First Week at Rishi Valley

My first week at Rishi Valley has come and gone, and I haven’t been blogging as enthusiastically as I expected. I’ve been reading a lot, though, so I guess that’s my excuse, along with settling into my new home.

I arrived at Rishi Valley on Thursday of last week, and was quite impressed with the surroundings: gorgeous, rocky hills all around, lush green campus, intelligent children running about, friendly faculty to talk to at meals. (Note: the food here isn’t spicy, which is a bit of a let down. It is, however, much easier on my stomach and I have had no tummy issues whatsoever here. Huzzah!) Here’s a break-down of what I’ve done so far.

Thursday – Saturday: the Rishi Valley School Olympics
The entire campus (our Rural Education Center included) participated in these “Olympics”, which were a series of sporting competitions among the kids. The campus has at least two soccer pitches (“fields” in “American”), a hockey pitch, tennis courts, two basketball courts, badminton courts (indoor and out), volleyball courts, etc. I live in a fancy place! The Olympics also included the three steps for winners and the two runners-up, all Olympic style. There was also a large ceremony, where someone ran down the aforementioned hill with a burning torch and lit an even larger torch to signify opening. Kids + fire = awesome.

During the Olympics, I noticed that some stuff they do in India is much closer to Russia than it is to America (for example, giving kids lit torches). The dances and performances by each class were much more elaborate than they would be in America, and you could see the teachers worked extremely hard to put everything together (American teachers work super hard as well, it just seems that it’s a difference in style). Also, there was an event called a “cock-fight”, in which the kids grab one leg with the opposite arm and the other arm, they have to place on their shoulder (opposite of the said arm). Then they jump around on one foot and smash into each other, trying to get the others to fall. Pretty fantastic spectacle, which would definitely be deemed far too unsafe in America. Also, they had high jump and long jump, which was really intense: some kids jumped more than twice their height!

The Olympics were fun to watch, but also made me a bit restless, because I had no idea who my co-workers were or what I was supposed to do. Since I came here for the foremost purpose of working/learning, it made me feel anxious that I was doing none of that, and instead watching some kids run around. But no matter. I caught up on some sleep and started reading some Voinovich (irrelevant note: I should really be reading him in Russian – it seems that if I translate what I read in my head back into Russian, it’s funnier).

Sunday: Off-day
There’s no work on Sundays, as far as I can tell (unless we have visitors for training), so I bummed around, slept in for the first time in India (every day I have to be up at 6:20 or 7:20 to make it to breakfast on time – the difference is whether I eat with the juniors [earlier, but more pleasant/quiet/roomy] or seniors [the only perk being that it gets me an extra hour of sleep], so I don’t get to sleep in, except on Sundays, where I skip breakfast altogether). I also went into town, Madanapalle, by auto-rickshaw and bus with Kala, a co-worker to pick up some essentials: a clock for the room, plug adapters to be able to recharge all my electronics, and some Indian outfits. This was a pretty fun outing, and Kala is really cool. She’s around my age and has been working on developing the English curriculum. Yay for making Indian friends!

Monday: Chittoor to register with immigration
On Monday, I had junior breakfast and right after got into a car to go to Chittoor. Chittoor is the district capital, and I have to get some paperwork to ensure that my stay in India is legal. It’s about two and a half hours each way driving. India is all about paperwork (which always includes a color photo requirement, which is a bit weird to me), and the process of registering was quite long, convoluted, and included a lot of raised voiced. I wasn’t sure what was going on, because a man from the school came with me and pretty much took care of everything. What he didn’t take care of was the last piece of paperwork that I needed to be able to buy a phone, and when I failed at getting one on the way back from Chittoor, I got pretty upset. Bah-humbug. I also had Indian food in a restaurant that was a) spicy and b) had mushrooms in it. And we got naan. Win!

Tuesday: My first day of work
Tuesday was supposed to be my first day of work, which made me very excited. When I showed up at the office (the Rural Education Center (REC) office this time, and not the main school one), I was led over to a closet near my room and given about 500 pages to read about the multi-grade multi-level (MGML) methodology. I was told that I should read it all today, because tomorrow there would be a site visit and lots of work! I mostly spent the day reading. I did get the last document needed to obtain a phone and went into town to procure said phone (success! I also read in the car a lot, so I was only “not working” for a little bit). Lots of reading and lots of insight.

