workshop, and nervously started to unpack our outfits: saree, blouse, petticoat, bindis, earrings, rings, hairclips, bangles, necklaces, and every other sparkly accoutrement of a proper Indian schoolteacher. Just as we were about to start wrapping our sarees, there was a knock at the door, and without even waiting to be let in, our co-teacher Mayuri burst in and announced that she was here to assist us in any way possible. Keep in mind that this is three hours before she is required to report to the school. How she knew what time we would arrive to start dressing is beyond my knowledge, but there she was, ready to help us. Like the situation with Mr. Patel, I knew we were in competent hands and she immediately relieved our stress. We were properly dressed with plenty of time to spare, and several extra pins strategically placed to avoid any unfortunate accidents, all thanks to Mayuri.

The workshop was undoubtedly a success. Our participants were engaged in our topics, asked excellent questions, and provided invaluable feedback. We met many dedicated teachers who are genuinely interested in changing the way they teach. Connecting them with resources to facilitate that process was incredibly rewarding. I have to say though, when I sat down at the end of the day, what I felt the most satisfied with was not the workshop per-se, but the Nanubhai team we have built over the past school year. Each of our six co-workers contributed to the workshop in a significant way, and the staff at The Kadod High School, Kadod planned for and managed every last detail. In a country rife with teacher absenteeism and school corruption, what better testament to the value of our work than the dedication it has inspired in such a large team of educators and administrators. Thank you to everyone who helped make the Effective Teaching of English at the High School Level an effective workshop. Below is a picture of the Nanubhai Ground Team, and of course, Mr. Patel.

Mr. Patel, Sarah and Myself

The entire Indian ground-team showing off their certificates of completion after the workshop!

Indian Ground Team Conducts ‘Effective Teaching of English’ Workshop at Kadod High School is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

The secondary classrooms are located in a different block than the school staff rooms. So, unless I have two periods in a row, I’m to cross the inky black Styx (or its dry riverbed) to get back to the break room. But it’s not uncommon for me to be gently taken by the arm and marched back towards the secondary block upon crossing. As we walk, my captor inquires in Hindi if I have a free period right now. ‘What, yaar, you’re free? Excellent. My students want you to teach my class! They are clamoring for Mr. John. They are asking me every day—why is Mr. John not teaching our class?’ He’s chattering so fast and his manner is so jaunty that it is impossible to fit in a word of protest. Plus, by now we’ve already reached the classroom door. He finally lets go. ‘There, you see, they want you here. Now you can teach them the English.’

The funny thing about the higher secondary teachers at Madhi high is that they don’t like to do the teaching thing. You might be crossing the quad on your way to print some documents in the computer lab, only to be towed away by Mr. Piyush, the maths and science instructor. Or you might be on break and off to get a quick chai. No need to go outside the school. There will be Mr. Ramesh, the social studies teacher, playing social butterfly and having tea with the school guard in the guardhouse. When his students stop by to ask him to come to class, he invites them to join his tea party instead. Or Mr. Patel, the English teacher, tells you his students want an ‘interview’. Mr. Patel hasn’t prepared any lesson, and he’s had the brainwave to use the only native speaker in the school as a prop in lieu of any actual teaching. ‘So, Mr. John, what exactly do you think of Indian marriage? Are you looking to marry a Gujarati larki? And, by the way, have you met my daughter?’

So it goes. Pop into the higher secondary staffroom at Madhi at any time, and find at least three teachers, each one buried in his (for this is a 100% male demographic) newspaper. Go on a day when the principal has left early, and you’ll be greeted by a phalanx of rustling crinkling newsprint. The male higher secondary teachers simply aren’t going to class. When they don’t feel like teaching, they bully subordinates into going for them. Or they might declare a ‘physical training day’ and let the students go out and play instead.

Teacher absenteeism is one of the largest obstacles to effective education facing India today. It’s not only Madhi or Gujarat. Nobel Laureate (and soon to be Humanities Medalist) Amartya Sen visited a number of elementary schools in his native West Bengal in 1999. Of those schools where a good number of the students were from Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) backgrounds, 75 percent had significant problems with teacher absenteeism. At least the teachers actually show up at Madhi High.

Last January I was sitting at a rooftop café in Jaisalmer, talking to the chef over after-dinner chai. A small boy whom I took to be his son was flying a kite not ten yards away. But when asked he told me he was his younger brother. The government teachers never came to his village. They collected their salary, but stayed home in the city. Eventually, the children stopped coming to school entirely. The chef’s family had sent their youngest son to live with his brother in the city just so that he could get some semblance of education. I asked the chef what sort of eduction he himself had received. He confessed he was illiterate, unable even to read the signs written in devanagari script surrounding his shop.

