1-6-16
Hi everyone! Today has been an incredibly long and productive day. So long that shhh I’m doing this before my tripnotes in case I don’t get to finishing all of them before falling asleep. My tea/sugar bomb arrived early this morning (again by a man knocking on my door), which gave me time to do a bit of exercise and stretching on the porch. It was incredibly relaxing and serene. The weather was no less than perfect, the view was incredible, and I was fully rested and sugared up. What else could you ask for in a morning?
After breakfast, we headed to the workshop to talk more with Naresh and walk him through our lesson plan. He is going to teach our lesson to students shortly. I did my best to describe each step of the lesson to him, as well as receive feedback, and get to an understanding (all through Subhash’s tireless and fantastic translation). We then proceeded to watch him teach our lesson. It was so cool to have the opportunity to watch our lesson be taught here and the student’s reactions. We certainly have found a lot of things that need improvement or rethought, but we also have proof that this concept is exciting to the students, good for the teachers, and an improvement on what currently exists.
The big adventure came after lunch when we went into the nearby city of Kuppam. We went directly into a school and watched both an Agastya instructor give a lesson on optics and a government school teacher give a lesson about electricity (they made a potato light!). This helped to compare not only our lesson to others in Agastya, but also to how government school teachers generally teach. The students enjoyed getting to ask us questions and we even took a group picture.
To experience a bit of the culture, we walked into Kuppam. The whole experience was chaotic. The streets were filled with vehicles buzzing by of all shapes and sizes, lined with people selling an arrangement of produce or other goods and annoyed by monkeys (yes monkeys) jumping around and causing terror. The experience was both horrifying, exciting and thrilling. I was shaking for a good hour afterwards. I did find some really nice earrings to add to my collection (of course, I needed one for this country!).
The drive to Kuppam is also really nice. Well, nice is a strong word as the streets are super bumpy, we are in a car with no seatbelts, and are weaving around potholes, people and cows. The buildings here are painted in a whole arrangement of bright colors, which is really exciting and cool to see. Also, we saw lots of rice fields.
This evening, we went back to the night school and used our Brightboxes with the kids there. It was incredibly fun, because there was no pressure of a class, just the kids enjoying the tool we created. They had a great time working with it and I loved interacting with them. They learned a lot in the lesson and you could see their face light up as they refracted and reflected the lights. We even took some time to teach them ring around the rosey, which they loved and was truly fun. My face was so lit up after the time spent there, even with some serious allergy reactions. The kids were incredibly fun and I felt both they and us got a lot out of the experience.
After dinner and a hot shower, I’m going to try to write some of those tripnotes before bed. Hope everyone is good at home!
Hi everyone! Today has been an incredibly long and productive day. So long that shhh I’m doing this before my tripnotes in case I don’t get to finishing all of them before falling asleep. My tea/sugar bomb arrived early this morning (again by a man knocking on my door), which gave me time to do a bit of exercise and stretching on the porch. It was incredibly relaxing and serene. The weather was no less than perfect, the view was incredible, and I was fully rested and sugared up. What else could you ask for in a morning?
After breakfast, we headed to the workshop to talk more with Naresh and walk him through our lesson plan. He is going to teach our lesson to students shortly. I did my best to describe each step of the lesson to him, as well as receive feedback, and get to an understanding (all through Subhash’s tireless and fantastic translation). We then proceeded to watch him teach our lesson. It was so cool to have the opportunity to watch our lesson be taught here and the student’s reactions. We certainly have found a lot of things that need improvement or rethought, but we also have proof that this concept is exciting to the students, good for the teachers, and an improvement on what currently exists.
The big adventure came after lunch when we went into the nearby city of Kuppam. We went directly into a school and watched both an Agastya instructor give a lesson on optics and a government school teacher give a lesson about electricity (they made a potato light!). This helped to compare not only our lesson to others in Agastya, but also to how government school teachers generally teach. The students enjoyed getting to ask us questions and we even took a group picture.
To experience a bit of the culture, we walked into Kuppam. The whole experience was chaotic. The streets were filled with vehicles buzzing by of all shapes and sizes, lined with people selling an arrangement of produce or other goods and annoyed by monkeys (yes monkeys) jumping around and causing terror. The experience was both horrifying, exciting and thrilling. I was shaking for a good hour afterwards. I did find some really nice earrings to add to my collection (of course, I needed one for this country!).
The drive to Kuppam is also really nice. Well, nice is a strong word as the streets are super bumpy, we are in a car with no seatbelts, and are weaving around potholes, people and cows. The buildings here are painted in a whole arrangement of bright colors, which is really exciting and cool to see. Also, we saw lots of rice fields.
This evening, we went back to the night school and used our Brightboxes with the kids there. It was incredibly fun, because there was no pressure of a class, just the kids enjoying the tool we created. They had a great time working with it and I loved interacting with them. They learned a lot in the lesson and you could see their face light up as they refracted and reflected the lights. We even took some time to teach them ring around the rosey, which they loved and was truly fun. My face was so lit up after the time spent there, even with some serious allergy reactions. The kids were incredibly fun and I felt both they and us got a lot out of the experience.
After dinner and a hot shower, I’m going to try to write some of those tripnotes before bed. Hope everyone is good at home!