Making the Best of Teaching Boys at Grace Model School

Wow! What an incredible week, it has been such a rollercoaster of emotions. I've learned so much, not only about myself, but the boys I have been teaching too and their cultural values. In my future I wish to be an English teacher, and I have found that this experience of teaching young boys spoken English is really preparing me for that profession. Although this is not at all what I was expecting to be doing on my trip, it still is a once in lifetime experience and the service is something I hope these students never forget. Everday this past week, for six days from 9:30am to 12:45pm, the girls with my program and I have traveled to Grace Model School which is a government funded school for children in the Hyderabad area apart of low-income families. The school provides such an amazing opprotunity for children who wish to get an education, and their parents who encourage them to also do so. With a strong force of female teachers, and even the principal, who is also a woman, they have created a wonderful atmosphere for young girls. I've learned through my training with VOICE4GIRLS (the NGO we work with) that girls in India do not always get the education they all desreve to have. Reasons including: their parents won't allow them, people believe only the men in the family should get an education to provide, school is deemed unsafe for girls, toilet access is a problem for girls who have their period, early marriage means no time for school, and many other reasons. According to VOICE, only 30% of girls graduate from the 10th grade. Their mission is to break this stigma, and to educate girls all across India to take charge of their futures through teaching spoken English, critical knowlege. and lifeskills. 

At Grace Model High School, my co-counselor Ruby and I teach boys ages 11-16 in a single classroom. Let me tell you, the boys are sweet and all but boy, are they rowdy! It definetly was a challenge trying to keep the attention of 20 young boys, esecially since a couple of them were the same age as me. Somehow, we managed and by the last day we were disapointed to leave. I truly hope my students gained knowledge from what VOICE4GIRLS had to offer and what Ruby and I could teach them. I learned a lot from this service in project. I've really learned to recognize the confiedence I have in myself more than ever before. Taking charge in the classroom and presenting myself as an authoritive figure has shown I am stronger than I thought I was. Dealing with these boys was a struggle for sure. Trying to get them to stop their side conversations repeatedly, even though they just continued to talk and ignored every word I said was a whole new level of frusteration. That behavior caused the class to be not as much fun because as an act of disipline, my co-counselor and I agreed that everytime the class was not making any effort to pay attention to the lesson, we would take away their privledge of fun games. We were supposed to do the icebreakers that were apart of the VOICE4GIRLS curriculum, but we felt that since we barely had enough time for the actvities because we had to stop every 5 minutes to quiet the class down, there would be no time for fun games and the learning activities were what felt most important. I really hope the boys learned from our actions to dicipline the class. I really felt bad for the select few who were extra engaged and participating frequently in class since Ruby and I were more focused on the students doing the complete opposite. Those kids deserved to play games and I really wish we would have had the time to give it to them. 

Now that teaching and service is over, its time for some fun! I'm anticipating a very eventful blog post for week 3. I'll be taking a 3 day adventure to Hampi by train and staying in a hotel with everyone. I'm very excited for this trip, I think it will be a very nice break from all the hard work from these past two weeks and I can't wait to make the best out of my ending days here in India.