In the U.S. teachers’ unions hamper administrators from rewarding good teaching and punishing the opposite. Indian teachers are not unionized, but the government protects them directly through an elaborate tenure system. Those applicants who pass the civil service exam in their field of study can apply for a position at a government school. And once the government assigns a post, it is generally guaranteed for life. In order to punish or dismiss a lax teacher, school administrators must appeal to the government first. The process is so bungled and confusing, so littered with bureaucratic red tape, that it is nigh impossible for a principal to exert any direct control over an errant teacher.

The problem is endemic to India, but has only become especially acute at M.K. Patel in the last year. It is not so entrenched (as in Rajasthan and Bihar) that it cannot be dealt an early death. And the school administration is well aware that there is a problem with teacher attendance. Last week, the principal called a special assembly. To the teachers, staff, and students present he gave a brief parable:

There once was a rocky seashore upon which thousands of fish would wash up at each high tide. One day, Gandhiji himself walked down to the beach. He noticed a small girl running up and down the strand tossing the flipping flopping fish back into the sea. Gandhiji asked the girl what she was doing, adding that it was impossible to deliver even a fraction of the fish back to the ocean before they perished in the sun. And those fish that she did toss back, did they not just end up flip flopping on the beach with the next tide? But the girl replied it was her duty to put the fish back in the water, even if the task seemed impossible, even if it was in fact impossible.

The principal’s point was that teachers should be more like that little girl. Let’s hope they take the lesson to heart. Perhaps then we can pluck that little girl off the seashore and put her back in school.

Dude, Where’s My Teacher? is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

        Well, if you are also interested in becoming a more tolerant, self-restrained person, I have the place for you! I had always thought that a pre-K classroom was the best place to develop patience, but I was wrong. Rural India is it. You want to, say, buy some bread? Well, walk down the street, smile foolishly, say the Gujarati word for bread in an unintentionally hilarious accent, get pointed to a store, walk to the store, get laughed at for your unintentional hilarity, get pointed to another store, et cetera. Wait, now you need a lightbulb? Some spinach? Toothpaste? Do all of that over again, ad nauseum.

        Given that social enterprise is the hot new development trend, I am thinking of opening some sort of patience-building retreat in Kadod (all proceeds to be evenly split between the Nanubhai Education Foundation and the Providing Sarah Birgé With Chocolate Cookies Organization). People love going to retreats in India! Yoga is passé, patience is in.

        However, the real master class of this new venture will be called, “Using the Internet: An Exercise in Virtual Zen.” Very catchy, right? Basically, the internet here is sloooooow. Like water buffalo slow (if you have never seen one “walking,” they are really really slow). Even getting the internet requires a lot of deep breathing and counting to ten behind clenched teeth. When my disciples are ready for this level of patience-building, we will first take a public rickshaw to Bardoli. Suppressing your growing nervousness as more and more people pile into the rickshaw (my personal record is seventeen; I was sitting on Claire’s lap and holding a baby) is the easy part.

Not the most aerodynamic animal.

        Once you get to Bardoli, you must find the internet store. No, that is not a joke. Every month, we go to the store and put another 1500 rupees of internet on our tiny USB satellite stick. After finding the store in the warren of dusty mini-malls that make up most of Bardoli, you need to wait until the manager goes to get his friend who speaks English. That is, unless the store is closed…because the the manager has gone home for a nap. Then, you need to exchange the same banal pleasantries that you exchanged last month, and take another harrowing rickshaw ride. When you get home, plug in that USB stick and check out all the new internet you bought!

        Unless, of course, it is raining. Or cloudy. Which it usually is for the, oh, four months or so of monsoonal rains. Or if you are sitting in the middle room of the house, or the kitchen, or anywhere except that one spot in the corner in the front room where the internet works. I can’t imagine trying to get online school assignments done like this! Or any school assignments for that matter.

        Of course, we do manage to get our work done, and have time to send emails to friends and family. Nothing, however, teaches patience like staring at a vital, unloaded google doc for twenty-five minutes. As much as I sometimes do get frustrated (and write slightly whiny blog posts), it is a good reminder that access to high-speed internet is a huge luxury, both personally and professionally. I’d like to think that, during my time working in Kadod, I have been able to focus my productivity and yes, become more patient.

(Applications for the Kadod Patience Retreat are open immediately; please make out all checks to the PSBWCC Organization).

Argh! The Internet is So Slow: A Lesson in Patience is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

This blog is a little different than my usual ones, because this time, instead of just sharing my thoughts with you, I am asking you to get involved.

As you know, Nanubhai provides professional development training to teachers in under-served rural schools as well as scholarships to economically disadvantaged young women. I have been living and working in India since June, and have been so fulfilled and inspired by my work here that I have chosen to stay for another year to continue to further their mission.

I know running and education and rural India might not seem connected, but in my experience, they are. Since arriving in India in June, I have been running fairly consistently. Not only do I love running, but I quickly realized that I needed the exercise – Gujarati food can be very high in fat and calories!

