school fun

Trip to the School

Today was possible the coolest, most enjoyable day we had, solely because of our morning activity. Earlier in our term, we troubleshot a PV (Photovoltaic) system that wasn’t supplying any electricity to a school. Well, being UD engineers, we can solve anything…duh. And naturally, we fixed this which gave the schools power for lights and fans, somewhat important in the 40+ C (104+ F) daily weather. We returned to the site, this time to visit with the children who were in 9^th and 10^th grade. There were only about 15 in each level, and all came from extremely poor backgrounds. As in they formerly picked through the garbage looking for rags, string, plastic or anything they could try to use or sell for a few rupees (45 RS (rupees) = $1 USD). These were the poorest of the poor that had no education or expectations from leaving the lowest level of the caste system. All started as illiterate and had transformed into students speaking and wiring fluent Hindi, learning basic English and enjoying life as human and not an object.

We sat in a 9^th grade math class and found the class so insightful. We could understand the teacher teaching (thanks to our recently learned numbers and her writing them on the board) and much to our surprise, her style was very similar to how we have been taught in the US. She used examples problems, continuously getting more difficult and through questions & answers to the class to make sure everyone understands.

After class, we were invited into a small gathering hall where chairs were set up for us and the principal of the school, Fr. Albert; the children sat on the floor on mats. The children preformed several authentic Indian dances for us that they had been practicing for only a few days. They used so much energy and passion you couldn’t help but smile while watching them. I was able to video tape them, which I will post online once I get back to the US. They then sang songs to us in English about teddy bears touching the ground, which took about the third verse to understand what they were saying. This was followed by a question and answer session where the students asked us how we like India, what we do for fun In America, where is America, what the most famous place in the USA is, if poor people like them exist in America and how Tim’s beard got so long. One of the young students that excelled in his English class acted as a translator for us because most students could not understand English. Father asked us to sing a song for the students, and as much fun as we have at UD singing away on Karaoke Wednesday nights at Milano’s, we were not ready for this.

After some quick thinking, we decided to teach them a childhood favorite, Old McDonald. Luckily they had never heard of this so it worked out perfectly. Mary Ellen wrote the lyrics on the board as Tim explained old McDonald was farmer, who had animals on his farm, and these animals made noises, have fun with that, translator! The students were starting to understand the idea, so we began the lyrics using a cow as the first animal. We went line by line reciting it, then having the children recite it back. They loved the Moo Moo parts and the Eeei Eeei Ooh parts! We also did a duck and a dog, to their choosing and were able to sing the song all the way through. They had so much fun with this that words don’t describe the emotion we felt vibing from the children and teachers. Several of them got up and thank us for our time and sharing what we did with them. We took a few pictures and were on our way. As we were leaving, you could see each face through the gate, smiling, having the best day of their lives. We too were smiling, giddy with how much fun we just had.