Wednesday: My first day of work
I thought that on this day, I would finally get my hands dirty. After having breakfast, I met Venu and Raju in the office (REC) and they presented a Powerpoint about MGML to me and a guest from Chennai named Moses. After the presentation, we got in a car and went to visit a village school (one of the 11 satellite schools that the REC runs), where we were further briefed on the methodology and got to observe the classroom. The MGML is highly impressive in practice! (I’ll make sure to write about curriculum details a bit later.) When we came back, it was almost time for lunch, and while Moses had a meeting with Rao (the head cheese), I was told to go to lunch and that I had the rest of the day to myself. So…not really working – just seeing more stuff. I did get to see a fun Indian fact in practice, though: India is all about hierarchy, and you have to go through a lot of people to get to the head cheese. I do have to say the highlight of my day was when Raju was going over the presentation and he said, “We like to partner more with other countries. For example, I think we’re going to work with Ghana on taking the MGML curriculum there.” To which I replied, “Oh, I actually have a handful of contacts in Ghana.” And here’s the best part: Raju says, “I know. That’s one of the reasons we hired you.” Um…BALLER. I frickin’ LOVE Ghana, and if I get to go there with the team, I will be more than ecstatic. Happiness all around.

Thursday: My first day of work, I really hope this time
But no, not really. Thursday, I came into the REC office and was told that I could have some time to sit on the internet in the computer lab (we have a really fancy computer lab with pretty new computers (all flat screen monitors) with high-speed internet and Linux (edubuntu) installed on all of them – baller), while Venu figured out what was there for me to do (the hierarchy goes, from top to bottom: Rao  Raju  Venu). He also told me to go watch a YouTube video about how the state of Tamil Nadu (just to the south of us) adopted the MGML methodology for all of its government schools, 37500 in total! After I was done with the video, I was supposed to report back for discussion, except when that happened, there was no one to report to, because Venu had gone to a meeting somewhere. Um…fail? Since I’m finishing up grad school applications, I wasn’t too upset and just worked on those, instead. At 2pm, I got to go to another village school to check out an environmental science lesson (the previous observation was for Telugu language class), which was quite insightful, but only occupied half an hour of my time.

On Thursday, I also played with a bunch of the village kids in the afternoon. We have a village school here on our REC campus, and once school was out, I got schooled in soccer by two little boys, and then played volleyball (which I totally rocked, btw) with a group of people. It was pretty awesome. There was a definite language barrier, but I think everyone involved had a lot of fun. It also gave me a breath of fresh air and reminded me of why I’m here and how much I love hangin’ out with kids. Kids are so awesome. Win.

Friday: My first day of work, seriously
On Friday, a group from Nepal came to RIVER (another name for the Rural Education Center – Rishi Valley institute for Educational Resources – sometimes Indian acronyms don’t really follow standard procedure) along with three guys from Hyderabad (the capital of our state, Andhra Pradesh). Oh, fun irrelevant aside: in Indian languages, they usually stress the first syllable, so when in doubt for pronunciation, stress the first vowel! Anyway, on Friday, we really did have a full itinerary of things to do: presentations, movies, school visits, and an afternoon trip to Horsely Hills, a British summer resort. It was exciting to actually do work! Kind of! I mean, it was still a lot of observing and not at all doing anything, but it still felt like work (in the way that this was essential for me to do before I start doing stuff). We also got to see a math class (which rounded out my observations: village schools teach Telugu, math, and environmental science, and I’ve already seen all three! Huzzah!), which was really nice – they used some innovative strategies, and I was, once again, impressed. I’m really liking this MGML curriculum more and more each day and feel like every school should get on board! Wee!

Saturday: My second day of work!
Saturday was quite long – we watched a movie, then had long discussions with the Raos (they’re a power couple!) about the methodology, its challenges, implementation strategies, etc. Really awesome, insightful stuff. I also got a meeting with the Raos on Tuesday to go over all the questions I need to ask them (for example: costs of the program, how much it costs to maintain a single school, as well as, what will I be doing here for the next 10 months, and how much does my rent cost, along with some others). I am excited for this meeting. And talking with the Nepal group and the Andhra Pradesh guys was insightful and gave me some new contacts and new insights (I knew very little about Nepal/education in Nepal, and now I know more!). Most people in the group (both Nepali and Indian) worked for World Education, so that’s another organization I learned about, which was also interesting. (Oh, and I got some feedback on working with UNICEF, since I might potentially work with them one day, and working with Room to Read, since John Wood is a Northwestern alum. Good things to know!) Good day! And I feel like I might be an actual benefit to the REC team sometime soon, which is encouraging and exciting!

For Sunday, I have plans to catch up on sleep (still not used at getting up so early in the morning!) and finishing all of the grad school applications due next month! Monday, I should be briefed about the English curriculum development initiative, and perhaps start sitting in on/contributing to those meetings. Tuesday, I at least have the meetings with the Raos (and I think after I figure out what’s going on with the English curriculum, I will participate in that daily, as I see that group working every day right next door to me). So…yay! A good first week! (Especially the last bit, where I got to do some work! Win.)