The town where I live, Kadod, is located in an agricultural area, and the countryside is dotted with countless small villages that are invisible to the outsider’s eye since most are not on any map. Going for long runs has allowed me to explore this area in a way that would never be possible with a car or scooter. I have run down dirt paths to find one-room schoolhouses with twenty students studying on dirt floors with not even so much as a chalkboard. And I have met teachers and community leaders who’s passion for education is palatable. I have sat in on classes, toured school facilities (these are usually very short tours, but everyone is proud of what they do have), and had the opportunity to sit down with community leaders, explain my work and share ideas.

So, back to my original question, and the title of this entry: What does running, education and rural India have to do with each other? Maybe not much on the surface, but in my personal experience, running has allowed me a unique window into what it means to live and be educated in rural India. I have met teachers and students and seen schools and communities that I would have never found if it wasn’t for my running. Seeing these places and meeting these people has only confirmed the importance of my work here. Teachers are eager to discuss new ideas and truly want to improve their teaching, but many don’t know how.

In America, it is easy to lose sight of how connected we are – to opportunities, information, and each other. But imagine a life with very little printed material, where the nearest quality university is two hours away by car, and where you don’t have electricity, let alone the internet. For many of these teachers, sharing ideas and being connected into better professional development resources is an unimaginable opportunity for them and, most importantly, their students.

I am running in the Auroville Half-Marathon on February 12th to raise money to support our professional development and scholarship programs so my work here can continue. I have an account set up on a new website called Pledge4Good ( www.Pledge4Good.com ) and you can sign up to donate a dollar for every full mile I complete, so 13 miles = 13 dollars.

Sending a girl to college for one year here costs approximately 600 dollars (approximately 45 supporters would be needed), and training one teacher for a school year costs approximately 24 dollars (2 supporters), so though 13 dollars doesn’t seem like much, it can make a tremendous impact.

Here is the direct link to my donation page: https://pledge4good.com/nanubhai-education-foundation/running/for-every-mile-i-complete-of-the-auroville-half-marathon/420018

Wish me luck in my running and I look forward to your support!

Sincerely,

Claire

Running, Education and Rural India: Is There A Connection? is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

Nemisha, Mayuri, Vibhuti, Sejalben and Purvi all discuss how to deliver an effective grammar lesson at Kadod High School.

“Training of Trainers”: Sejalben Mahida Conducts a Workshop at Kadod High School is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

Sanskruti and Reenal work on their project.

Spoken English Movie Time! is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

A pre-K student poses in an elaborate Goan fisherman's costume.

A young girl dressed for classical Indian dance.

Disco & Chanya Choli: A School’s Art Performance in Surat is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

At the end of October, the sugarcane fields in our area were ready to
be harvested. Migrant laborers from poorer parts of Gujarat and
bordering states like Maharashtra began to pour into Kadod and the
local villages. Most of the laborers travel in family groups, which
includes their children. Much like migrant laborers in the United
States, the bulk of these children are pulled out of school to follow
their families on the harvest cycles. Older children may help their
parents in the fields, while others care for younger siblings and
maintain the households. Those parents who truly want their kids to
have an education are faced with an almost impossible dilemma; do you
leave your child behind, in the company of strangers, so that he or
she may go to school, or do you pull them out halfway through the year
so that they can stay with their family? Others may simply come from
areas where distance or caste discrimination do not make education an
option. Perhaps most sadly, sometimes the family’s economic need is so
great that they simply cannot afford to spare a working body.

With our visiting photographer, the talented Sarah Lou Toscano, I set
out early one morning to visit a migrant camp and document the
experience. After walking for over an hour, we arrived at a small
clearing by a branch of the Tapi River. All travelers to India have
seen the shanties, tents, and huts will curl around the edges of
buildings in any major city. Economic migration is not a new concept,
and the way in which shanty-dwellers must struggle for their basic
needs is one of the most sobering aspects of life in India. However,
the migrant laborer’s camp was different.

Small, four-sided dwellings were neatly covered in woven reeds, with
only the occasional slip of normally ubiquitous blue tarp peeking out
from the roof. Houses were spaced evenly, and there was clearly a
demarkation for laundering clothes and going to the bathroom down on
the river bank. A small handpump, perhaps provided by the farm’s
owners, gave them access to drinking water, and there was even a tiny
store in the center of the camp.

As we walked into the camp, we paused, somewhat nervously. I do not
think that anyone in India has been quite so surprised to see me.
Sarah Lou and I, armed with our cameras, had made a serious
impression. People gawked at us without a shred of embarassment.

As we proceeded throughout the camp, people quietly stood and nodded their approval for photographs. Slowly, crowds started to build, and before we knew it, everyone in the camp was out of their homes, going about their daily business and keeping one eye trained on the two American girls with giant cameras.

