The basics: Where and What

Where are you?

Thanks to a grant from the Fund for Teachers, I am now in eastern Nepal. It looks like this just outside of where I live. I am living in a three story house in a small city named Damak. I am living with four 60-something South Indian sisters (Sister Mabel, Sister Anacleta, Sister Lioba, and Sister Lourdes) who were formerly school principals and hospital administrators in South India, but who have served in many other countries. They are super smart, kind, and articulate and they fuss over me like I am one of their daughters. :) They left these positions to serve in the Jesuit Refugee Services Education Program led by Father Amalraj. A family lives on the first floor of the house.

What are you doing there?

Each day I visit the 8th graders at a different school at a different refugee camp and share about life in NYC. A Bhutanese refugee (either a school administrator or one of their teachers) comes with me to translate in case they have questions they want to ask me in Nepali. Many of these children are in the process of being resettled to the US or to other countries. When I walk into a classroom and ask who is moving to the US, often over half of the hands in the room go up. (I am hardly the first foreigner they've seen--there were people here from NC and California earlier in the week. Many foreigners come here.)

When I go into their classroom (think: no electricity, bamboo slatted walls, thatched roof, maybe a concrete floor, maybe a dirt floor, one blackboard, long tables in rows with benches) I re-arrange it so that there are three stations. I give one group of students about 100 photographs taken by the Bhutanese students at Brooklyn International High School. I give another group of students letters written by my seniors from the class of 2010 from Brooklyn International High School. They read the letters and write letters to my students. With the third group, I talk to them about one of my students who moved from the camp to the US, show them his school papers so that they know what they need to bring with them, and show them how we transfer credits at my school, and talk to them about differences between classrooms in the US and classrooms in the schools in the camps in Nepal.

During and after this whole process they ask questions and I answer as honestly as I can. Sometimes I can answer affirmatively (Yes, we study math and science in the U.S.) Sometimes I answer negatively (No, you don't have to wear a uniform at most schools in the U.S.) Sometimes I am at a loss. (I am not qualified to say whether or not you can play on the World Cup team if you move to the U.S. )

Besides this, they've also been kind enough to give me an orientation to the camp schools, so that I have an idea of what the schedule is like and what they study. I may also be helping with the adult spoken English program here while the kids are in testing.