Chapter 7

Teacher Cheetah

This article was written as part of my voluntary service with ijgd & weltwärts in Karnataka, India, from 2018 to 2019. As an assistant in a tent school project of the NGO FSL India, I had the opportunity to teach „Basic English“ to children aged 1 to 15 from immigrant families.

Short Disclaimer

The experience of being a teacher is certainly very exciting and new for me. In order to prevent misunderstandings in my following article, which can cause a wrong image about India, I want to clarify that my personal experience of working with children does not represent whole India. I make the difference between kids ‘behaviour in general, children’s behaviour in Karnataka and children’s behaviour particularly in my tent school. While my pupils in tent school have their own individual character, it is thoroughly possible that all the other pupils in Karnataka do not act the same way, even though we would assume that the general behaviour of children is different, again.

It is well-known that children are real monsters in finding ways to disobey the teacher. If concentration is completely gone, they quickly find out that I have a lack of experience in handling a class. This is usually the turning point of the lesson, when kids kid around and pretend, I am not in classroom anymore. Twenty pupils constantly dancing on my nerves is the result of not being severe and strict; as far as I know, this however concerns every child I want to teach English, not only the children in my tent school. But what am I supposed to do, when a small child with big brown eyes gives me a super cute and paralysing look?

In India annoying pupils can be hit by the teacher as a punishment. While it is not legal in Germany to strike children, this method is (rarely) used in Karnataka, though I have not seen any hard hitting yet. On the contrary, I have seen a lot of fights among children themselves. On the one hand, my four years old students practise hitting in tent school to admonish their classmates to be fair to each other. I was truly fascinated by a small kid stepping up to his big brother and hitting him softly in his face, because his big brother has cheekily stolen his Lego toys. The craziest thing about this situation was the fact that the big brother accepted and respected the punishment. This shows that my kids in tent school do have a certain understanding about what is right and wrong, and do not fight back.

On the other hand, they just fight like normal children without deep reflection. When I tried to solve the situation with a new strategy, I unfortunately provoked a contrary effect. I harshly took one of the two squabblers and lifted him up in the air in order to stop the hitting. Now, pupils just hit each other in order to be lifted up and getting a short adrenaline kick of flying up and down.

Anyway, my lessons are quite diversified, not because of my varied teaching schedule including the alphabet and … the alphabet, but because of the impressive creativity of my students. They are indeed unwilling to learn the boring palette of letters, but rather amuse themselves by inventing new fancy letters by drawing unexpected lines with chalk on the black board, which results in a mess later on. Sometimes I really must intervene in the creative phase of a child, if the chalk starts to cross the border of the black board and decides to write on the wall or on the floor. Seems like I ‘m a real spoilsport.

The cutest moments of my career as a teacher were when I showed some picture cards of random animals and new vocabulary to my students. As I was holding up an image of a cheetah, the classroom screamed the word „teacher! “. Now I know what small kids are thinking of me.

Sometimes the children desire to enter the tent school with strange objects, like a knife or matches. I was astonished watching armed soldiers fencing with dangerous equipment. My contact person explained that the children must work in the kitchen while their parents go to work and therefore it is not so unusual to catch an ambitious child running with a sharp gadget.

After a whole hour of productive self-occupation with either toys or abused exercise books, it is the most fun time for all kids: „Game-time! “ Firstly, I found out that my kids are increasingly good at playing memory. Whether a few kids are awesomely incredible in remembering cards or the rest of them are obvious cheaters – everybody has a fun time playing memory.

Secondly, I have witnessed a terrible weakness among my children. They are really bad in playing with puzzles. Undeniably impressive is the students ‘reaction, when two shapes do not fit together. A common tactic is to raise one’s hand and strike two puzzle parts until they suit.

In a nutshell, tent school is a fun challenge.

to be continued…