What immediately became clear was that over 2/3 of the population of the camp were school-aged children, yet no one was getting ready for school: none of the characteristic hair braiding, book-gathering, or uniform-straightening was taking place. As I examined the laundry on the lines, I noticed not a single school uniform. Inside the homes, there were no backpacks.

Since most of the people residing in this settlement speak Gamit, Chaudhri, Marati or some mix of the three, I had a hard time communicating. One young mother, however, was willing to patiently listen to my bad Gujarati and watch my pantomimes and I tried to ask if the kids did indeed go to school. The woman, previously animated and particularly interested in my camera, turned quiet and a forlorn looked washed over her face as she explained that none of the children were enrolled in school. Not here, and not in their ancestral villages in Maharashtra.

In the end, my visit to the camp left me with more questions than
answers. What can be done to provide education to these children? The
reasons behind migration are so large and complex, it seems like an
impossible goal. Also, incredible as it may seem, Gujarat actually
has a fairly small migrant laborer population in comparison to poorer
states like Bihar or Orissa. Happily, there are some great NGOs doing
work in these areas. When working to try and improve the public school
system seems like an insurmountable challenge, it is inspiring to
remember that other NGOs struggle with even more extreme conditions.

For more information about NGOs which target the children of migrant
laborers, check out Vidhayak Sansad at http://www.vidhayaksansad.org,
Dr. Reddy’s Foundation at http://www.drreddysfoundation.org, or the
India Literacy Project at http://www.ilpnet.org.

The mother from my story.

Education in India: Children of Seasonal and Migrant Laborers is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

But there is also an opposite rhetoric. What happens when English threatens to erode the local language? Lamenting the demise of vernacular literature is something of a popular pastime these days. With the death of a language supposedly a whole genre of cultural expression dies alongside it. We lose the ability of Inuits to differentiate among nine different kinds of snow, and so on.   Honestly though, I’m a tad skeptical about all these funeral dirges for dead and dying tongues. Simply put, it’s the nature of any beast to die at the end of its life. People come and go. Languages do too. We mourn them, true, but let’s not fall into melodramatics. Languages are practical animals. Those parts of the language which can express things only unique to the culture (those nine different sorts of snow for instance) live on within the usurping language. When faced with a dead animal, the vultures eat its tongue too.   So, the demise of a language does not equate to the demise of a culture. At least I don’t think it does. And I can think of no finer example than Indian English. Wikipedia has an extensive list of Hindi words currently incorporated into English, primarily Indian English. Whether it’s the way Desi speakers of English use retroflex consonants in place of dental ones (not ‘t’ or ‘d’, but ‘ṭ’ or ‘ḍ’), or their free use of Desi idioms and slang, Indian English is a dialect of its own, like British English, American English, or Australian English. In spite of all their regional slang, these three countries have little trouble communicating with one another. And why can’t Indian English maintain its own flavor without sacrificing communicability? It’s one of my pet peeves that every time a Gujarati teacher introduces me to a new class, he chides them to “listen carefully” to my pronunciation. As if this were the most important aspect of my Spoken English classes. We’re not here to homogenize the world. We’re here to help people communicate with it. Right, yaar?

English has hardly become death, destroyer of cultures. On the contrary, it has become a virtual lingua franca the world over. This was never made clearer to me than while travelling in Nepal during the recent Diwali vacation. Trekkers from the United Kingdom, United States, or Australia are a minority in the heights around Everest. But sit down a Frenchman, a German, and a Nepalese around the same wood fire stove, and inevitably the conversation will be in English. The barriers of worldwide cooperation are lower than ever before. It seems we have finally overcome the curse of Babel. The human race can once again try its hand at building towers that soar into the heavens.   There is still a problem though, a kink in the system. Quality English education is not available to all. A great deal of the rural population of developing countries will be unable to engage with the emerging global community. English is not only a practical skill set. It is also the medium of the government examinations for the most prestigious and lucrative posts. What we have today is a system in which access to these high-sector jobs is almost completely monopolized by those who grow up at an early age speaking, reading, and writing English in elite English medium schools. Wealthier parents, especially those living in major urban centers such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, or Chennai, have greater access to these schools for their children. What more, these families often speak English at home. Students in rural areas simply don’t stand a chance on these exams until they too have access to quality English medium education.

Education Resource

Online Degrees gives prospective, fortunate students the chance to attend school and earn an education via the Internet.

Outside the English Medium School is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation

Tickets – Holiday Happy Hour

1 Ticket $5.00 2 Tickets $10.00 3 Tickets $15.00 4 Tickets $20.00

Tickets – Holiday Happy Hour

1 Ticket $5.00 2 Tickets $10.00 3 Tickets $15.00 4 Tickets $20.00

Cocktails for a Cause – Holiday Event is a post from: Nanubhai Education Foundation