Teaching in Delhi

I have been teaching in Delhi for nearly three weeks and have not had a chance to write anything on this blog, as I've been incedibly busy. So here goes.

I teach in a slum called Mayapuri. If you go to Google Maps and search for Mayapuri Industrial Area, Delhi, India you will see where it is. If you zoom in and click on the Street View icon then move it to the dot on the railway line, you will even see a photo of the slum, which is right on the railway track.

I teach two classes, each lasting 90 minutes. The early one consists of boys aged 8-14 years. There are 17 boys on the roll and usually about 14 or 15 show up on any given day. Since the classes are not compulsory, they are under no obligation to attend, and many of them miss their English classes for weeks at a time because they need to go to work, or help support their families in some way.
The other class consists of university students, who in theory can be of either sex but in the case of Mayapuri there are anything from 3 to 8 young men in the class. The group above are my regulars. They are (L to R) Vinod, Ranjan and Mananjay.

Some of the early class are shown below. In the back row are Goutam No.1 and Goutam No.2, as they are known. The boy pointing is called Dharmveer - he is one of my most vocal students, and as one of seven children (plus two parents and a grandmother) living in a single-room slum dwelling, I guess he'd have to be vocal to get attention.
The photos show the classroom as it is. There are no chairs, no tables, no audiovisual equipment - just a whiteboard and some mats on the floor. There is one window (which is better than the schools in some slums) and the electricity is fairly reliable. There is no running water. The public toilet block which Asha has built for the slum is outside the schoolroom and the smell is, well, I think you can guess. As the schoolroom is situated in the middle of an industrial area, the din from engines and car wreckers is deafening. We can't shut the window to keep the noise and smell out, because then we'd have no light and we'd probably all suffocate in the heat! :-)

So all this might sound like a nightmare scenario for teaching. The truth is that it is incredibly fun, stimulating and uplifting to be working in this environment. All the kids are there voluntarily. They have their usual school at 12 noon - the girls go to school at 7am, which is why my class has only boys, since I teach in the morning when the girls are at regular school. As they are there voluntarily, the students are all really motivated to learn. Best of all, the English Teaching Volunteers (ETVs) like myself believe that learning should be fun, so we teach in a way that is completely different from an ordinary Indian school. There are a lot of fun activities, noise is permitted in the classroom, there are interesting worksheets to complete (as opposed to simply copying off the board which is the norm) and the teachers are highly motivated (since we are all volunteers, after all!). This all means that the classroom sees a lot of fun, as well as a lot of learning.

As part of the lesson on 'big and small' I taught the boys the song 'Thumbelina' and we made up some actions for it. To my surprise they absolutely adored singing this song every morning - we had to do it three times each morning before the class could start! The idea of 14-year-old Australian or British boys happily dancing and singing to nursery rhymes in class is impossible to imagine, but these boys love it. I've uploaded a short video below so you can see what I mean.

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Well I think that's enough for one blog. I will (hopefully)soon blog again to explain what I do with the rest of my day. In the meantime, enjoy!