Its been over a month since i last penned down something about what has been happening here at Teach for India. For reasons which have been sometimes silly(ranging from – “am just not in the mood” to “don’t yet have a proper internet connection”) at other times quite valid(ranging from – “too much school work” to “am just not in the mood”) ,have postponed me from typing out anything at all.
But now that i decided that enough was enough, here it is, my second edition to the TFI diaries 🙂
From settling in with a bunch of 31 kids (read 7 year old monsters) to writing out 300 sight words from the dolch list of words on strips of fluorescent paper, sticking them with glue one after another to make an “English word wall” late into the night, to coming out of the classroom and finding my purple converse were missing( a kid hid them in the dustbin, he thought it would be funny :p), to finding that kids running around during break time pushing each other into doors can result in bleeding foreheads; i have pretty much seen it all 😀
Its been a crazy 40 days to say the least! It feels like such a herculean task, bridging the gaps of educational inequity.
My signature says “One day all children will attain an excellent education.” Also Teach for India’s vision.
But like someone rightly said, we are not sure what exactly that means, how does it look on paper, how does one measure it. And am i as an individual making any progress towards that??? Questions i ask myself each morning!
A more appropriate vision for me as an individual would be – “Today my 31 kids will attain an excellent teacher.”
Now this is more measurable and the onus now falls totally on me 🙂
Trust me there are days when working late into the night on charts, trackers, lesson plans, teaching aids, assessment grading etc leaves me with hardly anytime to catch a few winks before i have to wake up early next morning to teach, instruct and most of all inspire 31 unruly 2nd graders for 9 continuous hours until the preparation cycle for the next day starts all over again… there are days when i just don’t want to wake up… there are days when i feel what have i landed myself into… there are days when i feel like i cant make any impact and its all going to be a sheer waste of two years….
And then a day comes like yesterday when “Kajal” finally after 8 attempts phonetically breaks down the word “Big” —-“Bah” ” Ihh” “Gah”—— blends them all together to say …. “BIG”!
And then a day comes like today when “Swati” who couldn’t write a proper word in english wrote a sentence for me, complete with capital beginning, spacing and full stop ending 🙂
It goes something like this ——— ”I like Archana didi. The Archana didi is my superstar didi.”
These are the little moments i wait for and any amount of crazy work during this fellowship feels like worth it!
Leaving you attachments of both Kajal and Swati 🙂 My little superstars 🙂
Until next time, counting the progress little by little, each day, taking one day a time 🙂
Life Work Doodles 
Thiis was a lovely blog post
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