We arrived in Malapurram in the state Kerela today about
1:00 p.m. The plane ride over was a
little too exciting for me. If you love
roller coasters, you would have loved this flight! The Indian system of airport security was
interesting to say the least. I was
detained at both airports briefly. One
was my fault for not understanding which items needed to put in the tray for
scanning. The other was because the
total weight of the luggage among the 6 people traveling in the group was overweight
and I had to pay for the overage for everyone.
My teaching partner Erik and IREX coordinator Emily were
picked up Thomas V. who is my host teacher.
Thomas was part of another State Department Fellowship program (ILEP) in
2014. Thomas spent five months at Kent
State University in Ohio where he studied American teaching theory and practice
and had a teaching experience at McKinley High School in Mantua, near Canton,
Ohio. I have corresponded with him via
e-mail over the last 6 weeks but it was good to meet him. He drove us from the airport in Calicut to
Malapurram which took about an hour.
Malapurram is much different than Bangalore. Located in the state Kerela, It is far less
densely populated (there still are people everywhere) but green and
tropical. There are palm trees and
vendors selling fresh fruit including coconut which they open with a machete
and put a straw in for you. The terrain
is hilly, even mountainous. It reminds me of western North Carolina. Today, Erik and I will be taking a side trip
to a mountain city called Ooty so we can enjoy and see the scenery. On Monday, we begin our observation an d
interaction with students and staff at the Central Government school.
Thomas took us to the school when we arrived in
Malapurram. We got a chance to meet and
have tea with the principal. Seems like
a nice guy. There were several murals
inside the building that were interesting.
On the outside of the building there was a hand-painted mural of Abraham
Lincoln. The writing was a list of
advice given by Lincoln on why school is important. On the inside there were murals of Lord
Buddha, Jesus Christ and several Hindu Gods.
It was very interesting to see this acknowledgment of religion as would
not see tis in the U.S.
As I reflect back on the two school visits we have already
completed in Bangalore, I cannot help to be even more curious about my research
question; how is the school experience different here for students than in
America and at Waverly?
My initial observations are that they are quite
different. Many of the teachers in our
group are drawn to parts of this experience.
For example, students here are extremely well behaved. They settle down in class when they arrive,
they refer to their teachers as sir and madam, they do not socialize with their
peers in class. In general, they are
very attentive, much more so than American students, and seem so much more
eager to learn. On the other hand, the
methods and outcomes are not very appealing.
In the classes I observed, the vast majority of learning that took place
was over factual information. Teachers
read information to students. Students
followed along. Students repeated what
they heard out loud mostly in choral response.
I have seen virtually no cooperative learning and no emphasis on higher
level thinking skills. Granted, I have
observed two classes where students were learning English and one where they
were learning geography. Lots of
memorization. Of course, I don’t think
that our students in the U.S. do much memorization at all. I see this when ask students what 7 x 6 is
and they reach for their calculators or when they ask with horror if they are
going to have to know dates in history class.
Perhaps out students need more memorization of facts while Indian
students need more higher level thinking content.
It is now Saturday morning here in Malapurram. This is the one Saturday of the month when
school is not in session. Normally
school is Monday through Saturday.
That is all for now.
I am currently out of the wifi zone so including pictures is a little
bit of problem right now. I will include
pictures later.
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