Teaching In India again

Tibetan tea

It has been quite some time since I last posted on this blog. Since last time, I have been back three times to McLeod Ganj in India teaching English, working with a non-government organisation for two semesters and now for another institution. McLeod Ganj, for anyone who doesn’t know, is located the foothills of the Himalayas and is the home of the Dalai Lama. My students are mostly adults who, like the Dalai Lama, are living in exile from Tibet. Sometimes there are also Bhutanese students and others who are staying here and are using the opportunity to improve their English.

In February this year, I arrived back in India and, yet again, made my way to McLeod Ganj. This time the class was a small group of monks and nuns who were been selected to study science in the USA, and were undertaking a preparatory course. Another Australian ESL teacher has been here many times and this is a task she usually undertakes every two years, but this time she asked me to come here for the final part of the course and this was approved by the Director. I am staying in the English teacher’s accommodation and it is comfortable and clean, with a good kitchen. It’s peaceful, close to the classroom and has great views of the snow capped Dauladar Range. There is an improvement on last year healthwise too. In 2016, a bout of  Typhoid very soon after arriving left me in a debilitated state and I spend the next few months teaching in a feeling exhausted and weak while recovering. And yes, I was vaccinated, just unlucky.

For months before arriving this year, I collected materials, downloading films and many other items for use here. My focus was  on academic English and we worked out way through some of the topics typically studied in Australia in university preparation courses, such as plagiarism and referencing, academic vocabulary and writing, etc. The students particularly enjoyed learning pragmatics and picking up the nuances of the language. We even had a guest speaker from the US who worked with them to reproduce some everyday conversations at university and how to respond. I have since found an interesting website for teachers on American pragmatics.

Another useful website is the Cult of Pedagogy which belongs to a teacher from the US called Jennifer Gonzales. Most of her articles are free, but I paid a small amount for her package “Avoiding Plagiarism” and it was great value, providing a much more accessible introduction to the topic for students that helped us to progress to the usual university level materials.

Chai time with some of the lovely science students

The library picnic

The library picnic

Now, for the last few weeks, I am teaching an afternoon class that was intended to be for fairly advanced learners, but instead has attracted a fairly wide range, mostly staff working in the Gangchen Kyishong precinct. Each day I teach about the history of the English language along with some pronunciation and grammar.

The comfortable life here is ending soon and at the end of the month I am travelling to Ladakh, India to work with a former student, a Geshe monk, who is part of a group that has registered a new charitable organisation. Classes will be held over the summer months only. The skills I learnt in 2014 working as a volunteer coordinator at LHA Charity alongside a helpful Tibetan friend, Rabsel, have helped me with recruiting teachers for computer skills and English. I am pleased to have four or five great teachers from the UK, Australia and Canada coming to Leh, Ladakh to help and am hoping to find a few more.

Here is our recruitment poster.

Ladakh is a black hole in terms of internet, so the time here is precious in terms of communications. My next post will have to wait until Is Ladakh, but there should be plenty of stories to tell.

Two more pictures. When Australia played India in Dharamsala, I just had to see it. India won which was a bit disappointing, but it was a great experience.

My return to India

Since going home to Australia just before Christmas last year, I have recommenced part-time study and been teaching Academic English to international students in two universities in Canberra. My fairly lacklustre attempt at study involved designing a research proposal which …

More reflections on teaching English

I have been back in Canberra for three months now and am still reflecting on my amazing year. Being in Thailand for the last military coup made me abruptly aware of the power structures that exist there and the role of education in their maintenance. I still reel when I remember the regular use of the cane in the poor, rural high school I worked in.  Even the kindest teachers felt they needed to cane boys to carry out their jobs and one of the more up-front cane users entered my classroom several times to whack students, usually while my back was turned to the board. My preferred method was to work hard to engage reluctant class members. Some of my best memories are those times when those students succeeded, even in the smallest ways, and smiled with pleasure when they received good feedback. I realise now how lucky we are in Australia that our education system values questioning over subservience, that we can discuss politics openly and safely, and can learn that there are many ways we can view subjects, especially history.

