I'm sure future volunteers are wondering about the placement. There are three different placements here in Bir. Teaching English, childcare and medical. We currently have one volunteer in a medical placement, two in childcare, and everyone else is teaching.
In South Africa, volunteers acted mostly as teaching assistants. There was a dedicated classroom teacher and we were there to help. I know this led to some confusion on the part of a few volunteers, as some just sat at the back of the room all day and did very little, while others made an effort to be much more involved. For my part, I did a lot of one-on-one and small group remedial mathematics work. Here, things are run differently.
There are three monasteries here that have requested volunteers to teach. But in this case the volunteer is the classroom teacher and is expected to teach math and English independently. I am working on a separate post regarding the specifics of this (and my feelings about it), so I won't get too deep into the specifics at this point. The time spent in class each day varies between one and a half to three hours. So it's not a long day. I am currently working with one class from 10:30 - 12 and then assisting another volunteer with her class from 1:30-3. There used to be evening conversation classes for anyone who wished to practice English, but these have been presently discontinued due to the unseemly behaviour of previous volunteers.
Each class has between 8-12 students and they range widely in age. My morning class has boys from 10-18 years old. My afternoon class has boys ranging from 4-10. Both groups are very basic in both English and math, working at roughly a grade 1/2 level. There are some resource provided, such as workbooks and notebooks, but very little else is given in the way of curriculum or what they ought to be learning. (Again, I'm not going to discuss the specifics too much at this point.)
The younger boys are very much younger boys. They would rather be outside playing than stuck in a classroom. The older boys seem more interested in learning. Even still, classroom management is something that I would advise anyone coming to study up on, as it seems to have caught many volunteers flat-footed that even with a small number of students, there are still classroom issues to contend with.
In South Africa, volunteers acted mostly as teaching assistants. There was a dedicated classroom teacher and we were there to help. I know this led to some confusion on the part of a few volunteers, as some just sat at the back of the room all day and did very little, while others made an effort to be much more involved. For my part, I did a lot of one-on-one and small group remedial mathematics work. Here, things are run differently.
There are three monasteries here that have requested volunteers to teach. But in this case the volunteer is the classroom teacher and is expected to teach math and English independently. I am working on a separate post regarding the specifics of this (and my feelings about it), so I won't get too deep into the specifics at this point. The time spent in class each day varies between one and a half to three hours. So it's not a long day. I am currently working with one class from 10:30 - 12 and then assisting another volunteer with her class from 1:30-3. There used to be evening conversation classes for anyone who wished to practice English, but these have been presently discontinued due to the unseemly behaviour of previous volunteers.
Each class has between 8-12 students and they range widely in age. My morning class has boys from 10-18 years old. My afternoon class has boys ranging from 4-10. Both groups are very basic in both English and math, working at roughly a grade 1/2 level. There are some resource provided, such as workbooks and notebooks, but very little else is given in the way of curriculum or what they ought to be learning. (Again, I'm not going to discuss the specifics too much at this point.)
The younger boys are very much younger boys. They would rather be outside playing than stuck in a classroom. The older boys seem more interested in learning. Even still, classroom management is something that I would advise anyone coming to study up on, as it seems to have caught many volunteers flat-footed that even with a small number of students, there are still classroom issues to contend with.
The volunteer house is a four level private home. Meals are prepared three times a day, all vegetarian, but cleaning is left more to the volunteers. Meaning it's kind of like living at a frat house... There is a laundry machine, but mostly you'll wash your clothes by hand and hang them to dry. The house does have wifi on the main floor, but it doesn't extend to the bedrooms on the upper levels. Each bedroom has its own bathroom and sleeps to to three people in small, single beds. There is a shower in each bathroom, but the best you'll get is mildly warm water and most people use the bucket method to bathe. (Fill a big bucket with water and use a smaller one to pour it over you. Soap up and then pour more water to rinse.) Water is precious here, and this uses less than a traditional shower.
The village that consists of the Tibetan colony is small. With little cafés and shops to get a cheap meal or necessities. There isn't a lot of shopping, for that you're better off in Dharamsala or taking a day trip to one of the nearby places.
The village that consists of the Tibetan colony is small. With little cafés and shops to get a cheap meal or necessities. There isn't a lot of shopping, for that you're better off in Dharamsala or taking a day trip to one of the nearby places.