It never rains, but it pours.....

With my wedding now done, life in Nepal is returning to something like normality (or at least as close to normality as life in Nepal ever comes). One exception to this rule is the weather. One day I think summer is coming and I'm putting my shorts on, but the next it looks like monsoon has come several months early and I'm getting a severe drenching on the way to school.

My first post wedding school visit was to Mahachap. As there have previously been some issues surrounding staying in this village Saran and I just visited for the day. The school is desperately in need of funds and resources and it can be frustrating having to constantly remind that I am there to teach and show the teachers some new teaching methods. Getting the teachers to watch my lessons is also challenging! However, I had a great lesson with class 5 who made leaflets about local animals for their twin school. Yet again, something as simple as having a few colouring pencils was a great treat to them. I also spent time in nursery, who enjoyed doing a big floor puzzle I had taken with me. They also liked listening to some books as a read them. Although they couldn't understand much of the English they loved doing the actions I put it, something that I home their regular teacher will continue with having seen the way the children respond.

After Mahachap I returned to Amrit, to deliver a very generous donation from their twin school; Kings Lynn Academy. They plan to use this money to improve the rooms used by classes 5 & 6, and improvements are certainly desperately needed! I took a lesson with classes 11 & 12 (Nepali 6th Form) and we talked about what could be done to improve the education system of Nepal. They were a little shocked at my suggestion of burning all their textbooks, but we all agreed that the majority of their current lessons are very boring. 

Yesterday I made my latest visit to Pipaldanda. It was pouring with heavy rain in the morning, after thunderstorms all night. Rescheduling the visit wasn't really option, as many people from the community were already gather to meet us, so we tried to find a jeep. Unfortunately no available jeep wanted to try the difficult road to the school in bad weather conditions, so we had to go on motorbikes. By the time we arrived we looked like we'd swam there, in very dirty water! Still, after a cup of tea we managed to have a useful meeting with the community and decided to hold an open day at the school next week, to show the new building to all the local community. No doubt there will plenty more about that in my next blog entry! 

An unexpected journey (or 4)

After my visit to Jandeep school at Dumre, my next stop was Basanta Primary School at Bagnas. This is always a nice school to visit, not least because it is so easy to get to, being just a 45 minute walk away! It is also always interesting, as I tend to turn up here without giving any notice to the school so arrive to see a 'normal' day with no special preperatations. 

I took class 5 to make some leaflets about animals, as I have done at several schools recently. Like everywhere else, the children loved having the chance to be creative and it was clearly a big treat to have the colouring pencils and felt-tip pens out! All the children went to their text books to find animal pictures they could copy. While I loved to see the initiative they took, it again highlights the lack of opportunities for creative activities that they couldn't create their own pictures from scratch. 

The school has a good library, which has been provided by Room to Read, another NGO working to improve education in Nepal. Each class gets the chance to go in once a week and read books of their own choice. As well as books there were a number of toys and games in the library which were being underused, so I took these to nursery where the children were thrilled! It was clear they hadn't used many toys like these before, few of them thought of putting building blocks on top of each other. Instead, the blocks became cars and airplanes but it was great to see so much imagination and laughter! 

After my visit to Basanta school, I had to make a trip to Kathmandu to visit the British Embassy. While I've had my share of bad bus journeys in Nepal, this was the worst yet, being squeezed into the back seat of a minibus with leg room for a hobbit for 10 hours, and the return was not much better! This was a journey I had never imagined I would be taking when I came to Nepal, as the reason for visiting the embassy was to get a certificate allowing me to get married! A lot can happen in four months but marriage is certainly a surprise that will take some beating! 

A couple of days after returning to Tansen it was off to the temple for the marriage ceremony! While I spent most of the day being confused about what exactly I was meant to be doing (and understanding the significance or meaning of virtually nothing) by the end of the day I was married to my beautiful new wife, Bimala. It was a great days with friends and new family here in Nepal and I'm very happy and excited to be married and to know my involvement with Nepal won't be ending when I head back to England in 5 weeks time! 

Having the marriage made legal is a little less fun, with Nepali administration being incapable of organising a cup of coffee, let alone a marriage certificate! But after countless visits to various people in government offices we are slowly getting there and I will be returning to England as a married man!

Dumre

This week I have visited Jandeep School in Dumre. This school goes from Nursery class up to year 9, and I managed to spend at least one lesson with every class. 

