Teaching Practice Recap

Wednesday, Sept 29

    I have sooooo much to catch up on!!! I would have written most of my "catch-up" blogging on the two day train ride to Kerala; however, under certain circumstances (stay tuned!) I felt that whipping out a Macbook during my third-bunk-made-for-a-small-child-with-people-staring-at-me-for-40-hours-experience may be less than responsible.  Anyways… a lot I have to say will be in condensed form, and probably a little scattered.  So bear with me.  Ok ..:::fog screen and harp playing in background:::… lets reminisce about my last days in Calcutta.
    Two of my practice lessons were in an all boys government school.  Now, my very first practice class in the all girls government school had a class size of 60 and it went wonderfully--they were well behaved, eager to learn, and just stinkin' adorable.  The boys were 10-12 years-old and holy guacamole (man i miss guacamole), these kids were CRAZY!!! On our first day at this all boys government school, all six of us teachers walked out pretty much drooling and giggling, like we'd been shot with a taser gun.  The boys were rambunctious, loud, bouncing off the walls, pinching, touching, laughing, shouting, jumping, throwing… "class control" on our evaluation sheets became irrelevant.  You have to laugh because when we arrived in pairs to each classroom, the teachers dipped out and were nowhere to be seen until we found them in the office after our lessons, lounging and chatting with tea.  At that point we understood why they left so abruptly when we arrived…"yes! break from hell!!!"  Haha! Anyways, boys will be boys and the next day we taught there the lessons went much smoother and they behaved better--they were able to repeat some vocab (despite the fact that our prepared lessons were definitely more advanced than the language level of the children…ATI required that we do 5 different lessons of all levels; however, the classes we were given did not always match the levels of the kids so that made it a bit difficult)… I think the combination of the fact that we served as "substitutes" for the days (oh and we all know how we've treated substitutes), and the fact that we are strange white people with funny accents probably got them jostled into an excessive form of excitement. It was an experience to say the least.  On a personal level, I felt more comfortable and confident as the week went on, and my last lesson seemed just like another class for me!  I loved every minute!
     I have to mention that at every school we went to, all the kids were jumping out of their skin saying "Hello!" "Nice to meet you!" "signacha?? pleeeease!?!?"  They all wanted our signature/autograph and/or to shake hands with us when we left.  We felt like celebrities! My classmate, Matt, said, "I don't think I've ever gotten that excited about another human being before!"  Haha, I have to agree with that.  We enjoyed it while it lasted.