Final Report: Teachers For Global Classrooms
I’m typing this report on the British Airways flight to London on Thursday 25 July 2019. My notebooks are full of thoughts and ideas, which may take me weeks or months to process. So, this report covers the salient memories of the trip, the friends I’ve made, my experiences both within and without the classroom, and the changes I have experienced in myself and my thinking.
Summary of July 2019 Trip
I’ve not traveled internationally before, so I had a huge learning curve. I’d spent the months from February (the Washington, D.C. Symposium) until June making lists, buying supplies, planning with guidebooks, and thinking. Looking back, I could have done more with the Fulbright materials sent to me but I ran into scheduling difficulties with the end-of-year school work in my classroom.
Packing & Planning
My luggage included a travel backpack and a daypack, into which I packed a jacket for more formal events, slacks and shirts, and gifts for students and hosts. In retrospect, I should have brought much less. I had to send one package home at the end of the official Teachers for Global Classrooms (TGC) block before I journeyed through India on my own. Even then, I had too many clothes and my pack was too heavy. I did learn about packing cubes, which worked very well, and the need for a wheeled backpack.
During my final week in India, I bought a carryall, which worked for my carry-on luggage, and allowed me to check my backpack. I got better with managing airport check-ins with security. For my return to Heathrow today, I breezed through the passport control, unlike my previous check-ins when leaving the U.S. and flying to Kannur during Week Two of the trip.
Working With Others
The people I met and with whom I worked were wonderful. Gerald Smith and I became close friends as we traveled around Mahe together. He is a Peace Corps veteran and an experienced world traveler. He quietly gave me hints about travel and was a genius at making reservations and using international cell phones. He also provided significant support for someone new to international travel, and he offered this support in a gentle way, as a colleague and friend. I valued our time together and hope we will be able to stay in touch. (After the group ended, Gerald stayed in India and traveled north to the Himalayas to see a friend at another school, then ended up on the beach near Goa taking surfing lessons. I thought he had a particularly worthwhile plan, and he kept seeing the schools of India, which was great!)
Fulbright Supporters in India
Our team included educators from India who had been to the United States—Rajesh, Poonam, Sophia, and Mamta. They supported us in New Delhi and accompanied us on our trips around that city and to Agra. They knew India and generously shared information about food, phones, ATMs, and the subway. I had so much to learn—who knew that Indians eat with their hands, and that I had to learn a new way of eating too?—and these colleagues instructed us by example. Rajesh ate breakfast with us most mornings and during our conversations spanned what we were seeing during the day and how we were adjusting to India. My biggest disappointment about leaving India is that those close relationships are now separated by a 9.5-hour time difference and email. I miss those TGC alumni very much. I know we will work together because I am planning a collaborative project with Poonam and Mamta about critical thinking, and I hope we will continue our relationship.
Host Teachers & Touring Kerala
Finally, the most important part of the trip placed Gerald and I under Rathnakaran’s care in the JMK school in Mathe. We flew there on a Sunday and stayed one week. The school community embraced us. We observed assemblies, taught classes, ate together, and most important spent time with the students.
It is the faces of those students that I remember from my time as a Fulbright scholar. Walking into a classroom and having everyone stand and say “Good morning, Sir” is an experience that I will never forget. Working with those students gave me a new appreciation for the difference that education can make in a young person’s life. I saw students memorizing poetry, giving speeches, and analyzing the events of the day. I saw them perform a cultural evening with music, singing and dancing. I saw them involve us, the visitors, in their lives. And I happily participated in their requests for selfies and giving autographs.
The package I sent home contained two framed pieces of art that the students had created, one for Gerald and one for myself. It contained their artwork and other items that students gave us. I did not have room in my bags for all their gifts but I could carry their love with me in a major way.
In the same way, Rathnakaran had planned a wonderful visit. He focused on his school and made sure we met with teachers and students. Then he took us out into the countryside, to Kerala and Wyanad, where we saw more students and teachers at different schools. The logistics of his effort were incredible, from food and hotel reservations to making plans with other principals and arranging for a car and driver for the week. We lacked nothing and benefited from many hours of conversation and a wonderful dinner in his home on our final night in Mahe.
A Reflection Within A Reflection
The honor of visiting India brought with it a vast amount of new experiences and relationships. An English teacher in Mahe seeing me teach a lesson about Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson immediately obtained a look into American education. My style differs from Indian educators, less in fundamental ways but more in the theatricality I bring to my subject versus the textbook model followed by Indian teachers.
