One lamp to light the whole room

Well hello there!

It's been a full week here at The Merasi School! Our two classes, Little Class (made up of kids roughly between the ages of 5-7) and Big Class (made up of kids roughly between the ages of 8-11) are plowing through learning body parts and basic health and hygiene. We are bringing a new teacher on board this week, a young Merasi woman named Arunah, who will work on a trial period until we can ascertain if she's a good fit for us and we're a good fit for her.

Arunah, unlike the sweeping majority of Merasi, espescially Merasi women, has been to school and finished 7th grade, which gives her the academic capacities to be a dynamo teacher. What she and I work on in our teacher training sessions focuses less on the what of teaching (the content) and more on the how (the delivery). The Indian education system leans towards memorization over comprehension and what we're working on is not developing little information recepticals, but training teachers. The time constraints of these childrens' lives makes it such that they are often the only kids from their family to attend school, so it becomes vital that they pay forward the knowledge they're acquiring and be, as our onsite Director Sarwar Khan put it, the one lamp that can light the whole room.

For this to sustainably transpire, we're working on these students understanding themselves as teachers with the capacity to shift and shape the world around them. And slowly, in little moments, signs of this are beginning to show, from Big Class' Suriya Khan demanding that everyone now call her 'Doctor Suriya' to Seema, a rather fiesty Little Classer, bellowing English body part names at her younger brother as they ate rice, then demanding, 'WHERE is your nose, brother?'

A bit of business: if you've donated to or are planning to donate to The Merasi School with a check between 12/31-2/23/08, your check will not be cashed until after 2/23/08. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience so very much.

All the best from me to you,

Caitie!