As described in my first entry, I participated in an internship at a school in Mumbai and worked there. The aim was to dance with the children and bring German culture closer to them. For this, I was provided with accommodation, transportation and food on site.
And these 6 weeks were truly an exciting experience! Not only because it was my first time being a teacher, but also because I could understand why people are the way they are here. After all, the roots of every culture lie in the education of children.
I still remember how after the first few days of school, I told Aline that all children in the world are the same and at that time I thought it would be easy. But it quickly became clear that it would be a challenging task for me to get used to the mentality of the children and the school routine. While all children are indeed the same, cultural differences become noticeable at a certain age.
I was at Ryan Global School in Andheri, Mumbai. It is one of 20 Christian schools and they are also present in other countries. Although not all students are Christians, Christianity is the guiding principle of these schools. Many students are Hindus and Muslims, so the school is closed on their holidays and often classes are held on Saturdays to make up for the missed days.
The basic aspects are comparable to schools in Germany, but there are certainly many differences. All students have to hand in their mobile phones at the reception in the mornings. English is spoken as a general rule. I also really appreciate that there are cleaners present throughout the school day, who ensure the cleanliness of the school building and support the teachers. The toilets in my school were sometimes horrifying! Here they wear turquoise saris as their "uniform". This makes the already beautiful hallways even more colorful :)
The 2nd floor, classes 2 and 3. Here we had a break room and spent a lot of time
On our first day, we were warmly welcomed at the morning assembly and received a card and a flower. (I still don't know how I'm going to transport this flower for the remaining days.. :D) The first few days were very exciting and went by quickly.
Early on, we agreed with the teachers that we would develop a final project and choreograph a welcome song, two prayer songs (from Finland/Germany) and two other dances for the sports day. At that time, I felt very limited in my freedom, as church songs were not necessarily the kind of songs I wanted to use to give the children an insight into jazz and modern dance. It felt more like they wanted to stick to their plan and the cultural exchange consisted of using German and Finnish songs. However, even there we were limited: we could not use "Meine Oma fährt im Hühnerstall Motorrad" because they couldn't play a song about a crazy grandma. At that moment, I wondered who in the audience would actually understand the lyrics.. well, whatever, we simply accepted the situation and told ourselves that we would make the best of it.
My school routine took some getting used to. The driver picked us up from the hotel every day at 7:30 and we arrived at the school around 8:30. Initially, we had to wait 2 weeks before we received a proper timetable after several inquiries. However, it was mostly useless as we often sat in the auditorium and waited to see which class would come next. I wonder how the students can get used to a regular schedule when the timetable varies every day and there are no fixed hours; this certainly doesn't create a good and stable learning atmosphere. It was often nerve-wracking for me, but it also forced me to be spontaneous. I eventually stopped planning the lessons specifically and just roughly determined what I wanted to achieve in the upcoming hour. I taught the classes together with Rianna from Finland. It was great to have someone else with me, as we could have more control over the children, gather more ideas, and if one of us was tired and exhausted, the other could step in and help. Here, everything is done at the last minute and hardly anything is planned in advance, there were countless situations that confirmed this. "We have a performance with 5 classes on Saturday? Oh, the choir rehearsal is on Wednesday, we will have enough time to sing and learn the dance steps. The 2 exchange teachers from Europe can help quickly. So, let's just cancel their classes. When should the sports day take place? It's on December 1st, no, let's move it to December 6th, no, let's postpone it to December 16th. This class doesn't have a teacher at the moment? Then they can have dance lessons with our interns. The number of groups varied greatly, sometimes there were 6 of us and sometimes there were about 50 students and teachers in one room. We mostly structured the lessons with a mix of independent work, guided teaching, and games. It was clear that it was a completely different teaching method for the children compared to what they were used to.
The 1st grade working on the task of visualizing the music they hear, afterwards we developed dance steps based on their drawings (e.g. if raindrops were painted, we showed raindrops with our fingers)
The children were often very hyper, shouted a lot, and often ran around wildly in the room. But there is a simple explanation for this: there are no breaks for them to let off steam and clear their minds. The breakfast break lasts for 10 minutes, there are no 5-minute breaks between classes to change rooms (they just do it as quickly as possible), and the lunch break is only 40 minutes long. There isn't much time for playing and running around if they also want to eat something.
Everything is hectic, and there is hardly any time for the students to rest and focus on themselves. When we did exercises in which the children were supposed to run freely around the room, they often looked at us with big eyes and didn't know what to do. They simply stood still. It was strange to see where we had to start working here.