For his part, Gerald taught math in new ways for Indian students using the Desmos application that he practices in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Rathnakaran already had some familiarity with the model and Gerald supplemented that learning with specific tips and tricks, and a connection with the software developer. They still connect via video conferences to share ideas.
For me, I spent time with Assistant Principal Dr. K. Sajeevan and various English teachers, offering them examples of how I teach critical thinking and four-way thinking. I emphasized how I teach writing. In one lengthy session with all the teachers, Rathkaran, Gerald, and I answered questions and offered insights into our method of instruction. We spoke to a roomful of teachers who had learned to depend on the textbook to frame students’ education, as measured by a summative test at the end of the year.
Gerald and I focused more on assessing proficiency, a system that requires much less standardized assessment and allows for more student-directed learning. The Indian teachers saw this type of instruction as a major paradigm shift, one that they might not be able to achieve given the Indian government’s insistence on and structure of “teaching to the test.” As visiting teachers, we cannot change a teaching methodology that has been baked into the curriculum since colonial days but we could offer some alternatives to make that education more student-based and applicable.
The issue of standardized testing brings with it some concerns for American secondary students. In a proficiency-driven school, our students might never see a standardized test until they enroll in college and must take a midterm or final exam. The Indian students know how to take tests and they appear to know how to study. In many Indian schools, students reside on campus, with the attendant benefits of having the day start early in the morning with physical activity, teacher support, an assembly, a snack, all before classes begin around 8:00 a.m. They receive several tea breaks as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner breaks.
In the structured discipline of the typical Indian school, students enter the dining hall and pick up a metal tray. Some students help adults serve the meal, which usually consists of rice and curry dishes. Students then wash their trays and return to classes. This system of student-directed discipline appears in all school activities. Students help each other, older students mentor younger ones, and camaraderie reigns. I saw no students alone; students lived in a world of comradeship and support one for another.
Students wore uniforms in most of the schools I visited. Later, as I traveled by myself, I saw students wearing uniforms in Birkaner and Jaipur similar those in New Delhi, Mahe, and Agar. A tuk-tuk would disgorge six students wearing the same clothing style in front of a school.
Students in Mahe began the day in a white uniform for activities and then changed into their class uniform. They all looked alike, neat, clean, and polished. Some of the girls wore ribbons—always white—in their hair. They spoke English well, as one of several languages (most spoke Hindi, the language of India, and Malayalam, the local language). In addition to math, science, history, and English, classes included Hindi instruction. Preparation for the daily assembly—rotated among the three languages—took place in the evening or early morning, another advantage of working in a residential school.
Concluding the TGC Program
The end of the formal Teachers for Global Classrooms on Wednesday, 17 July, gave us time to think and discuss our experiences as a group. Peter Boller from IREX, who had coordinated the trip and spent time with Gerald and me in Mahe, facilitated our final meeting and helped us summarize our learning. We gave gifts to Peter, our hosts and alumni, and had some good-natured fun creating a poem and song. Les played his saxophone to get us all in the mood. Looking back, all of us learned new things. Some partner teams worked with poor schools and had a different experience than Gerald and myself. Others spent more time teaching and less time exploring the country. In many ways, Gerald and I enjoyed a unique experience because of our friendship with Rathnakaran. On our tours, we saw varying degrees of poverty and educational styles. In short, we did not see “one” India but a variety of places, styles, and personalities, all committed to the ideals of education.
Many members of the cohort left for Heathrow on Thursday, 18 July but several of us remained in India to continue our experience. Gerald and I had breakfast that morning and I took a train to Birkaner in Rajasthan, the largest Indian state. I wanted to see the desert and take a camel trek. I learned that Rajasthan is hot and dry but that the desert is beautiful and camels were lovely, hard-working creatures. I visited a Christian school there, spent time with the principal, and taught one class. I was unannounced and without the advance warning that IREX had supplied during other school visits. Yet, the school accepted this unannounced American visitor and allowed me to see another side of Indian education. I had come to understand the idea of secular schools offering a strong religious emphasis, a concept unique to India. My impromptu visit to a Christian school rounded out that generalization with a look into the difficulties experienced by a religious school in a secular country.
In Jaipur, I would spend time on the campus of St. Xavier’s Secondary School, which resembled a college campus with gardens, playing fields, and separate classroom buildings.
