Learning Experiences

Learning Experiences

As I have learned throughout my college years in my Human Services classes, it is very important to be flexible, open-minded, and eager when working with non-profit organizations and NGO’s.  This point was reinforced on my Dialogue of Civilizations trip to Mexico in 2008 and it was also brought up in our pre-departure classes for India.  Flexibility is key to being successful. 

An Anecdote:  After our group was finally settled into our respective schools and finally had a consistent group of students attend our lectures and activities everyday, it was time to go on our mini trip to Delhi.  Indians celebrate many festivals and each festival has different meaning and traditions to go along with it.  The Indian Festivals can be slightly compared to holidays in the United States.  We had the honor of being in India for Diwali, the Festival of Lights.  Our group flew to Delhi for the weekend and had an amazing time strolling around the metropolis city.  It was very comparable to cities in the United States.  At night fire crackers, also known as fireworks, filled the sky.  For about six hours straight fire crackers were lit off from all parts of the city and the country for that matter so there was a bright display of color eluding over the country.  It was brilliant.  And much cooler than the fire works we light off on the fourth of July. 

The day before we left for Delhi we planned our lesson to be about holidays and festivals.  We had each student draw a picture of their favorite festival and had them come to the front of the room and describe the festival and their picture.  It was so fun to here the different traditions that are celebrated within families in India.  In our class there were 3 Christians and the rest were Hindi so it was very fun to here about how Christmas was celebrated in India.  It also gave me a warm fuzzy feeling when they talked about Christmas because I thought of home and my family and how much I love the holiday season and snow.  O home. 

As you can tell I was beginning to get pretty attached to my students.  Each of them brought a different quality and energy to our class.  There was little Nitish, who when standing was as tall as the kids sitting down, who would raise his little hand for every question and just smile his full faced grin.  There was Pragati, who had an intellectual answer for many questions but was so shy to answer in front of her peers.  She would put her head down and just peak over her arms.  And who could forget my favorite, Kavya.  She didn’t say a word but she wrote and decorated my name about ten different times and all of those pictures will be hanging in my room when I get home.

When we left our class on Thursday, we left and promised we would be back next week to learn about world issues.  They were so excited and we left the class with a 20 high pitched voices cheering, “HAPPY DIWALI.”  I was so happy.

After our amazing trip to Delhi, we arrived in Hubli with some interesting news.  Angelina, our contact at Akshara, said she found us a new school.  Our whole group was so confused, Does the Kendriya Vidyalala school in Dharwad know we are not coming back?, Why do we have to start all over?, Do we get to say good-bye to our students?  It didn’t matter, the eight of us packed in our mini van and were hauled to the next school.  The feeling in most of our minds was frustration.  We were down and overall our group had a pretty negative vibe.  Flexibility, is all I kept repeating in my head.  Flexibility.  You have to be ready for anything. 

After a semi unsuccessful day at our new school St. Joseph, we were all feeling a little depleted and pretty nervous about how we were going to put together a project to improve the education systems in the next three days….

It was time for some major break storming and group bonding.  The best is yet to come.