But it is the role of English in keeping social structures intact that troubles me the most. The contrast between middle class, English speaking students and the rest of the population is stark. They, of course, usually get the best education that private wealth can buy, secure the best jobs, make more money and have a better chance of becoming powerful members of society.   The same is also evident in India. In Dharamsala, I was lucky enough to attend a premier of the film Vara: a Blessing.  From the start of the film, there was a strange dissonance between the setting and the language spoken by  the characters, which was English. The audience members were mostly young Indians and the use of English was the subject of the first question asked of the great writer/director Khyentse Norbu following the screening. He openly expressed his own dismay and advised that the choice of English belonged to the producers. I also noticed upper class Indian families who were visiting Dharamsala using English with their young children and, meanwhile, probably ensuring that their offspring lose their parents’ first language. This was a phenomenon I also remember from Indonesia, particularly Jakarta.

So what is the role of an English teacher in countries where the use of English is controversial? I can tell myself that my role is to help the disempowered and then make sure that these are my students. Ironically, I strongly believe that part of the role of English teachers in these situations is also to help students to appreciate the immense value of their mother tongue and do all we can to encourage them to become literate in that as a priority. I found this story, How English Ruined Indian Literature, in the New York Times particularly interesting and hope you do too.

Counting down

There are only 14 days to go before I fly from Dharamsala to Delhi to Sydney. I have settled into a routine here – going to work at Lha in the mornings where I help write responses to emails from volunteers from all over the world, taking a lunch break and then heading for Tibet World to teach students for two hours.

As I promised myself, I have been trying to help the students with their writing and they have responded well.  They are keen to hear what I think about their latest pieces of writing and are getting used to incorporating feedback into new drafts.  I gave a presentation about writing to the volunteer teachers at Tibet World.  The volunteers teach a range of languages apart from English so I tried to accommodate this and to make it relevant for all proficiency levels. There was a good discussion at the end, so hopefully that was a good sign.

The members of the English class seem much more relaxed now and even the most reserved students are finally smiling and contributing in class.  This has resulted in a much better atmosphere where they are participating and helping each other much more.  I am looking forward to our last two weeks and hope we get a few more good lessons in.

The picture of the class was taken while they were absorbed in writing.  We had studied a model and they were silently writing their own narratives.  They are all deep thinkers, and despite the limitations of their English, they all produce work that reflects their schemas.

In addition to covering the grammar items listed in the program, we have been working on areas they still find confusing, like question word orders.  I think next week is a good chance to continue to help with common errors, so we will try using Learning From Common Mistakes (Cambridge) .

So I am turning my mind to going home and tying up all the loose ends here before leaving. The University of Canberra has accepted my application to continue my studies and am looking forward to university life next semester. My TESOL studies have played a crucial role in the quality of my teaching and I definitely want to keep improving.

I am also looking forward to meeting up with other TESOL graduates who have started teaching so we can share our experiences. Who knows, maybe I can encourage other students to spend some time volunteering in Asia like I have.  There is so much waiting out there and I can guarantee that it’s a richly rewarding experience.

Teaching Tibetans

In the fascinating town of McLeod Ganj, India, my fifth week will soon be over. The Dalai Lama has been teaching this week so English classes were cancelled for three days.  Unfortunately, as soon as I started teaching I managed to catch a cold and coughed my way through most classes, so the break has been most welcome. Combining three hours a day coordinating volunteers with two hours teaching has been fairly demanding but I am better now and life is settling down again.

Tibetan monks – Sunday is laundry day at the waterfall.

I am slowly getting to know my students. They are nearly all Tibetans although for the last three weeks we were joined by a lovely young Japanese woman who was visiting the area. About half the class are monks from different parts of India and even from Bhutan.  They have come here to study and I think it must be hard for them living in freezing guesthouses with few belongings and very little money.