Putting the days of the week in order

The younger primary school children really loved having the chance to make some noise and be active in lessons. At many of the schools I visit the children start very shy, but here the children couldn't wait to start playing some learning games! We played a lot of racing games, with some coloured card on the floor and two children racing to the colour I shouted out. At the end of the lesson the children didn't want to let me leave until they'd all had another go! It is certainly a far more effective technique for teaching colour that the rote learning they usually get. In kindergarten I started showing some colours and was delighted when the children started to sing them all with spellings; "B-L-U-E blue, R-E-D, red.... etc", but when I asked them to match the word to the colour on the board not one of them was able to do it. Take note the effect of too many exams (4 per year!) and too much rote learning Ms Morgan!! 

Colouring fun

I made some more animal leaflets for Dumre's twin school with year 5. Once again they loved having the chance to do some creative drawing and use colour pencils and pens. It was hard to restrict them to drawing animals though, they all loved drawing flowers (it turns out this is something they were remarkably good at). So many of the leaflets heading back to the UK are decorated with roses, marigolds and all sorts of other flowers in addition to some local animals. 

I'm on fire! 

While in Jandeep I had the chance to observe some trainee teachers on teaching practice. I'm sorry to say that the standard was quite worrying and the poor training here is clearly a major factor in the general poor quality of schools. Two young trainees teaching a maths lesson spent the entire 40 minutes writing the calculations on the board for the children to copy, but they also gave them the answers, so the children did no work for themselves! There was no modelling or explanation, in English or Nepali and the entire lesson was wasted. As if that wasn't enough, the calculations on the board were covered in mistakes, so any children who were managing to pick up something would have also learnt these errors. I decided to do the same lesson the next day as I would teach it, to show the teachers some different ideas. While they both agreed to this, neither of them were in school the following day. I re-did the lesson regardless as the children certainly needed it (and in teaching it again I could see they certainly hadn't learnt anything the previous day!). The government in Nepal desperately needs to address the poor quality of training and the curriculum. Fighting against these combined forces is certainly not making the task of Manisha UK any easier! 

Playing in nursery 

Working with the secondary school classes I was generally impressed with their reading and writing skills. However, the speaking and listening skills were desperately poor. Again, the Nepali curriculum bears much of the blame for this, as the text books are geared this way. Dumre school is fortunate to have a couple of teachers with exceptionally good English but the pupils need to hear this much more often and have the chance to speak (and chanting / repeating is not the same as speaking) themselves. 

Despite the concerns I had a wonderful few days at the school and was sorry to leave. As always I was well looked after by all the students and staff and I am sad that I won't have the chance to see most of them again during this years training program. This weekend brings a long bus journey to Kathmandu to collect some documents from the British Embassy, 8 hours each way for a piece of paper is quite frustrating!  

Jheksang and Amrit

This week was the start of term for most schools in Palpa and I made a slightly overdue return to our schools at Jheksang and Amrit. 

Making leaflets with class 7

My first visit was to Jheksang, for the very first day of term. I was prepared for a full day of teaching, only to learn that because it was the first day back they'd all go home at lunch time! Nonetheless, I had a great morning. Class 7 prepared some leaflets about the local animals and really loved getting to use crayons and do some drawings. They get very little, if any, opportunity to do activities like this normally so it was a real treat for them. 

Using the mini whiteboards

 

I took some mini white boards with me for the school and the children absolutely loved using these. They had never seen them before so needed a bit of explanation, but they soon got the idea and it really encouraged them to talk about the questions I was asking and discuss things with their classmates, something I've really being trying to get teachers here to work on. (At least I hope they were talking about my questions, I am still limited to about 30 Nepali words so they could have been talking about anything!) 


The school has managed to buy two new PCs since my last visit, and I was able to install some software, a visual dictionary, on these for the children to use. They don't get much opportunity to use the computers normally but hopefully having some good useful software will help. 

After Jheksang I went further up the hill to Amrit Public, one of our larger schools. I was both surprised and delighted to learn they now have wifi internet access! The downside is there is only one working PC, but hopefully the others will be fixed in time. 

Class 5 colouring leaflets

I did the same animal leaflet activity as I had done at Jheksang, this time with class 5. Again, the children loved the chance to be a little creative and use some crayons and colours! They also enjoyed using the mini whiteboards and I found again it helped to encourage more discussion. I did some work with a bilingual book with class one and the kindergarten, showing the teachers how adding some actions can help the children understand the vocabulary and learn new words. The children enjoyed the actions and proved at the end they had picked up a lot more new words than they would have through the normal listen and repeat story telling method usually used in Nepal.

I'm a bird!

Before leaving I was given a massive send off, presented with gifts of a hat (topi), waistcoat and tie all made from traditional local cloth, as well as being totally covered in flower garlands (mala). It really showed just how much they appreciate the visits from Manisha UK, and the support from their twin school, Kings Lynn Academy. 

My next visit is to our newest twin school, Dumre, and hopefully it will be as positive as my visits to Jheksang and Amrit! 

