Teaching in India - Jessica Hills
I arrived in India in mid-January for a one month teaching placement. When I first stepped of the plane I was feeling a bit bewildered, having left home and with the prospect of thirty kids expecting me to be able to teach them English! The first thing to hit me on arriving was the heat, even though it was Indian winter, and the massive number of people, despite it being the middle of the night.
Driving along the roads in Chennai alongside rickshaws, cows, and even an elephant at one point, I began to wonder what I had let myself in for! After eight hours on a train through the Western Ghat mountains I arrived in the temple city of Madurai, and this was followed by a three hour drive to Sivakasi. After a good night's sleep in the office accommodation, I met all the Teaching & Projects Abroad staff who all had really good English and were really helpful and reassuring. .
I was then driven to my placement, which was a private school in a busy town called Theni. It was a three-hour drive away from the office in Sivakasi, and was a fairly typical Indian town with people hanging off buses, crazy rickshaw drivers and the odd cow wandering down the street. The town had seen very few westerners when I arrived so I was treated like quite a celebrity! My accommodation was with the principal of the school and her family, so I always had loads of support on hand if I needed help planning lessons. The family was really lovely and even arranged for a school teacher to take me out on my first weekend to various villages and a nearby park and zoo.
Going into the school on my first day was quite daunting but all the children were really sweet and eager to learn. Even the teachers liked to sit in on lessons so they could learn from us! The classes ranged from nursery, where the children were 3 years old, up to sixth standard, who were 11 or 12. They were just so excited to have a real English person to teach them and at the end of break times I was always weighed down by the hundreds of snacks all the children had insisted on giving me!
When I first arrived I wondered what sort of difference I could really make. I taught all the age groups during my time in Theni, which meant I taught each class for only one or two periods a week. However, I was amazed at how quickly their English improved. For the first day or two I had problems understanding their strong accents and they had trouble understanding me, but by the end of my placement their listening and speaking skills were so much better, and it was easy to hold a proper conversation, especially with the older kids.
A good way of teaching was general conversation about a particular topic, such as family life or hobbies as well as lots of games and quizzes. Putting the class in teams also worked really well, as the children couldn't resist a competition - although I did have to be prepared to control the noise that always resulted! If I wanted something quieter to do the students really enjoyed writing stories. I would give them an opening sentence and just let them use their imaginations and carry on the story.
At the school, the last hour of the day was a free period and was always a lot of fun. We played games like cricket and badminton, and the children taught me how to play some traditional Indian games such as kaw-kaw, which is basically a complicated game of running and catching. At the end of the day, we always got the school bus back to our accommodation - a crazy experience, with a mad scramble to get a seat, a lot of noisy songs and games, and usually a race with one of the other school buses!
When the time came to leave I was upset to leave my children but as I still had two months left in India I was able to go back and visit a couple of times. I returned for their prize distribution day and the school and children were as fabulous as ever! Saying goodbye before I finally left the country was really sad but I made some wonderful friends here, amongst the teachers, students and other volunteers, and I will keep in touch with loads of people. Overall the whole experience was amazing and I had the time of my life!
Jessica Hills
If like Jessica you would like to work on one of the projects in India, take a look at our India Destination page
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Kindergarten dance lesson
Me with class one
Prize giving day
Ready for sports lesson
Republic day dance show
With my host parents
