12th August 2010

Well, it has been an interesting week!
I was asked by the school to run a teacher training session on behaviour management as this is an area many Nepali teachers find difficult. It is common practice to beat children here if they do wrong, both parents and teachers do this. However, the school stopped corporal punishment about 18 months ago and now they are finding it incredibly difficult to find other ways of maintaining order.
The children here are like any others all over the world and respond well to positive reinforcement. So my whole training was about helping the teachers to find ways of making the lessons more interesting and making sure the lessons are inclusive.
This is a lot harder than it sounds. Teaching here is about making sure the government curriculum is followed to the letter, and this means reading out of books and writing the answers to set questions.
But how to make things more interesting? What is wonderful is having some of the teachers trying out new methods, like group work and mixing the girls and boys together. Basic things like introducing the lesson and giving a learning objective for the lesson are missing so children that may have been absent have no idea what is happening. The teachers have now started to do this in some lessons and have begun to get the idea about different learning and teaching styles. The science teacher has even promised me he will bring in flowers so the children can see at first hand the anatomy of a plant!
English lessons have taken on a more intuitive feel by using more group work and discussion and the idea of project work is starting to filter through. So maybe Liz and I are making a difference! (Liz is a fabulous 18 year old American student who will make a great teacher one day)

Namaste!