Teaching English

Back when our retreat group first visited the school, Santosh told us that the children were expecting us to teach them English. We were all quite surprised by this. Asking where they might have come to that conclusion, Santosh said that he had told them. :-) So English teaching it is.

I was relived when Jenny volunteered to take the oldest class. My sense was that it would be much more difficult to pull something over on the older kids.

I number of years back I became certified as and ESL tutor but I only tutored for a couple of months and didn't feel that I was very effective.

Breez teamed up with me and we were set to work with a mid range age group.

Because it made great sense to me I remembered from my training that working with visuals and specially action words would be easiest to learn.

We came up with a simple list of visuals that we would be able to utilize in the classroom, consisting of colors, furniture, body features. And we compiled our list of action words.

The class was all over our simple visuals. It felt as if we were presenting a 1st grade lesson to 8th graders. So we moved on quickly.

So it was up to our 'actions' list: walk, run, sit, stand, talk*, go, stop, jump, sing, dance, wave*. The (*) signified that I was concerned with those because the action may not be clearly discernible. We did try wave but only one time.

Breez and the children's teacher were fantastic models for our action words. The children would see and hear Breez "I am walking" and we would have them recite "He is walking". Than "She is walking", "They are walking" and it ram it home we had the whole class walking around and (as it turned out) Shouting "We are Walking! We are walking! We are walking!" The biggest hit was undoubtedly "We are Jumping!"

The children have a great deal of written English practice and have a groundswell of knowledge. They seem primed to start speaking and the excitement that they exuded as they were Standing, Sitting, singing, dancing, jumping, eating, drinking was amazing.

There is some video out there that I hope to be able to share with you in the near future.

I have still been nursing a cold and have decided to remain in Rishikesh. I am enjoying my yoga class and have been coming to terms with some of my resistance to that which is India. There are lessons for me everywhere I look. I have been meetin many fellow travelers and sharing some great meals.

More later.

Sorry no pictures this time. There are posted signs in this internet cafe reading "USB NOT ALLOWED", "SENDING & UPLOADING PICTURES NOT ALLOWED". I will take a picture and send it along in the future.

My very best,
Jeff