Yelling a lot is normal here. If a teacher at our school made an announcement like they do here, the children would be quiet for the rest of the hour and wouldn't dare to chat. Here, it is normal for the children to talk in between while the teacher is speaking. This sometimes really annoyed me. The kids only know either total obedience or complete chaos. There is no middle ground, which often made improvisational work difficult. Nevertheless, I think that the children got somewhat used to it during this time, as I could see some progress. I was really happy about that. We also had dance lessons with a local dance teacher. His classes were strict and monotonous. When we watched this for the first time, we were not impressed. The kids didn't look happy and couldn't let themselves be carried away by the music for a moment. He was the perfect example of how the children were only taught total obedience again!
Students with physical and mental disabilities are integrated into the classes here. In principle, I think it's a good thing, as it allows the children to lose any fear of contact and learn and have fun together. However, it was sometimes an obstacle, especially with the children with intellectual disabilities, as they often disturbed the class loudly and hindered the others from learning. Sometimes it was difficult for me to explain something when one of the children was sitting at the drums and his drumming drowned out my voice. Nevertheless, I always found it wonderful to see how the children interacted with each other. For example, when the boy with disabilities walked through the dancing children, all the others tried to hold his hands and dance with him. We don't have that in Germany. In my school, I never had contact with people with disabilities, so I also had a small barrier in my mind. It loosened up a bit when I often served the disability groups at the zoo.
During our time there, Children's Day was celebrated. It was really celebrated and the teachers celebrated the students. I think it's nice that the children are praised and motivated in this way.
During the morning assembly, the birthday children were also called up on stage and sung to, and birthday cards were presented to them. These children were also allowed to come without uniforms on that day and wear whatever they wanted. I think it's a nice thing.
About the projects:
Since we worked with children ranging from kindergarten age to 12th grade and the groups sometimes consisted of 5 children, but sometimes also of 50 students, we had to design the lessons and the final projects differently.
The class with grades 6 to 12, each time was horrible because of the noise and because it took the students forever to line up. In addition, at this age, they are not necessarily super motivated.
Me with a small group of 1st graders. This was the only time it was possible to do a quiet breathing exercise with the children.
For the little ones (2-5 years old), we chose "So ein schöner Tag" by Tim Toupet. The song is perfect for the little ones as the steps are easy to understand and they can even hum and sing along.
Das Fliegerlied (So ein schöner Tag)
The youngest child in the school was just 2 years old and was in the kindergarten group that familiarizes the children with school life.
For the prayer song from Germany, I chose a terrible song. "Der Jesus-Tanz" (The Jesus Dance), I used to make fun of this song 2 years ago and now I'm dancing to it with the 2A class. But the kids love this song. It has a great, fast rhythm and also some parts to sing along to. The 3rd grade received a song from Finland and dances with a large cloth and umbrellas. I like how colorful it looks.
The remaining songs are from Finland. So, we both had the chance to choreograph the songs ourselves, but we also worked on some of them together.
A circle dance to a Finnish song
Regarding the sports day, we were not responsible for the higher grades, the PE teacher and the dance teacher took care of that. Certainly, for the 6th to 8th grades, it had to be something fast and active (there can't be anything slow): Zumba. The students were shown 6 dance steps and practised them for a whole 4 weeks. It was terrible to watch, as the kids hardly had any fun anymore and looked bored. The 9th to 12th grades were supposed to build human pyramids. But until now, there is no choreography for that. Last Friday, they said we should do chair aerobics with them. At that point, nothing shocked me anymore and I just accepted this absurd idea and laughed. The only problem was that we no longer had classes with them and now nothing happens. But that's not bad either. It's a shame that we won't see the sports day and the presentation anymore, but we will receive a video and on the last day of work, we had a dress rehearsal and had to give an interview. All in all, it was a great experience. I now know that I definitely won't become a teacher. It's a great job, but I can't imagine doing it for the rest of my life. I also came to the conclusion that I wouldn't have typical favorite children, but rather "hate children".. :D I will miss the children and also the nice teachers. But also the kind food lady who made fruit salad for us every day, even on request. I learned a lot, also about myself. I'm glad I was brave enough to say YES to India, despite everyone saying I shouldn't do it. It's good that I listened to myself and my feelings!
Another picture from the last day, when the assembly happened to take place at the end of the school day by chance. We were praised and wished good luck for the future. Everyone was sad that we were leaving.
