Kolu Festivities

We had some nice cultural experiences this week. I visited a colleague's home on Thursday evening and on Saturday we all went on a tour through the crazy crowds of Chennai.

First a little background about the Dussehra festival, which is celebrated all over India. There are actually different stories that they celebrate depending on the region, but all over the country during these nine days, people are visiting each other. In the South, it is celebrated as the victory of the Goddess Shakti, over the demon Mahishasura. While She is fighting on Earth, all the Gods and Goddesses are here, to cheer her on. So this is the time when the Gods walk the Earth and are celebrated in all Hindu households. Here are a couple shots from Mythreth's house, her adorable daughter all dressed in a colorful costume and their display of Kolu dolls, which represent the various gods.

Our "Story Trails" tour began in Mylapore, a downtown section of Chennai, at a huge temple. We took off our shoes and hiked through the various places. There was a guy who was making a design using the nine special grains of the festival. It was cool watching him through the mirror above him.

And, just by coincidence, our guide told us, the planet Saturn had moved into a different position yesterday, the day were at the temple. So aside from their holiday visit, there were hundreds (maybe thousands) of people waiting in long winding lines that reminded me of Disney World. The guide, a Hindu herself, said, "Oh, Saturn is very powerful. He can bring you great abundance or he can wipe you out. These people are all waiting to light and make a sesame oil offering to Saturn." She was absolutely serious about the importance of getting this done to ensure their well being, and as you can see from the photo, people take Saturn very seriously.



Then we took an autorickshaw across town a ways to a lovely home in a quiet section, where we admired the antique statues of the Ramayana story and another Kolu doll collection, much larger than the one at my colleague's home. They served us refreshments and gave us gifts of young coconut, beetle nut leaves, turmeric, and other symbolic items and crafts. And then some dancers demonstrated the traditional dances using sticks. Finally, of course, we had to try it ourselves.





Finally, we headed back to the crowds outside the temple and went to the bazaar. John found a great carved wooden dinosaur, which he got as a souvenir. He wasn't too pumped about the whole outing, but he made it through the bustling crowds without complaint and recognized the Ramayana story from Widi's bedtime stories when he was younger. The Hindus brought a lot of their stories to Java before the Muslims converted everyone, and those stories were the ones that we've seen performed there and in Bali and that Widi grew up with.

It was an exhausting day; I'm not sure if I've spent so many hours outside in the heat since we've been here--well, at least without an ocean or pool to jump into--but it was all quite fascinating and colorful. Still, we were happy to find our driver in the crowd and be swept back into the cool, quiet comfort of our world.

DLPs

I learned a new acronym today. Our headmaster emailed me asking if it were true that the ESL classrooms didn't have overhead projectors and not a single DLP. Everyone else probably already knows this, but I had to GI (google it).

The digital light processing projector, of course, projects the computer screen on a large screen in front of the classroom. Most of the regular classroom have these mounted on the ceiling and teachers work with a remote and wireless keyboard to navigate the PowerPoints and Internet sites to enhance their classes. Many of the have smartboards too, but we have whiteboards and bulletin boards. I even scrounged pocket chart and easel at the beginning of the year. Very old school.

The ESL department has been neglected on the technology spending side of things as well as square footage. We have half-classrooms, yet during the Language Arts block, because there are so many ELLs, we have more students than the mainstream teachers. I asked about getting an overhead (a far fall from my Mimio and Smartboard technology in West Springfield), but was told that they really couldn't fit in our rooms. So, I've been improvising in that room, and I reserve the ESL lab regularly and use the Smartboard there and set up my students on programs like Rosetta Stone and sites like brainpop.

Anyway, when our headmaster Barry realized how crazy it was that the ESL teachers didn't have DLPs today, he asked me to find out who needed them and submit a purchase order for them and any other materials we need to do our jobs. This all came as a surprise because enrollment is down, and it's been all about the "austerity budget" since we arrived. I had been imagining how fun and engaging it would be for my 4th and 5th graders to have all the internet has to offer as we work through our thematic units. Teaching would be beyond fun!

So I'm hoping no one wakes me up from this dream, and in a few weeks, we get our DLPs.

