International Volunteering

Jess and I have been in India for a week now, probably the busiest week we'll have for a while. We've both had a few days of our volunteering placement now, so I thought I'd write a bit about mine.

I've been teaching in a government-funded school called Divine Public School in Dharamsala. The school has a kindergarten, and in the main school they teach children from 6-10 years old.

Originally I was assigned to teach the 6-9 year olds in classes 1-3. However each day I've been there I have taught a variety of classes, ranging from the youngest kindergarten children to the 10 year olds.

I've been asked to teach mainly English, but will also cover other classes such as maths, art and "general knowledge" (which is everything else).

The teaching for all of the classes seems to learning by rote, so the children have a relatively shallow understanding of the subject matter. By this I mean they can repeat or write out what they've been shown, but don't necessarily understand the sentence, or can't use words in a new context.

I hope I can help the students with their understanding of English with some different teaching styles, and maybe a few games.

A few of the past and current volunteers here have tried to address this whilst on placement and get the feeling they've met with a bit of resistance from staff, which is understandable. Who are we to come in and tell them they're doing it wrong?

I think that introducing new ideas and approaches into a culture without alienating the local people is the biggest challenge that international volunteers face, just behind learning that they're often not right about those ideas! We'll see how we do.