At Last, An Update!

Dear readers and supporters of Nanubhai,

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I know Pamela and I have been the invisible members of the Nanubhai blogging world lately. This is because, after returning from Diwali, we were given a brand-new set of responsibilities by the English medium principal, and our lives have revolved around getting adjusted to our new schedule and finding our groove again. I don’t know if I’m exactly ‘grooving’ yet, but at least I have an extra day to the weekend this week, so I can sit down and write to you. (Pamela, on the other hand, is off on “Adventure Camp” with a throng of our students, swimming and having wilderness survival activities… etc.)

To reduce the last month and a half to a brief paragraph:

Our responsibilities underwent an overhaul when the English medium principal lost a couple of senior teachers to inter-continental moves and pregnancies. Without anywhere else to turn, she quickly assigned us the responsibilities that these teachers had dropped—specifically, we are now “Class Teachers” in the 5th Standard, which means we’re responsible for the progress of our classes, administering discipline, and being responsible for any extra activities that our classes may participate in. This also means that I now teach 4th and 5th standard English and English grammar, 5th standard Social Studies, and 8th standard GK (General Knowledge). Pamela teaches Maths, Social Studies, and 4th standard GK. Because of the drastically increased preparation time that goes along with these responsibilities and the extra teaching load during the day, we do not teach in the Gujarati medium anymore. We also work on our own in the classroom, because a lack of available teachers has prevented us from having co-teachers. Thus, all subsequent updates will be about our work solely in the English medium.

My class, 5-A, isn’t exactly huge (just 35 students) but it is disproportionate. Disproportionately full of little boys, that is. Out of 35, 28 are boys and 7 are girls. If only it were the other way around! My 7 girls are almost always wonderful, attentive, and well-behaved, while the boys mercilessly beat each other with any implements they can find (most often body parts, but sometimes pencils, rulers, compasses, water bottles, and so on). I assume this must partly be the influence of some of their teachers (I’ve witnessed one lady who teaches them after me walk around with a ruler in hand, whacking anyone who seems to need it), but this doesn’t make for a very smooth running class.

I’ve tried to implement some punishments for too much “beating” (as they call it) in the class, but these new tactics seem like a game opportunity to them, since they’re novel and, compared to getting hit with a ruler, fairly lenient. I tried to have any student I found beating each other write a phrase twenty times in their notebooks. The phrase was, “Violence always leads to more violence. I will not beat others because I do not want to be beaten.” It worked for a couple of days, but quickly became a fun way to rat out your friends and make fun of them for having to write it in their notebooks. Rather than discouraging the violence, it just resulted in gleeful cries of “Violence! Twenty times! Twenty times!” throughout the room. I’m still in the process of working out something more effective.

Anyway, to move on to a more specific update, I’m going to tackle the latest and greatest festival to roll through Surat: Christmas.