They are here because they have a strong will to learn and the class is delightful to teach. It is great to have an advanced class and the challenge of guiding them though some of the complexities of English is enjoyable. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are more comfortable when I use more traditional approaches to grammar teaching, but despite that, they they are experiencing a variety of approaches. I still think back to the expression “an eclectic range of approaches” from lectures at the University of Canberra and that’s the way I have been teaching all year.

Over the next few weeks, I want to see them writing more. This skill seems to be a bit neglected by some teachers here. Maybe it is regarded as too hard or unimportant, but I disagree.  English is widely used here and being unable to write in English has the potential at times to leave many Tibetan refugees in a relatively powerless position. It is also the language mostly used in countries that they (remember that we are talking about refugees) often want to emigrate to, such as the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA.

On a side note, the issue of official and national languages of India is a volatile political minefield, but for now, English and Hindi are the (main) official languages of India.  Even though the Constitution states that English is to be phased out in favour of Hindi, Hindi is not universally popular, while English is widely used and sometimes is referred to as the national language. 

McLeod Ganj is a good place to live for a while.  Sometimes it is heart rending to think about the difficult position of the refugees here, always waiting and hoping for world support and a chance to return to their country.  Their spirit is amazing though and their Buddhist traditions help keep them strong.  This is a place no visitor could forget.

Talking with students in Laos

Luang Prabang in Laos is a beautiful world heritage town and I went there for eight days before journeying to India where I am now, but that’s another story.  In Luang Prabang, I was pleased to meet enthusiastic English students at Big Brother Mouse , an organisation that publishes and distributes books to promote reading in villages. Big Brother Mouse also runs free drop-in English speaking sessions and that’s where I ended up on most days. The sessions are attended by high school and university students, as well as monks and working people.

What they have in common is bravery and motivation, and it was marvellous to practice English with them.  They actually wrote down word meanings and asked questions.  These  sessions were a contrast to my last experience in the high school in rural Thailand where no-one ever asked a question and it was rare to find a student who connected with English outside their regular lessons.  The people I talked with in Laos ranged from fluent university English Major students to a high school girl, Lee, who came along for the first time and was painfully shy, but she was there!

The benefits of practicing with foreigners were plain to see, and their knowledge of the world was pretty impressive at times too.

The experience reinforced my reflections in Thailand that teaching English isn’t a finite process involving stuffing a set of knowledge into students’ heads, although I encountered some people there who believed that this is the case. It is more likely a long term process reliant on autonomous learning that can be helped by good teachers and suitable materials.

The picture is from the Big Brother Mouse website.  

A teacher’s thoughts

Although a lot has been happening here, just lately I haven’t been posting to this blog. I have, however, been working hard at school, all the while reading and reflecting on the incredible experiences I am having as a teacher in Thailand. This article from the Guardian, directed primarily at teachers returning from holidays, appeals to me because of the author’s humility and dedication.

High school students are not always easy to teach, even in Thailand (despite its reputation for respectful subservience).  While the behaviour of the senior students is usually no less than angelic, unfortunately at other times a couple of my classes have resembled a minor battlefield.  The article helps to keep it all in perspective.

Secret Teacher: we all have our dark days, but don’t forget you’re making a difference | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional.

Changing lanes – two very different English camps

Currently lessons at Thungmaprao High School have been suspended while the students play sports and undertake other activities for a couple of weeks. So this week I taught at two contrasting three day English camps. Both were for government school students, but the first was at a five star resort and the other was in a primary school located in a very small Muslim village.

The camp at the resort was for the most proficient English students from a large high school in Takuapa. The other camp was the first one ever at the little primary school and you can see from the tears in the farewell picture (top left) that it was something very special for the children. The younger children were fascinated and were often found watching at the door and, at the end, some of the mothers were there too.

Both camps were wonderful experiences for me and I have picked up a few new tricks from some of the other teachers.  The pictures show that the students enjoyed themselves too.

I have just found out that I am required at Thungmaprau on Monday morning to attend an event and give a speech.  As long as no-one puts a microphone in front of me and asks me to sing “If you’re happy and you know it” again, I should be fine. Anything but that, please!

And I am back to regular classes on Wednesday.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.