Celebrations

Our cook went a little overboard when we asked him to prepare a little extra dinner for a couple friends last night. It was Friday night, another week gone by. Now, there's a celebration.

This weekend marks the end of Ramadan and Monday is a holiday for Muslims, Eid ul Fitr, always an occasion for us to send extra money to Widi's family, is a time for new clothes, visiting, and feasting in Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Many of our Malaysian students have been fasting for the whole month, admirable and disciplined as it is, it's still makes little kids pretty lethargic at school. I won't expect to see them on Monday, as the Eid is a wonderful celebration.

Today begins the nine-day Hindu celebration of Navratri, a time of dance, worship, music and enjoyment. We've got several invitations this week. People set up an elaborate set of dolls, evidently, which represent the gods and goddesses. Not sure what else goes on, but a colleague and our cook, both asked us to stop over at their houses to check it out. We also signed up for a tour next Saturday, the Kolu Trail (http://www.storytrails.in/) which give us a little more information about the festivities.

And in a few more weeks comes the much anticipated Diwali break--the school closes for the whole week, so it's a major holiday. I don't really know too much about it, but we'll be driving down to a French coastal town a couple hours south called Pondicherry to experience the festivities. We'll stay in town for a couple days and then we'll go to a The Dune, Ecovillage & Spa, for some yoga, meditation, and organic food. http://www.thedunehotel.com/ It's right on the ocean and has broadband, so I'm hoping John will be happy there while we rest and relax.

Monsoon, Pancakes, & 4th Graders

The rains began early a few weeks ago and the temperature dropped down to the low 70s in the mornings. Still sticky and humid, but cooler and cloudy. It got hot again and today the rains returned. It's still too early for the actual monsoon season, however. It's quite nice having a little more of a breeze and relief from the sun. The streets of Chennai flood rather quickly, however, so it's a little messy. With the door to door service that we have it doesn't inconvenience us too much, but for those who are still trying to buy a car and the locals, it's pretty wet out there, like knee deep in places.

John is the new pancake maker. This one is a banana special. We haven't found real maple syrup, but the cheap stuff is tasting mighty fine.



I want to tell story of our neighbors and our apartments, but it will have to wait for another day. It already late, but here are the kids from (l-r) Japan, Korea, France, Japan, Sweden, and Japan. I got another new girl this week, another Japanese student who doesn't speak a word. Already these kids are speaking and having fun with the language, but little Kotori will catch up in no time.

Working on Labor Day

Labor Day was a professional development day, and both Widi and I volunteered to be presenters. I used my old trick of finding an wonderfully talented teacher to co-facilitate with me. While she could not match Wilma's effervescence, Becky, pictured here, provided a great shock language experience, helped me navigate the international school culture, and put together an image-strong PowerPoint. Our topic was ESL Inclusion: Making Team Teaching Work. I'm learning a lot about the difficulties of inclusion, wherein the ESL teacher works inside another teacher's classroom, and never having taught ESL in that situation, it's a delicate situation teaching other people how to do it. I think of it working ideally like co-facilitating, and in the session someone brought out the point that team teaching should look like what Becky and I had demonstrated, where all the students see both teachers as "their" teacher.

Widi had even more participants sign up for his session on differentiation, and teachers have been asking him for a copies of his handout this week, so I take that as a signal that participants are talking about it.

I think our two workshops were the only participant-centered sessions the whole day. I went to four others that were all pretty much lecture style. For me personally, not much learning takes place in that situation. I don't think it works that well for kids either. I like to see teachers and students energized in creating their own understanding.

John's French Horn

John brought home his French horn today. We were hoping for percussion, but the band leader was trying kids out with all kinds of exercises and practice before choosing the ideal instrument for each kid after considering strengths and lip shape. Yeah, that and everyone wants to play the drums.

So, John's been practicing with just the mouth piece, and when he played today, it didn't sound too bad. He's got some wind power in them thar lungs. Brought me back to the days in the late '70s when I was a big Chuck Mangione fan. I had a couple albums and saw him live at the UMass Fine Arts Center when he toured. Feels So Good and Children of Sanchez. Pure magic.

Just realized after visiting youtube, however, that Magnione plays the flugel horn and trumpet--not the French Horn. What a disappointment. John wasn't that interested in watching him play the flugel horn.


