Memories of Nepal
From May 2002 until April 2004, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. During that time, I lived in Kalaiya, a small city located in south central Nepal, 20 kilometers north of the Indian border. My primary assignment was to teach sixth and seventh grade science in the local Nepali language and to share effective teaching methods with the other teachers. Those two years in Nepal were the most happy and fulfilling of my life.
Now as we are going to begin teaching in Mississippi, I would like to share some of my experiences in Nepal and hopefully provide a new perspective towards our upcoming challenges in the Mississippi school system. I know the conditions in Mississippi (the Delta in particular) will be below the standards of what we expect from schools in the US and our students will face obstacles that we wouldn’t wish upon anyone. But when I think of my students in Nepal, I can’t imagine children anywhere in the world that have to deal what they dealt with every day in the class room. The following are some of my experiences with class room conditions and corporal punishment:
Classroom Conditions
Both my sixth and seventh grade classes were very large. My sixth grade class had 120 students while my seventh grade class had 90 students. The students were cramped into their benches and there was no room to move. On particularly bad days, some students had to sit outside the classroom and observe through the windows and door.
The actual classrooms were small, 20 feet by 20 feet. None of the classrooms had electricity. If we needed more light, we opened the shudders. The walls were concrete blocks and the roof was a metal sheet. With the temperature reaching as high as 43o C (110o F) during the summer, it was extremely hot in those small over crowded classrooms.
On the first day, I was overwhelmed by the size of the class and the intense heat of the classroom. I sat amongst the students and observed as Sampat Sir, my counterpart, taught the class. Within two minutes, I found myself drenched in my own sweat. As I listened intently to Sampat Sir’s lecture, trying to catch as much of the language as I could, I noticed the blackboard was so wet that Sampat Sir couldn’t write on it. At first, I thought someone had washed the board, but throughout the class it never dried. I finally realized the blackboard was soaked from the perspiration and humidity of the classroom.
Krishna Kumar Sir (this is my corporal punishment story)
Nepalese often use certain English words that they don’t fully understand or know how to use correctly. For example, my friend Krishna Kumar Sir liked Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys. He described their music as melodious and harmonious when all he really meant to say was that their music is good.
Krishna Kumar Sir also carried a cane with him everywhere he went. He suffered from polio as a child and the cane served as a walking aid, but it also served as a stick to beat children. His style of discipline left Mohammad Sagir Sir, the head sir of the school, very displeased.
One day Mohammad Sagir Sir and I were eating at his house as we did everyday after school. We usually had rice and vegetables with lentil soup. Sometimes his wife would make rice pudding, curried goat, or pakora as a special treat. We would sit on a mat on the floor in his bedroom, eating with our hands and immersing ourselves in conversation. On this particular day, he asked me to start teaching English, “Lee Sir, would you like to teach seventh class English? Krishna Kumar Sir’s methods are outdated and I am not satisfied.”
This was still near the beginning of my stay in Nepal, and I was very hesitant to take another class because lesson planning for my two science classes took all my time after school. I agreed to observe Krishna Kumar Sir’s class for one day but would not commit immediately.
The next day, I sat in the back corner of the room and observed Krishna Kumar Sir’s class. It was very chaotic. Students were playing, chit chatting, and throwing objects across the room. In the midst of the chaos, Krishna Kumar Sir was conducting a spelling bee. He went down the aisle and told the students to stand up with both hands out and palms up. He would tell them an English word, and if they spelled it wrong he whacked both of their hands with his cane. Occasionally, he would come to the back of the room and yell at the rowdy kids. At one point he came and swung his cane at Mahesh’s head. Mahesh, a student in the class, was quick enough to duck, laugh it off and get back to his seat.
At the end of class, Krishna Kumar Sir approached me and asked for a critique of his teaching. I told him he should stop beating the kids because it wasn’t working. With an erudite tone, he responded, “Yes Lee Sir, but the students, they are quite numerous and they can be rather disorderly, so we must beat them ruthlessly and sometimes mercilessly.”
With anyone else I think I would become a bit angered but I knew he didn’t really mean ruthlessly or mercilessly. I even had to hold in a laugh. Anyways, I began teaching seventh grade English the very next day.