Only half way through the mala giving!

Beginnings and Ends

I know I've been away a while, but I'm back by popular demand! (While, 2 people, but I'll take that) My last post was just before Christmas, when I hoped to squeeze in another school visit but feared holidays and exams would spoil my plans, and indeed they did. So I had a long Christmas break, made longer by 3 week winter vactations that meant I could only get back to school on Monday this week (19th January) and the majority of schools won't open until 26th January.

So what have I been doing all this time? Well, I had great, but very nontraditional, Christmas and New Year celebrations. Neither event is really celebrated in Nepal, but I've made so many friends out here who wanted to party with me I had little choice and had a really great time. I time honored tradition, Christmas involved eating far too much, even if pizza, momo and dal bhat had to replace the usual turkey and roast potatoes, and NYE had plenty of dancing.

The almost complete new school! 

Throughout all this time, the building project at Pipaldanda school has been continuing and the building is now complete! There are still a few finishing touches needed but we're really in the very final phase now, which is a huge relief to all of us here who have been given plenty of headaches by this major project. Almost every visit to Pipaldanda dominated by building issues, and sadly the teaching has been a little neglected. I'm really looking forward to being able to spend some quality teaching time in the village soon, which the children certainly deserve! 

Thinking up new questions! 

Guest speaker from Room to Read

Before term started, I held the third teacher training session of my placement here. This time we spent the day focusing on questioning. The quality of questioning in Nepali textbooks is incredibly poor and a very narrow range (for the educators out there, it is an endless stream of AF2 questions, maybe one AF3 question each week!), pure comprehension exercise style questions which don't require much thinking, any understanding, and certainly no imagination. We looked at the need to ask different types of questions, and what we could ask. We also talked about getting children discussing these questions together and talking in lessons, which is painfully lacking! Each school received a small set of mini-white boards and pens to help aid pupil discussing and more active questioning by the teachers. I also gave each teacher resources to make a "pot of fairness" for selecting random children to answer questions and a "zone board" to help reward those that make the effort. Overall it was a challenging day. The teachers have all spent not only there entire teaching careers working with this narrow range of questions, it is also all they ever knew at school themselves, making it a difficult habit to break! Nonetheless, we made a good start and I know the focus for my next round of school visits! 

Staff at teacher training

 After teacher training I took a mini holiday in Bardia, Western Nepal, while the schools were still on holiday. This is a large national park and home to tigers, rhinos, elephants and many other animals. Unfortunately, most of them were as shy as a typical Nepali school pupil. I did see plenty of deer, some crocodiles and monkeys so plenty still, as well as plenty of tiger tracks and poo! There were also domestic elephants and an orphan rhino, so despite the animal shyness I had a really good few days away and enjoyed my time in the jungle!

These primary classrooms are made from
iron sheets and bamboo

This week I was finally able to go back to school at Gyanodaya School in Okhaldhunga. I had hoped for 3 days of teaching there, but yet another holiday (on Wednesday, 2 days after term started on Monday!) restricted me to just 2. It was great to be back in school, although the children here were even quieter than I remembered in class. I insisted we had to get the children used to a new style of questioning, even though it meant waiting a long time for anyone to answer, lots of embarrassed children and only a couple of questions asked each lesson. By the end of the 2 days some children were beginning to get it, and if the teachers can persevere I know they will see a real improvement. Last time I was in Okhaldhunga they made me get up and dance in front of the entire school to Justin Bieber. This time I avoided Justin, but got the Vengaboys instead, as well as some traditional Nepali songs. It's fair to say Nepal has had me out of my comfort zone on quite a number of occasions! 

Making leaflets for West Derby twin school

Dancing with the teachers during the thanks program...

...and dancing with the village during the evening

On the holiday day, I was taken for a great walk to some local sites of interest. This included the "luck cave". The locals all believe that if you go there and see water inside you are a lucky person, however, no water means unlucky! I was able to see a good pool of water, and fortunately for me the feared transport strike the next day never happened, so I'm inclined to believe in my luck for now. In the afternoon I went to a program at another nearby primary school where another village was celebrating the completion of a sanitation program. Sadly, the speakers here didn't share the pupils shyness and the speeches went on pretty much forever. I timed the VDC chairman who spoke, non-stop, for a full 25 minutes, in spite of the fact it was perfectly obvious everyone has long given up listening. With local leaders like this, maybe it's little surprise the new constitution still hasn't been agreed! 

Next up are visits to schools at Jheksang and Amrit, as I try to visit all the schools again before returning back to England, a date which is approaching much faster than I'd like. 

Christmas is coming, but all the Nepali children are getting from Santa is exams!

