Waste Not, Want Not

Finding these chubby little stubs around the school building made me chuckle, and so I started a collection. The children are so careful not to lose or waste their pencils that it actually took me several weeks to come up with this amount of loot. And they weren't lying about in plain sight, but hidden in nooks and behind doors. They use that lead down to the bitter end.

When I first arrived in India, I made the rookie mistake of disbursing pencils to anyone for the asking. But then I found that those same children would return and ask for another, and another, every day (or every hour!). I finally smartened up and started trading the children's "stars" (reward points) for every pencil given out. I soon found that the kids were not so eager for new pencils after all. Some students will ask for one and then declare that they were "just kidding" when I tell them that it will be costing three stars, thank you very much.

Thank you to my friends Anita and Talmadge who initiated this brilliant star system last year to teach responsibility and accountability. I think it's working!

Wordless Wednesday

Where in the world is Tamil Nadu?

As some of you are wondering, where in the world is Carmen Sandi Tamil Nadu?

It's the southernmost state in India. The location nearest us on this map is Kanchipuram (see in the northeast). India is divided into states as is the United States, but an important difference is that this subcontinent is polyglot: Indians speak a large variety of languages.

Imagine that they spoke German in Georgia, French in Florida, and Albanian in Alabama. That's a bit what it's like here. If we cross over the northern border of Tamil Nadu into Andhra Pradesh, say, we hear Telugu. Just to the west in Karnataka, it's a language called Kannada. To our southwest in Kerala, they speak Mayalam.

Hindi is another Indian language, but it's more widely spoken as the official language in eleven states in the north (including Delhi).

As you may expect, we speak Tamil in Tamil Nadu. Unfortunately the "we" is not exactly inclusive, although I try (a little) in fits and starts. Currently I'm on a months-long hiatus, during which I haven't cracked the book. It's disappointing to not be able to communicate better after spending so much time in the country.

But Rising Star is officially an "English medium school" and the children and staff need above all to hear it spoken properly. So it's really a duty not to practice terribly broken Tamil on everyone. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that Tamil boasts no fewer than 247 letters and comes in many variants. There are several dialects, a classical written form, a modern written form, and a modern spoken form.

If I ask three children how to say a word as simple as "house," I'll hear three different answers. Or sometimes there are so many ways to say a word (this happened with "tired") that the person I'm asking will declare that it is untranslatable.

But sitting in on occasional sessions of first-grade Tamil class has done wonders, and I can decipher (=pronounce, not comprehend!) some of its beautifully coiled floral shapes. My favorite thing about reading Tamil is that, although it is usually read left to right, you sometimes read a few letters right to left within the word. Sounds like a code!

Wordless Wednesday

Moot leprosy colony

Thottanaval Village

Volunteer Audrey assembled this little video of Thottanaval village. These scenes are from just beyond the front gate of Rising Star. Oddly enough, this is what now feels like home!

http://vimeo.com/21687075 

Wordless Wednesday

Almost wordless: teacher Uvaraj prepares fifth-graders for Cats performance (Arun in yellow, Mohan in red)

Here's to you, volunteers!

To begin with, I can't resist another one of CJ's shots of my poster child. I guess the ones I love the most are also the ones who happen to provide me with the most grief. Surprise! It makes our slow, halting, backsliding, and incremental progress all the more valuable.

Thank you to Audrey, who's been with us from January through April. Her main focus was homeschooling the directors' children each morning. That was her only defined task, and she could easily have taken the day off after that. But she also proved to be an invaluable tutor, mentor, and life coach at school in the afternoons.

After school ended in early May, and the children had dispersed to their own villages, Audrey made the rounds and visited some of our kids. Here she is with Kanmani in his leprosy colony:

 

Audrey perfectly expressed what I wasn't quite able to articulate about why I'm staying for another year and why I chose Kanmani's face to represent my decision. 

Audrey writes:

"My goal was, however, to find Kanmani, one of my favorite little trouble makers from Rising Star. I asked people near and far. "Kanmani," I'd say, really trying to enunciate. "Yanmani. Girl," they questioned. "Nooooo. Little Boy. KKKKKKKanmani," I'd say over and over. Finally a look of sudden realization lit up a young boys face as he motioned for me to follow him. We ran through alleys, and a gate to two rows of bright blue buildings. There he was hanging up some laundry. I yelled his name and saw him smile. He gave me a big hug and told me to follow him so I could see his baby sister. He showed me his two room living arrangement, his mother, and baby sister. Kanmani's father committed suicide. His mother blamed it on him. Now there is a man that lives with them, who is also his baby sister's father. This is actually illegal in India from what Daphe told me. Since Kanmani has endured the unthinkable for a child, he tends to act out while at school. He shows this by stealing the children's pens, erasers, and snacks. He is, however, very smart and a very sweet boy. I always have a special place in my heart for the troublemakers. It's probably because I have two brothers in my family that are quite the troublemakers themselves."

Audrey's main protege was our dear Basha. Every day at precisely 2:15 pm they would meet for private math class in an empty room. Basha's a sweet and bright boy, but he has trouble focusing when he's in the regular classroom with others. What Audrey and Basha don't know is that I frequently had to fight back the tears as I walked past the room and saw how kindly and patiently she was explaining matters to him.

Thank you to CJ, who also lived at Rising Star from January through April. CJ taught a special reading class for struggling fourth-graders, tutored math and endless reading, corrected a bottomless pit of students' (often undecipherable) journal entries, took a plethora of children's pictures to send to their sponsors, served as our tech guru, and was my Frisbee buddy.

 

Thank you to Lucy, who visited us on the last leg of her high-school-to-college-gap-year trip, fresh from Australia. Or was it Hong Kong? Lucy arrived on the scene just as my head was threatening to fall off. She was my administrative assistant, souffleuse (reminding me of everything I'd asked her to remind me of), reading and math tutor, list taker, and substitute teacher, all at a moment's notice and always with ebullient enthusiasm.

Thank you to Chris, of whom there are pictures in previous blog entries but of whom, alas, I don't have any tutoring snapshots. Chris dramatically improved our upper-level English classes by either teaching them herself or by instructing the teacher. She taught an illiterate housemother the rudiments of reading and writing, for which she will always be remembered. 

She also helped Amirthavasan and M. Vijay daily with their reading. Following one such session, little M. Vijay ran to me bursting with pride. Chris had taught him to read an entire book, "Bears on Wheels." Luckily I had my camera handy (a rare event!). 

Thank you to Todd, who was at Rising Star for several months last fall. The boys flocked to him as to the Pied Piper, and he always had one or several of them hanging from his shoulders. Todd was instrumental in redesigning our computer lab, served as a teacher to struggling learners, tutored, corrected, and was helpful above and beyond the call of duty.

 

Thank you to Cameron, who was here last fall along with Todd. Cameron read, read, and read some more, which takes enormous patience when it's always the same beginning readers and weeks and months sometimes evince little discernible progress. His other feat included teaching a resource class composed of unruly and uncooperative students, all of whom went on strike at least once.

Finally, I like this little video about Rising Star volunteers. I met some of these people in India last summer. These guys, unlike the ones featured above, are short-termers who stay with us for just two or three weeks. We look forward to them breezing in to our campus from June through August.