What Did I Learn?
How can I describe a life-changing experience? All the elements of the trip, seen, unseen, and felt—the heat, different foods, braying sounds of automobile horns, constant interaction while walking down a street as “someone different,” historical content that forms the fabric of Indian life and education, desire on the part of children to succeed, and unmitigated poverty combined with the presence of dogs and cattle wandering around freely, the sense of karma that provided food to animals and humans—all combined to create a vital portrait of a country unknown to someone living in the U.S.
Some of my most vivid memories are of a young mother thrusting her baby at me and asking for money. Similarly, wizened crones stuck their heads into my auto-rickshaw to tap my leg with a bony finger and beg. One young girl on a New Delhi street came up to me at 7:00 pm and asked me to buy a pen. Would that I had the time or the capital to invest in all these people. But the vastness of India, the hugeness of its population, conspires against aid programs. Life goes on in the piles of trash where animals and people scrounge for scraps, where buildings collapse, and construction continues at a maddeningly slow pace on subways, railroads, office buildings and streets. Yet, the students I met laughed at my jokes, wanted to talk with me, and enjoyed my al fresco lessons about poetry and writing.
As my tuk-tuk driver ferried me to my hotel in Delhi Wednesday night, the traffic came to a complete halt, the road turned into huge ruts that could have swallowed our small contrivance. No one could make the traffic move. On all sides of me modern cars and motorcycles and scooters stopped. People had just gotten out of work, around 8:00 at night. The streets were jammed with people, rickshaws, and cars. Meanwhile, my non-English speaking driver calmly waited for traffic to clear.
Possibly an analogy for India itself, the scene included an outsider (me), a worker (the tuk-tuk driver), and people from many classes and interests, and beggar or two. We all managed to get to our destinations that night, just as India is managing to succeed in education, science, and technology, while promoting its heritage through tourism.
No less successful was my tuk-tuk driver. Within minutes, the traffic cleared and he found my hotel after asking for directions at another hotel. My college-educated brain could not encompass the complexity of the thousands of streets and alleyways of New Delhi—nor could it fathom the history of development and invasions and warfare in this country—yet this unschooled native could get me within blocks of a destination—through some incredibly difficult traffic conditions—with patience and fortitude, and an apology for not speaking English.
India humbled me. Its greatness lies in the historical record and in its people who work together in incredible ways. My degrees and education matter little in a culture that existed for thousands of years, created massive temples and forts, brought culture and religion to millions, made a desert bloom, and today work under trying conditions on a daily basis. Indians are survivors who want to continue the culture they have created. What a privilege and honor it was to visit this country.
Later, in London, I began reading Michael Wood’s The Story of India (BBC Books, 2008) and gained some understanding of the history of the country, especially imperialism and the 200-year structure imposed during the British Raj:
“Only great and resilient civilizations, such as India, were able to hold their own, take what was useful, and emerge still themselves” (Wood, 271).
When I combine my personal travels in Rajasthan—seeing the city of Birkaner with its fort and signs for the “longest defended border in the world” marking the desert leading to Pakistan, and the city of Jaipur, with its imposing forts, temples, and swelling population—with my experiences in New Delhi, Agra, and Mahe, I come away with an imperfect picture of life in India but one that focuses on children and the ongoing need for education.
Children were everywhere: In the schools, with typical classes of 40 or 50 students. At train stations, where families camped out on the platforms, feeding infants and playing with the older ones while teens ran to jump on trains as they arrived. On visits to historical sites, where entire families joined the queue to see the world’s largest cannon and the third-longest defensive wall in the world.
India cannot escape its past of Mughal empires, invasions, and European colonialism. Instead, she has merged all those historical experiences into a modern country that has staked a claim to its position in the 21st century.
“Only India has preserved the unbroken thread of the human story that binds us all” (BBC. Director: Jeffs. 2007).
Today, I am back at my home in Vermont and teaching high school students. I speak frequently about my experiences in India. I immediately acquired spices, a rolling pin, board, and cast-iron pan to make chapatis, and Indian Vegetarian Cookery (Maria, 1982).
I am reading Suketu Mehta’s This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019) and Anita Anand’s The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India’s Quest for Independence (Scribner, 2019).
I may have left India in July but India has not left me. I saw only a small part of the country and I long to know more. Like many Westerners before me, India touched me in some major way and remains in my mind and heart.
