First weeks of teaching in our new school building

First fourteen days of teaching in the new school have just gone by. Teaching is demanding, but it proceeds better than expected. Together with a Tibetian teacher and Marketa we are sharing our daily portion of lessons. As to the popularity of subjects, I have to admit that pupils all around the world are pretty much the same – local kids love P.E., IT lessons and playing games. Fortunately neither mathematics or English are despised by them, although it is very difficult to explain various linguistic phenomena without knowledge of the local language. Tenzin Yega (our Tibetian teacher) makes a huge effort to compensate for this, but it’s too much work for one man. Therefore we’re really looking forward to arrival of two remaining Tibetian teachers at the beginning of November and to arrival of Pyru about whom we don´t have any news.

The school operations should reach their full capacity with the arrival of the Tibetian teachers. In addition to the basic education we will start with individual education of both talented pupils and laggers, and with the afternoon education of adults. We will teach them English and IT. For now we’ll have to do with „skeleton crew“, seeing that Marketa will probably leave us next week. It will be really difficult, because we have many children suffering from hyperactivity far exceeding European standards and accompanied with limitless amount of energy that drives the kids to do things European pupils wouldn’t even think of. Everything is fortunately compensated by enthusiasm and strong will to attend school and learn something new and except for little abuses like late arrivals or absence of some children, the “hunger for education“ is pretty intense.

I firmly believe that the work of tens of people, both on the construction of the school building here in India, and on the organisation arrangements in the Czech Republic, has been meaningful and that it will soon „bear fruit“. The school building, having been used for two weeks now, bears no sign of serious flaws; there are just minor problems like slight leakage etc., all of which is being promptly repaired. But it is true that the weather has been rather summerish so far, so the real test of the building’s durability and temperature management has yet to come. As of this moment there is 24 °C in the rooms and even 38 °C in the corridors. During the night the outside temperature drops to – 10°C, but even then it stays above 12°C in the rooms. Please keep your fingers crossed so that it stays that way.

Martin

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