Joining Hands Nepal
A Family Orphan HomeArchive for education
A Pilot’s Tale
This week has been story making week during English class in our orphan home, and the children have really been enjoying the process. For most of them, it is their first real introduction to the creative process and having the freedom to make up a story of their own. We spent last week learning about adjectives and using them to describe people and things in preparation for this week’s exercise, and it has been a great benefit. Next we learned about the 4 key elements of a story: Characters, Setting, Plot, and Moral. Using these elements, we have been creating our story. What is most impressive about this whole week is the characters and story the children have come up with so far.
In Nepal, most of the stories have to do with love and duty to family and country. These are certainly valuable and worthwhile topics for a story, but the children are not often exposed to stories of independence and personal freedom. That is why it was pleasantly surprising to hear them choose a young female protagonist who becomes an international pilot, traveling the world, and who is unmarried at the age of 24 and in no hurry to marry despite her mother’s pressure because she is happy with her life of freedom and adventure. In fact, the moral of the story they decided upon is that it is okay to be independent and follow your dreams. When asked if there was anyone they knew in real life who was independent and followed their dreams that they admired, they picked their guardian, our director, Himal. We can only hope they keep this feeling as they get older and find their own dreams to follow.
James the German
Quite a funny story came our way today from the children about some humorous happenings at school. Apparently, James, one of our youngest, enjoys very much to speak what little English he knows all the time around school to everyone, including teachers and older children. Now you should know, James is 6 years old and is in class LKG (the classes here go Nursery, LKG, UKG, then 1st grade), so no other child in his class speaks much English except to repeat the teacher, but here is James going around speaking English everywhere. Well, it so happens that the teacher of younger classes usually are the weakest in English, because it is not required of them to speak much English. That is how it came to be that James’ own teacher approached one of our older children and asked if James grew up in a foreign country somewhere because he speaks English so much. Can I stress again that James is 6 years old and in the second lowest class in the Nepali education system? And that he spoke basically no English before coming to stay with us? Well, needless to say, James has become class leader and is scheduled to sing an English song at the upcoming school performance for the big festival Dashain. And one last bit of humor from this whole story: after James heard that his teacher asked his brother if he grew up in a foreign country, if you ask James where he is from, he will happily reply “I am from Germany”.
Masters of Command
This week in English conversation class at the orphanage we have heavily focused on teaching commands, and the dedication has really paid off. At the beginning of the week basic commands were introduced, such as “stand up”, “sit down”, “come here”, “show me the …”, “bring me the …”, and so on. Then, throughout the week as we moved on to different lessons, commands were always included fundamentally into the lesson without specifically mentioning the topic and the range of commands was slowly expanded. Now, the children automatically respond to several important and universal commands in English without having to think or be given any hints. The speed at which they pick up things through a careful combination of repetition and patience is amazing, and it is very satisfying to see how much progress has come in about a month from these daily classes, especially this last week. We are happy we can provide this great advantage to the children and to see it pay off. Here’s to hoping the success continues and their English level soars above their peers in the coming years!
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