Here is my favorite photo of the my trip to India.  It may not be the best photo in a technical sense, but it best captures the spirit of my work as a fifth grade teacher at a tiny village school in Himachal Pradesh.  In the background you can see the other fifth grade teacher, Sam, making sure no one gets kicked in the face during this photo shoot.  Climbing up the wall you can see Vijay, with the thousand-watt smile, and Atul, with the missing tooth, and Kailash, looking down.

Vijay was quickwitted and stylish, and he brought me an almond every day.  This is a pretty generous gift as almonds are not cheap in India.  I met Vijay in town one afternoon when he was sitting with his father, a farmer who was selling vegetables on the side of the road.  He saw me before I saw him, and then he said “Ma’am ji, ma’am ji!” until I took notice.  (Cries of “Ma’am ji” or “Didi” or “Sister” were constant in the classroom, as that was how all of the students got my attention.)  When I looked down and saw him, he grinned at me, the same grin he has in the photo.  I wondered if I should talk to his father, and tell him how smart his son was, but I was too embarrassed to initiate a conversation in Hindi, so I just smiled back at Vijay.  He seemed satisfied.

Atul was more mischievous than Vijay: if I ever left the classroom when something was written on the board, the board would be erased by the time I returned.  Atul always admitted his crime, so I suspect he did it mostly to get my attention.  He also brought me flowers on many days, as well as prasad (sugar clusters) from the nearby temple.  I saw Atul in town one day as well:  I was walking through the main bazaar and someone ran up to me, grabbed my wrist, said “Ma’am!” and ran away.  I looked over my shoulder to see Atul grinning at me for a second before his parents chided him to catch up.

Kailash was also a troublemaker, perhaps because he was one of the smallest boys in the fifth grade.  Sam often had to lift him off the floor and move him to a different place in the classroom, to stop him from hitting the other boys.  That probably encouraged him, really, but sometimes it seemed like the only solution.

All of our students really loved coming to school, even the ones who were lagging behind in their studies.  (To give an idea of what I mean by “lagging,” the smartest student in the class would read in English for fun and could do simple algebra like 10 + x = 15, and the slowest students in the class still did not know the alphabet and had some trouble adding large numbers.  There may even have been a student who could not really count in English, but I never really got him alone to find out for sure.)  The school did not look like much to us, but the kids had never seen anything better.  When it rained outside, it rained in our classroom.  The playground was a patch of dirt next to a pile of bricks and rubble.  There was very little furniture, so the students had nothing to write on but their books.  Every day the kids laid this long, skinny carpet against the wall, which they would then sit on.  Every time they moved the carpet, a cloud of brown dust would fly out of it, so I don’t think it was actually any cleaner than the concrete floor.  All the textbooks in the school had shredded covers and missing pages, not to mention that the content of the English textbook was ridiculously advanced for these students and boring and inaccurate, to boot.  While there was a small amount of electrical wiring in the school building–say, enough for two light bulb sockets–there was only one bulb.

Sam and I were shown the light bulb on the first day, when the Indian teachers interrupted our class for ten minutes to screw it in with an air of great ceremony.  It provided about ten watts of light.  Later, they took it away, probably so they could read the newspaper in their office, which was what they did most of the time.  One day the daily rainstorm came early, and it made our little classroom very dark.  The students were doing math and it was hard to see their papers, so I asked if we could have the bulb back.  The answer was no.

The Indian teachers were one of the most frustrating elements of my work.  Teaching public school is a cushy government job, which basically means it is hard to get fired.  The teachers sat in their office most of the time, ignoring the students.  Every now and then they would come out and hit a kid who was making too much noise during recess, or who had forgotten to bring their plate for lunch, but that was the extent of their participation.  I know it was not the presence of volunteers that made them sit in their office, because we did not have enough volunteers to teach every grade.  The grades that had no volunteer teacher had no teacher at all.  (This is not to say that all Indian teachers are so irresponsible, and there were some people working at the school who I liked.  One day I saw one of the cooks, a skinny older guy, sneak out of the kitchen to comfort a little girl who was crying after a teacher had slapped her for forgetting to bring a lunch plate.  Just to make you cringe a little more, this poor girl also had a raging fever that day, which I knew because she said “Didi, bukhaar!” [Sister, fever!] and made me feel her forehead.  A lot of the students would come to school sick and tell me similar things.  I didn’t know what to do.)

Despite all the frustrating parts, the kids were adorable and their enthusiasm for learning really made my work easy.  I wish I had stayed four more weeks, or longer.  I almost feel like I could do that kind of work my whole life, if I only I weren’t so attached to people who don’t live in India.

Posted in India, teaching, travel by rachel