My day to day life has become such a routine that I often lose track of what day it is, until the kids remind me, its Tuesday! Or its Thursday! You are teaching us gymnastics today! I have been teaching them gymnastics and every Tuesday and Thursday evening during their play time and they have been loving it. Loving it so much that sometimes they cannot even contain their excitement that they are jumping up and down, it is a joy to see such excitement over something so simple.
Everyday Monday thru Friday is the same. In the mornings as a staff we spend time together in prayer and praise and sharing different things that God has been teaching us and praying for each other and the kids.
Teaching begins at 9am and we spend the first hour of the day focusing on literacy. In Indian schools teachers do not teach kids how to read the way that we do in the United States, and there is little to no focus put on literacy when they are in school in India. Thus it has been my goal to implement a literacy program here at the orphanage that can be continued after I leave. This way when the kids start school in June and are not learning to read in school they will have an established program at home that they can continue to use to grow in reading.
Literacy is the biggest focus of our day, we spend about 3 hours between reading, writing and word study. Although all of the kids are at such a low reading level, most 2 grades lower than where they should be they are improving quickly as they are getting the one-on-one individualized instruction that they need.
In the afternoon we spend about 2 hours on math, playing math games, developing certain skills that they needs and doing Number of the Day, a short part of our math time to develop number sense.
Our focus on math has been quite intense, much more than I had planned and most of this is due to what the kids are expected to know when they start school in June. Before even going to school every year they have to take entrance exams to get into the grade that they should be in, this means they are tested on everything that they learned the previous year. So for the 6 year olds that are starting 1st Grade they are expected to already know addition, subtraction, multiplication and fractions, which by American standards is ridiculous to know all of that before even going into 1st Grade.
As a result of what the kids are expected to know and me only being here with them for 7 weeks I don't get to always teach the way that I feel is the best for kids or what is developmentally appropriate for their skill level.
Teaching the kids here is nothing like teaching kids in the United States, and slowly I have been trying to undo some of the misconceptions that these kids have been taught but it has been hard. For example when we do writing workshop the kids are constantly so worried about spelling every word correctly that they become so fixated on the spelling their mind is blocked from just being free to write and enjoy the story that they are telling. I keep reminding them that I will love their story whether they spell every word right or no words right because its not about how good your spelling is its about getting your thoughts out to tell your story and writing the sounds and words you are hearing in your mind.
Indian children are also taught to sit and write, sit and write, sit and write and don't interact at all with what they are learning. This has been a slow process as well in teaching them how to be free of sitting and writing all the time and to enjoy learning, reading, creating art and thinking for themselves critically.
Everyday is filled with so much joy despite the things that are so different and hard and I am seeing so much growth in the kids already in the short two weeks that I have been here. Even the rest of the staff at the orphanage has been impressed with how much better the kids speech and pronunciation is, I explained to them its because they are reading books and they have never spent anytime doing that before!