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These are just some of my experiences in Nepal that I wanted to share and remember before I started teaching in Jackson. If you have any questions for me about my experience in Nepal, please feel free to ask. It always makes me feel good to talk about Nepal. Thank you and I wish everyone the best at their schools.
Now as we are going to begin teaching in Mississippi, I would like to share some of my experiences in Nepal and hopefully provide a new perspective towards our upcoming challenges in the Mississippi school system. I know the conditions in Mississippi (the Delta in particular) will be below the standards of what we expect from schools in the US and our students will face obstacles that we wouldn’t wish upon anyone. But when I think of my students in Nepal, I can’t imagine children anywhere in the world that have to deal what they dealt with every day in the class room. The following are some of my experiences with class room conditions and corporal punishment:
Classroom Conditions
Both my sixth and seventh grade classes were very large. My sixth grade class had 120 students while my seventh grade class had 90 students. The students were cramped into their benches and there was no room to move. On particularly bad days, some students had to sit outside the classroom and observe through the windows and door.
The actual classrooms were small, 20 feet by 20 feet. None of the classrooms had electricity. If we needed more light, we opened the shudders. The walls were concrete blocks and the roof was a metal sheet. With the temperature reaching as high as 43o C (110o F) during the summer, it was extremely hot in those small over crowded classrooms.
On the first day, I was overwhelmed by the size of the class and the intense heat of the classroom. I sat amongst the students and observed as Sampat Sir, my counterpart, taught the class. Within two minutes, I found myself drenched in my own sweat. As I listened intently to Sampat Sir’s lecture, trying to catch as much of the language as I could, I noticed the blackboard was so wet that Sampat Sir couldn’t write on it. At first, I thought someone had washed the board, but throughout the class it never dried. I finally realized the blackboard was soaked from the perspiration and humidity of the classroom.
Krishna Kumar Sir (this is my corporal punishment story)
Nepalese often use certain English words that they don’t fully understand or know how to use correctly. For example, my friend Krishna Kumar Sir liked Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys. He described their music as melodious and harmonious when all he really meant to say was that their music is good.
Krishna Kumar Sir also carried a cane with him everywhere he went. He suffered from polio as a child and the cane served as a walking aid, but it also served as a stick to beat children. His style of discipline left Mohammad Sagir Sir, the head sir of the school, very displeased.
One day Mohammad Sagir Sir and I were eating at his house as we did everyday after school. We usually had rice and vegetables with lentil soup. Sometimes his wife would make rice pudding, curried goat, or pakora as a special treat. We would sit on a mat on the floor in his bedroom, eating with our hands and immersing ourselves in conversation. On this particular day, he asked me to start teaching English, “Lee Sir, would you like to teach seventh class English? Krishna Kumar Sir’s methods are outdated and I am not satisfied.”
This was still near the beginning of my stay in Nepal, and I was very hesitant to take another class because lesson planning for my two science classes took all my time after school. I agreed to observe Krishna Kumar Sir’s class for one day but would not commit immediately.
The next day, I sat in the back corner of the room and observed Krishna Kumar Sir’s class. It was very chaotic. Students were playing, chit chatting, and throwing objects across the room. In the midst of the chaos, Krishna Kumar Sir was conducting a spelling bee. He went down the aisle and told the students to stand up with both hands out and palms up. He would tell them an English word, and if they spelled it wrong he whacked both of their hands with his cane. Occasionally, he would come to the back of the room and yell at the rowdy kids. At one point he came and swung his cane at Mahesh’s head. Mahesh, a student in the class, was quick enough to duck, laugh it off and get back to his seat.
At the end of class, Krishna Kumar Sir approached me and asked for a critique of his teaching. I told him he should stop beating the kids because it wasn’t working. With an erudite tone, he responded, “Yes Lee Sir, but the students, they are quite numerous and they can be rather disorderly, so we must beat them ruthlessly and sometimes mercilessly.”
With anyone else I think I would become a bit angered but I knew he didn’t really mean ruthlessly or mercilessly. I even had to hold in a laugh. Anyways, I began teaching seventh grade English the very next day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are just some of my experiences in Nepal that I wanted to share and remember before I started teaching in Jackson. If you have any questions for me about my experience in Nepal, please feel free to ask. It always makes me feel good to talk about Nepal. Thank you and I wish everyone the best at their schools.
posted by Lee Tran at 11:18 PM
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Thank you for sharing...
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