Pipaldanda: Who knew building a school could be so much work?!

New building

Yesterday I made my final trip to Pipaldanda. I have made more visits to this school than any other during the last six months, but it is also the school where I have done the least teaching! Our project to completely rebuild the school has dominated my other visits, but I am absolutely thrilled to be able to say that the building project is now complete!!! This has been an immense effort by everyone involved, both from Manisha UK and in the community at Pipaldanda. I must say here a special thanks to Saran who has worked tirelessly on this project over the last two years and probably aged about ten years for all the stress it's caused him. There are many others deserving of thanks but I won't list them all here.

Class 5 leaflets

The trip this week was to hold an open day to celebrate the completion of the building project and to show off the building a bit. We really want to boost pupil numbers so inviting everyone in to see not only the new building, but also the resources and good teaching practice, is part of our strategy to help the schools reputation in the local area. 


I spent the whole morning teaching before a celebration and thank you program in the afternoon. I once again made animal leaflets with class five, as like the children at so many schools they loved the chance to be creative and use the colouring pencils. The highlight of the day was working with nursery. All the resources that the school has been given over the last few years were out, some for the first time. After reading from some 'Big Books', with plenty of actions, we did some jigsaw puzzles before some free play time. The children really did love using the resources and were clearly learning lots from being given the chance to explore them independently. The headteacher saw all this and I am optimistic it will become a more regular feature of school life than it has been in the past. Plenty of parents and people from the community came to see the school during this time and seemed almost as thrilled as the children to see such a lively and colourful scene. 

 

Keep trying!

Class 5 children dancing

The tikka is still in my hair...

The afternoon was given over to a celebration and thank you program. Most of this consisted of fairly long speeches, as is quite typical in Nepal. We were also treated to some dances from some of the children. Inevitably I was also asked to dance, with my new wife who came to school with me for the first time. It's hard to say who looked more embarrassed, but her dancing was certainly much better than my efforts! 
 

Traditional Nepali or Saturday Night Fever?

The new building really does look good now, and with all the resources out and spread around the classrooms it really did look like a proper learning environment for the first time. With next years volunteers able to concentrate on teacher training rather than building projects the school should now go from strength to strength.