Teach India : Week 6

Finally had a good session with the kids after a 4 week break!

I had almost forgotten what it is like to go there and go there and teach….1 month is a very long time!I was honestly quite lazy to go on a Saturday afternoon and I so wanted o sleep but I pulled myself up cause I had committed I would be there and went for the session and it was totally worth it.

I had a total of 15 kids today over various sessions!! It was good fun..

I reached late for my first session (was plain lazy and a lil disappointed with the last time’s session).One of my kiddo’s spotted me and I pulled him out of the session he was in and took him for a walk. We went to the school library and I spotted the child craft books and world books!! So we picked up a book on activities and sat and read it and saw the pictures. The session went off well. This child had come to the library numerous times earlier but had never bothered to look at those books.
I was quite unprepared for this session and I though cool I found my activity for the day…I will bring all the kids to the library and help them to explore the place and make friends with the books…But oh-ho… suddenly I see the Librarian getting up and closing the window and he informs me “Saturday the library closes half day”. There goes my impromto ‘planned’ activity out of the closed window! Now what!? So I asked the Librarian If I could borrow one of the child craft books…surprisingly he agreed! I picked up a Child Craft book “Celebrations” and we had many discussions on different celebrations around the world!

My second session with the kids was pretty good…I had two of my old children and three new ones! We went for a walk in the school…we learnt new words…we played the ‘shopping’ role play…In the middle of the session one of the new kids was being called away by one of the Kotak staff for something and she refused to go! She went with him only after he assured her that she could come back and continue the session!! This was by and large my best session of the day!

The third session started off wonderfully…I was sitting and waiting for my kiddos to come…my 4 bacchus came with a whole lot of their other friends!! So it was me and almost 20 kids around me ...each of them saying “teacher humko aapke saat baitna hai!!” Telling me shiyari’s doing full TP! What a chaos! But honestly I quite liked it…who does not like to be popular..!! Finally the Kotak Staff had to intervene and assign the kids to the other volunteers and I was left with my original set of 4! After all the excitement…the session was a big popat!...It was quite drab…after all no matter what you do…the energy levels with 20 kids vis a vis 4 kids would be different…and I was not really prepared!
We did a whole lot of activities…but the kids with another volunteer seemed to be having more fun! The official session ended…and I again had all the kids surrounding me again…and we had a shiyari session with me trying to recollect some old ones I knew as a kid!
Here is a new one I learnt from the kidoo’s today

“Dus aur Dus Jodo to Bees banta hai”
“Dus aur Dus Jodo to Bees banta hai”
“Hoot Aur Hoot Jodo to Kiss banta hai”

Giggles..giggles...giggles from all the kiddos..and then it was time for this batch to go!

The last session was also interesting….I had 5 new girls who were coming for the first time. I was no longer nervous like I was in my first day of teaching and the session was smooth and fun!
I think I quite love teaching…It is extremely challenging to keep kids engaged…and it is soo easy to make out when they are bored! I hope we have a session next week…it would be nice to have some continuity!!