Jayanti (India)
What can I say about my time in Munsong teaching at Lovebuds Nursery School except that it has been an absolute pleasure to volunteer there as an English language teacher. The village, evoking a veritable Shangri-La hidden away in the hillside an hours drive by shared taxi outside the bustling little town of Kalimpong is one of the prettiest I visited of those dotted around this side of town, surrounded by stunning views of lush green forest and quinine plantations, which has been the dominant livelihood of the villagers for generations.
Suren, the headmaster and Anju, his wife were my hosts and did all they could to make my stay comfortable. I adored my little room with its window looking out on to their smallholding that provided them with a supply of essential vegetables and dairy produce. Looking down the descending hillside one could see the neighbouring houses with their own farmed areas around them. Fruit trees abounded, amongst them mango, peach, grapefruit and orange. It was a bird-watchers paradise too!
What struck me against this modest backdrop was the wonderful spirit of the children – they brimmed with vitality and enthusiasm for learning and were so rewardingly responsive. This along with the courtesy and good manners they showed made teaching them hugely pleasurable and more than made up for the lack of any sophisticated equipment. To me it was clear that the 3 Rs of learning and teaching were working. The children have surprisingly high levels of literacy in English, a non-native language. They seemed extremely well trained in getting down to classwork using their textbooks with their full attention and concentration and engaged equally readily with EFL communicative activities, interactively reacting and shouting out their answers – they all wanted to be right and when they guessed a correct answer the joy they expressed was a joy to behold.
They were happy to work in pairs and to discover that working together was an enjoyable and productive alternative to competitively working against their neighbours, they would instinctively and touchingly curve their arms around their work to shield it from prying eyes from another. This habit presumably stems from the severe ranking system endemic in the country’s education system.
Of course their English may not have been perfect and they still have some way to go. I would describe their English as being fluent but not perfect or native-level as yet. One frequent mistake was in subject-verb agreement and I frequently heard them say “they goes” rather than “they go”. However, their accuracy and fluency is bound to improve given the right academic opportunities and something I witnessed from a pHD student I met from Munsong who had attended the same school!
One of my aims was to see if I could help them improve their writing skills and so I set up a class where they produced essays on an outing to the Science Park. This introduced them to the idea of structuring their stories with a beginning, middle and end, and also to writing in paragraphs. They produced some lovely illustrated work on dinosaurs: posters were produced and put up on their classroom walls (this was achieved after a major hunt for drawing pins and glue!) We also had great fun reading out and pronouncing the multisyllabic and odd-sounding dinosaur names.
What I felt was really important in this school was that the children with all their potential have the opportunity to continue their education and most parents in this village prefer to send their children to schools in Kalimpong which they believe are better than in the village even with all the constraints that come with sending their children away. School fees are an issue and traditional ways and expectations for the children especially for the girls could also be a drawback. It is easy to think that girls might end up getting married and settling down without continuing their education simply because it is easier, but I hope not!
I wish the children all the best for the future and remain grateful to them, my host family and Mondo for a truly wonderful experience.