Education Day

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

~Nelson Mandela

I woke up on Tuesday feeling great. I suppose that I was dehydrated, but my health has been nursed back to me along with my appetite. Here on the Rising Star Campus the volunteers are assigned into three groups: cobra, scorpion and shakti (power) that rotate responsibilities each day. My group is scorpion which includes myself, Stacy, Savannah and a mother daughter duo: Brenda and Quincy. On our first rotation we were assigned with Education.

Here on Campus there is a wonderful school for the kids called the Peery Matriculation School. When we are on the education round we sit in the library as they usher kids in to be tutored in either English or math. We spend forty minutes with each kid, helping them complete the assignment we have been handed to give them. While tutoring them in English we try to focus on pronunciation and comprehension of the text. With math we focus on making sure they are getting the right answer.

We each have an opportunity to tutor five wonderful kids through out the day. My first two kids were boys and we worked on their English. Even though they understand spoken English fairly well and do a good job in speaking with us Americans, they still have difficulty in reading and writing in English -- mainly due to the fact that our language is not phonetic. Since they struggle with the written language their desire to read is low. But we helped encourage them and due to our persistence kept them motivated to push through the assignment. It was easy to tell who were the more focused students and who would require more patience.

Math turned out to be a much easier concept to tutor since most of the students felt comfortable with numbers and their times tables. The biggest struggle was the eventual boredom of doing math problem after math problem, but we helped spice it up with some friendly racing competition.
The best parts of doing education is the opportunity to watch their morning conclave. Here they do the daily announcements and say their national anthem/pledge all lined up in front of the flag pole in their cute little school uniforms. Their attitude was completely different from what I saw the night before, where the night before they were rambunctious and at school they were calm and disciplined. Another great benefit is the opportunity to eat a typical Indian lunch with the students on the ground under an open dining pavilion.

Working with the kids in helping them build a brighter future through their education was rewarding. Although there were difficult moments in focusing on the short term assignment, I maintained focus with the vision of the long term benefits of education, especially English, in the lives of these children. Within the caste system here these children are considered the bottom of the pile due to the circumstances the families and circumstances they are born in, but working with them I see so much potential. Their education is the key to unlocking their full potential so that they can rise above the expectations this society has placed upon them.