MONO KAMANA A PUBLIC SCHOOL

Before our final stop we met the students of Artevelde in Chakpur: Sanderijn, Febe and Wouter. The next day we went with them to their school and we had a blast with the children. Their dancing skills were amazing!

Check it out! https://youtu.be/2EsrN-oFeRw

We arrived at our last destination: Sindhuli, Janakpur

It’s a small fishing village located next to two big rivers. Here we will spend the last weeks of our journey. We are staying with the sister (Purnimaya) of the principal and her husband who is the local pastor. Elena and I had the honour to sleep in a lovely accommodation (see video).

Lots of babies means lots of playtime! Robien and Anushka were our cuties!

:’D All jokes a side, it was a warm family and they had the best intention for us. Each day we got rice, dal(lentil soup) and some freshly caught fish.

CLICK ON THE VIDEO! https://youtu.be/4-LJX6c4qN0 

Mono Kamana a Public School.

We met the main school team that consist out of 5 teachers: Amar, Sita ram, Sobahaa, Monicha and Robina. The school had interns for their teacher training too. It’s a primary school with 5 classes.

The teachers looked motivated but sometimes we asked our self is it just because we are here or are they genuinely motivated. We had mixed feelings. 

One of the teachers was often sick and brought her child to school. Another thing were the unplanned holidays. We had the feeling that the teachers planned the holidays when they wanted.

The government laid rules that public schools must be open for at least 220 days. 190 Days are filled with the normal curriculum and 30 days are filled in with activities that the teachers choose. When we asked around we heard that the school was only open for 90 days. We feel that there is no control because there is hardly any supervision. Also the teachers are protected by politicians so it’s very hard to fire them.

WORKSHOPS & TEACHING

After we observed we were asked to put together some workshops for the teachers about how to have interaction with the students and how to implement new methods to increase the learning capacities. The team was very enthusiastic and put all our suggestions and theirs into practice the next weeks.

Amar (teacher English) was teaching new vocabulary: jump, clap, laugh, drink, drive and dance. So we thought it would be nice to have 4 cards: 1 card with the word in English, 1 card with the word in Nepali, 1 drawing of the word and 1 card with the word in a sentence.

Each child would then get a card and start to look for students who have cards that match his or hers. You could also do another game with the same cards for example: memory.

Elena and I got mainly class 1 to teach in. In the next video we had English class so we thought the teacher and the children a new song: “Where is dumpy”. 

(Video)