Tuesday, July 2, 2013

It Will Be a Challenge, Without A Doubt

Digging into the my third week here. Blogging is not exactly my deal, but I will try my best to include all of the pertinent details. The immensity of the job I have been tasked with seems to be growing. At the same time, I have struck a rhythm with the students and I am comfortable coming in everyday with whatever it is I’ve put together for them.

Each week it becomes more apparent to me that many of these students are at a level of English that might as well be called zero. This is not only in terms of their speaking abilities, but their written skills as well. Even the best of them struggle with simple spelling. I discovered today that most students struggled to spell basic words such as “table”, “cot”, “chair”, and “mat.” These are children many of whom have been taking English as a language for more than four or five years.

It is my opinion that many of the students are severely lacking in both of these areas because they have little to no understanding of what they are writing, reading, and saying when they are asked to do so in their regular English classes. This poor basic knowledge of the language, I suspect, is due to a lack of emphasis on the subject and perhaps also outdated and ineffective teaching styles being employed in their English education previous to coming to Deepa Academy. The students who enter Deepa Academy at the 8th standard have not been brought to a sufficient level of reading, writing and speaking English to handle the materials designed for their standardized class year. The struggle then falls to the tireless staff of Deepa Academy to push the students forward so that they can manage their 10th standard board exams, even though the students still have yet to master the foundational building blocks of the language.

I worry that the result of this the students are memorizing the material they need to know in order to pass these crucial exams, but they are not truly comprehending the meaning of what they are memorizing. A student who does not understand the simple question “Do you like to read?” surely cannot be expected to grasp the meaning of even a basic paragraph in English.

It has taken me some time to reach this awareness of the students’ English capacities, and I am still figuring out exactly where each student stands in terms of their English education. There are hundreds of materials for teaching ESL and for teaching students with visual impairments, but still I have yet to find a satisfactory criterion with which to assess their abilities, let alone a course plan with a sound teaching method to meet their needs.

I fear that I may not actually be qualified to make the assessments and propose the methods by which the students’ speaking skills can be improved that I have been tasked to make and propose - at least not to any official or accredited standard. I simply do not have the training in education or special education that I need to develop the effective and comprehensive program that these girls deserve. Perhaps once I return to my own college, I can seek the help and resources from our education department to finally set the bar for the students English education at Deepa Academy.

What I can reasonably hope to accomplish in the meantime, at this point, is a solid starting point; a course that introduces basic English vocabulary, structures, and grammar and helps to build the students’ confidence in reading, writing, and especially speaking English.

I have written about these issues in further detail in the manual, which will eventually be made available on this blog.

Despite all of that, I am enjoying my class time with both groups. I have been able to visit a number of dance programs with and featuring several of the students from the Academy, as well as a play at the Ranga Shankara Theater. The faculty have been incredibly generous with their time to take me to different events, and they are always looking out for me and asking after my needs. I am planning on more activities and exploration for the coming weeks, including a trip to Goa to meet a friend from my college for the weekend, visits to several local temples, and as many more arts and performance events as I can manage to attend.
An interesting note on the girls performance that I was present for last week: I have been trying to learn about the perception of visually impaired persons by the general public in India as well as the various other social constructs that are active in society still today. From what I have been told, though things are changing, there is still a common belief that any “differently-abled,” (or differently-gifted, or disabled, or however you want to call it) person is inherently “less-abled” or “unable” because of their physical “short-comings.” They are considered “idiots,” “useless,” “parasites to society,” and so on. In general the discourse on this topic makes me very uncomfortable, whether it is coming from a positive or negative standpoint. I was reminded why it makes me uncomfortable at the performance, last Wednesday night. I put it this way after the show in my notebook;

“They come on stage and do their thing. It would be beautiful, and spectacular whether or not they were blind. I thnk that is what all the announcers and speakers are thinking as well, but they are so proud of themselves for thinking it, that their progressive good intentions get smothered in their heightened sense of self-worth. The man who organized the event, young with a blazing mustache, literally said to the audience, ‘I am so proud… of myself’ (this was while he was explaining that he never thought twice about including a blind group in the program) I couldn’t help laughing quietly in my seat.”

I’m no expert on the discourse surrounding visual impairment or any other kind of impairment for that matter, and so I will try as best as I can not to pass any judgment, even if it is a positive judgment, on any of my students that takes into account their visual abilities. I try to not to assume, expect, or overemphasize any thing. I’m here to learn and to do something that may be useful to someone. I said before than when you enter a classroom at Deepa Academy, it is easy to forget that the students you meet and interact with are blind or visually impaired. They act and perform the way students act and perform. That’s all I can say, the line is too thin to thread on for very long.

What is truly a damn, damn shame about India is that the ignorance about the differently abled is paired with a seriously twisted construction about the female gender. The ignorance exists everywhere in the world, and discriminating social constructions exist in most places as well, but the combination that the girls at Deepa Academy are faced with from the public must surely be daunting…..

Edits and more to come when time affords.

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