Baby Steps

After hearing a rather inspiring presentation from Kiran Sethi yesterday, we returned to our regular routine of teaching with a slightly greater understanding of the impact we are making. As we entered the first school, a little later than expected, I was drawn towards the chaos caused by the children atop the water tank. Although I have come to expect a stir of excitement as we enter the school, I was slightly baffled/ intrigued to see children diving into the water tank at our arrival. After inquiring further, we realized that the commotion was caused by a rat that fell into the tank. While the children cleaned the tank out, I was shocked to see that they were throwing out buckets of, what appeared to be, muddy brown water. Since this was what the children were drinking on a daily basis, I had to wonder if teaching them their ABC’s took precedence over a blatant infringement of a basic right to clean water. At the same time, however, I realized that trying to tackle this issue was something that would require more than just the resources we could provide. Sure we could all work together for a few days and clean out the tank. But how long would this last?  We all knew that the moment we left this issue would remain unresolved. Rather than focusing our main efforts on this issue, we went back to trying to give the children something that they would carry with them for the rest of their lives: a well-intentioned education.

With regards to the teaching, today was a breakthrough in many regards. Even though we still have major discipline problems in the first school, I was encouraged to see that many of the mischievous kids were beginning to respond better during our small group sessions. One student in particular that I have been working with over the past week began to understand the concept of different letters in the alphabet.  After days of trying to get him to differentiate between A, B, and C, he was finally able to see that each letter corresponded to a unique symbol. Even though it seems like a basic step, I have come to realize that only through these steps can significant improvements be seen.