Greetings from Kadod

Hello readers-Addaia here, also known as Sofia to the many residents of Kadod. After growing up in the US with a strange name containing far too many vowels, It's nothing new for people to have trouble with my name, so a "pet name" was only fitting. Luckily for me, Sofia is also an Indian name, which has avoids the past twenty years of difficult name exchanges. Now, the challenge will be the rest of the conversation and learning all of my students Indian names. As a Nanubhai fellow, my own passion and commitment stems from a solid belief in the empowering and redistributive impact education can have on communities. Almost a month into my program, I'm adapting to the rhythms of life in a small village in rural india. That's not to say that each day doesn't leave me bewildered, amazed or both.

The educational problems in India are heightened by severe gender and social class disparities, along with high drop-out rates, an emphasis on memorization in order to pass state exams over real learning, and inadequate resources. Our formal teaching duties do not permit us the flexibility to even attempt to break any of these educational barriers, but spoken English gives children this unique opportunity that the regular school day does not. It gives any student in standard 9 the free opportunity to have individual attention with a curriculum geared towards learning as opposed to memorization. Not only is it my favorite part of the day, but reaffirms my purpose as a teacher.

In an attempt to acquire more students in spoken English, since our numbers had been dwindling before Diwali vacation, we decided that the best way to attract more students would be spoken English games and icebreakers. Playing educational games not only captivated the children's attention, but coaxed them into speaking unconsciously. It also worked as intended in attracting other student's curiosity seeing what a blast spoken English could be. Luckily, it worked. Not only has our class attendance tripled, I had the unique opportunity to see our students unique personalities expressed in English. I was extremely impressed by their ability to make jokes and general commentary on the activities.