Women’s Empowerment and the Joys of Teaching
September 29
On my first day of teaching I wore white pants and a pink shirt. When I entered my classroom I realized I had managed to perfectly match the women as all four of them were wearing pink dresses of different shades and two of them also had white on their dresses and white pants. The beauty of the Nepali women’s outfits never fails to impress me – each dress was decorated with intricate details, vibrant colors in many hues, and they all wore many bracelets and earrings. They were all older women, though it was hard to exactly guess their ages. Classes this week are extremely small and only held on two days because of the festival Dashain. Because of this, they decided to combine the beginner and intermediate classes and work on practicing vocabulary. We played a matching game, breaking up into pairs to combine the words with pictures of vegetables, fruits, and clothes as fast as they could. This didn’t go particularly well as it took one pair 8 minutes to match about 15 items and a few times they would be holding the item picture and searching for the correct word for a few minutes when it was right in front of them.
The next game we played was the whisper game (the same as a game called “telephone” that I loved to play with my friends in elementary school). It started by me or the other volunteer making a sentence (of about 3-4 words) and whispering it to the first lady in line. They would then pass it along, whispering it in each other's ears and repeating what they heard until it had passed through all four of them and we heard how it had ended up. They would giggle, repeat the sentences a few times, and then scootch over on the bench to the next lady in line. After four rounds ending in funny twisted sentences, we got through one game where the sentence came out virtually unchanged! I watched the concentration on each of their faces as they heard the sentence, mouthed it silently to themselves, and then repeated the words they had heard and recognized from before. Throughout the activity I really watched it click – they went from trying to copy sounds to searching their brains for the actual words that were connected to those sounds. It became repeating rather than mimicking, strengthening the essential tool of listening to something foreign and placing those noises to something you know. When we had finished the lesson the women looked proud of the work they had done and I was so grateful we had managed to practice a valuable skill while laughing, building teamwork, and having fun.
October 6th
Today, class was held in the nearby house of one of the students as the key to the classroom had been misplaced. Instead of our normal white board and desk chairs, we all sat in a circle on armchairs and carpets on the balcony. There was a beautiful view of the surrounding houses, hills, streets, and the sky. It was so peaceful and I loved the feeling of us all sitting around a little coffee table and talking. Ambika, the woman whose house it was, brought everyone tea, apples, cookies, and bananas. The location also happened to be a perfect setting for today's lesson and practice in adjectives, as the view gave us lots of things to practice describing. We played a wonderful game of “I Spy” where the women were able to practice vocabulary and combining adjectives to make specific descriptions. Two of the women, Saraswoti and Balkumari, were really good at the game and loved choosing very specific things and giggling as everyone struggled to guess what they had chosen.
For me, my favorite thing to see when I am teaching is the women supporting and teaching each other. This is something I saw a lot in this lesson and that act, combined with everyone drinking tea and sitting together in a circle, brought a special sense of community and connection to this class that I will always remember. Today I watched them help each other write a list of vocabulary in their notebooks, build sentences through filling in the blanks with adjectives and nouns, find things to guess in “I Spy”, and remind each other of words we had learned. This is special for two reasons. One, it shows that the one who is teaching truly understands the material and through teaching it to her peers she is strengthening her own understanding and confidence in the subject. And two, because although I know I will only be here for three weeks, I can see that even after I leave they have the skills to continue practicing on their own and helping each other learn. The support that comes with helping each other transcends the material, that act builds connection, strengthens community, and I believe is the true essence of the "women's empowerment” initiative of the program.
My favorite moment of the day was when we were finishing up by practicing writing sentences from the structures I had outlined earlier – “I am (adjective)”, “my (noun) is (adjective)”, and “I see a (adjective) (noun)”. The examples I had given included, “I am happy”, “I am tall”, “my shirt is blue”, “my hair is brown”, and “I see a blue house”. When they were reading the sentences they had written, Ambika, who is an early beginner in English, read out “I am beautiful”. Ambika is 75 years old and often quite shy – when she read out that sentence everyone smiled. In that moment I felt so much joy and was so incredibly proud of her – it showed me the spark that drives people to teach.
Sienna, it's great to hear you fall in love with teaching. Such a satisfying experience for everyone. Learning together like that magnifies the growth of all involved -- far beyond the individual's separate understanding. I wish all schools would give students the joy of learning with others instead of the often isolated days with little sharing. What an awesome sentence that Ambika came up with!