It's been a bit of a hectic time since my last post, with plans constantly changing. I've only managed to visit two schools in that time, Bagnas and Pipaldanda. 

The view on the way to Bagnas school (also my regular running route)

First was Bagnas, a short walk down the road from Tansen with some great views on the way. I spent a really enjoyable few days here, working with all 5 classes and nursery. I spent most of my time working with two of the younger teachers, who both show great potential. Although (or maybe because!) neither of them have had government training they are both really receptive to new ideas and show amazing willingness to put them into practice during lessons. I watched both of them improve their questioning over the three days I was in school and both tried to bring in some role play and make the lessons more active.

Number fun in nursery

Before leaving Barbara had visited Bagnas and provided some inflatable numbers for Nursery. When I arrived these were still in the staffroom, but a length of string later and the children were absolutely delighted! Eventually they calmed down enough to actually do some counting activities, focusing especially on numbers out of sequence. This is something many children in Nepal struggle with due to the constant chanting method of learning, but the bright colours and active lesson helped them to recognise the numbers and match them to quantities.

After finishing the first day with a whole school round of the Hokey Cokey, the children were quite insistent the following day that I couldn't leave until we had played a game. We had some 'under / over' balloon races which the children absolutely loved, although there were a few arguments about who got to take the balloons home!

One of the young English teachers reading with he pupils outside. 

 

 

After Bagnas I spent a day visiting a couple of other towns with Saran and soaking up some more Nepali culture. We attended a first rice day for one of his young relatives. This is the first day of a lifetime of Dal Bhat, when the child eats their first rice. It is a very big deal in Nepal with rice being such an important part of daily life and the family have a massive celebration to mark the occasion.

I had been intending to visit Pipaldanda straight after my trip to Mahachap, but had to postpone several times, first due to exams and then twice because the weather made the road unusable for a motorbike. On my previous visits to this school it has been all about the building work, so on this occasion I was  determined to do some teaching! It was slightly easier than I expected to get around to teaching all the students as the building work meant classes have been merged into just two different rooms. We did some work on days of the week, location as well as some numbers and stories and it was a very enjoyable morning. In the afternoon there were the discussions about the building work, which was somewhat less enjoyable as we move toward completion and the budget gets very stretched! Some difficult choices about what we can and can't afford to do had to be made, making for some tough conversations. However, work has been moving at a really good pace and carried out to a good standard. Since my last visit a massive amount of plastering has been done, safety railings installed, floors smoothed and electrical wiring was going in when we arrived. There are lots more photos available here.

While schools in England we be breaking up for Christmas this weekend, schools here are in the middle of exam season. Not exactly what most people ask Santa for, but at least most of them get a short break afterwards. I'll try to squeeze in one more visit before my own little Christmas break, but with exams and breaks in many schools this may be another plan that gets changed at the last minute! 

Merry Christmas to everyone!!

Flying solo

This week I made my first school visit since Barbara left, returning to Shree Himalaya school in Mahachap village.

Without Barbara here I have no excuse to pay for jeeps to the villages anymore, so made the journey to Mahachap by motorbike, about an hour of off-roading with some spectacular views between the gaps in the fog and one or two scary moments! The marigold population was once again decimated for my arrival and I was covered in mala and tikka. During my last visit to this school with Barbara we were only able to do a little bit of teaching, as most of our time went to discussing ways of using some land the school had purchased and a rather long thank you program. This time I have been able to visit and teach in all the classes, which go from nursery to class 5. There are some very bright students at the school, but it quickly became clear that they are not very used at thinking for themselves. Of course it is hard for pupils to follow instructions for activities when they are being given in a foreign language, but it becomes frustrating to hear them just chanted back to me while the students stare without any understanding! By my second day perserverance was starting to pay off with pupils becoming more active and more willing to talk to each other about questions I'd ask. I have spoken to the staff about using "Big Questions" during every lesson, and the need to constantly ask pupils "Why?". Hopefully I'll see the benefits of this when I next visit.

This was the first time I spent the night in Mahachap, and the villagers certainly put plenty of effort into making sure I didn't get bored. I was given a tour of the village after school, visiting many homes and being treated to fresh orangers everywhere. (When I say fresh, I mean they picked them off the tree when I arrived). I could tell there were some stunning views to be seen from many points in the village, but sadly on this occassion they were all obscured by cloud. At least the cloud only spoilt my view, for Barbara in Kathmandu it meant a 3 hour delay to her flight, a missed connection and a nightmare at Delhi airport, so I can't complain too much!

Another visit to Pipaldanda is next for me, I'm excited to see the progress that has been made with the building project, and hope do actually do some teaching there this time as well!