At lunch today some of the teachers were just gushing over John. About his "aura" and how he's like magnet that other kids are attracted to, how natural and calm he is.

John is intrigued with the Korean kids, and while he's only learned two words in Tamil (thank you and delicious), he knows several phrases in Korean and a few in Japanese. He performed in an "advisory" play last week and impressed all with his portrayal of the victim of a bully. For an American school, there really aren't that many American kids in his classes. His gang includes kids from France, England, Germany, the Philippines, Canada, Korea, and Japan.

In his classes he has lots of online forums and virtual group work type assignments, and he is still enjoying school, thoroughly.

We're even coercing him to join the math competition team later this month since he passed on the swim team. Some of his other friends are doing it, so he'll go along with it. There's also a drama group called Madras Kids starting soon that he's somewhat interested in. Of course, we'll try to push him into that too.

Improving John's educational opportunities abroad: priceless.

The White Tiger

Today I finished the book I'd begun on the plane over here, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. A lot of book clubs have read it recently, and it won the Man Booker prize in 2008. It's about an Indian driver who, we find out in the first chapter, murders his master. It's a fascinating commentary on village and urban life in India today, satirical and funny, and thoroughly enjoyable. Even though it took me all these weeks to finish it, you have to remember, we were going through a lot of settling in, and I took it in in small doses so as to enjoy it longer. It's all written in a series of letters to Premier Jiaboa of China, who was scheduled to visit India in the coming weeks. Here's an excerpt from page 8 that I just love and have come back to:

"Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep--all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.

The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.

But pay attention, Mr. Premier! Fully formed fellows, after twelve years of school and three years of university, wear nice suits, join companies, and take orders from other men for the rest of their lives.

Entrepreneurs are made from the half-baked clay."

It's a great story, and I have to say, I have wondered if our driver shares any of his views.

John and I are just finishing up Sara, the spiritual story by Esther and Jerry Hicks, and I've found ebay, India, which will send us Book 2 for $7.00, free shipping. We're both enjoying still reading together at night even though this is not quite Harry Potter. We've become much more aware of all the things we appreciate, and we talk about how that changes how you enjoy life.

The kids have the day off for Labor Day, but John has a babysitting gig for the school day, and we have a professional development day at school. Both Widi and I are presenting separate workshops and attending some others. Not quite a day at the lake. But we are just six weeks away from our Diwali week vacation in mid-October. In other news our big shipment arrived this week and we are slowly unpacking all the books, towels, linens, and kitchenware we sent. We also have some nice family photos to make our apartment feel more like our new home.

The Job

I'm just starting to figure out my job here. I signed on thinking that I would be a teacher and elementary department chair, but the first time I saw this sign by my classroom, I realized there were other expectations of me.

I spoke with the principal today, and she's very excited about the potential for creativity in providing ESL services for our 175 ELLs. It's a difficult situation, however, with classroom teachers who didn't necessary sign on to teach a class with a majority of children at the beginning level of English language acquisition. Many have not had formal training in sheltering content for ELLs, and there is a certain amount of panic among them.

On the plus side, I've got a fantastic group of 11 teachers in the ESL department, loads of resources, curriculum/materials, and technology: smartboards, computer labs, laptop carts, software galore, broadband, of course. I also have a lovely Indian assistant, who gets everything done for me and the department. All of the people are so helpful, and young men come every afternoon to wash the desks, whiteboards,and floors. Plus it's a lovely campus with nourishing lunches, cappuccinos, and strong air conditioning.

Still, there are a lot of needs, stressed kids who can't settle in, concerned parents in tears, teachers who haven't figured out how to team teach with the ESL teacher in their classroom, scheduling conundrums and the like. Each day presents new challenges, and I do my best to stay completely present in the moment as I deal with them all.

The most rewarding part of the day, of course, is my 90-minute block with my low beginning 4th graders. They have come so far in just these first few weeks, and we will go much further together in the coming months. They are such a joy to work with.

So, though I've resisted for years, I've become a bit of an administrator, and I'm doing the best I can, trying to harness our cumulative potential to find better ways to serve the kids.