The drama unfolds ………

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Patan, Kathmandu, exhausted after spending the whole afternoon in Bal Vinod, a government school just round the corner from here. My name is James Lewis and I am one of two tour managers of BackPact, a theatre-education initiative run by students from the University of Cambridge. Today was our last day working in Nepal. We have been here for about 10 days. During that time we have twice visited Bal Bygan and Bal Vinod, two of the schools supported by Nepal School's Aid. We have been moving around North India and Nepal since July and have experienced a whole range of different educational environments. I think I speak for everybody in the team when I say that these two schools have been among the best we have visited. On the whole, the children we have worked with have been bright, enthusiastic and creative. We have also been delighted to encounter teachers eager to participate in and learn about the activities we have presented. Bashu, a NSA funded teacher at Bal Bigyan, was especially keen, and attended three of our four sessions. I am working on a resume of all the work we did with the children which I will send him in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully he will be able to continue to use some of the methods and activities that we have been experimenting with over the last few days.

So what exactly do we do? In the NSA schools, our workshops have run from 1.15 in the afternoon to about 5pm in the evening. The workshop starts with a 20 minute play performed by all members of the group. Our play is a simple story about a Prince who is abducted by a wicked music-hating witch. His princess, in a reversal of the fairy tale stereotype, sets off on a journey to save him. After some hiccups, she eventually achieves her goal, kills the witch (with a song) and returns home with the (traumatised) prince to live happily ever after. It is a light-hearted piece and it is patched together with various different theatrical techniques (song, tableau, sound-scape, rap, slap-stick, mime). In short, the rest of the afternoon is devoted to exploring these techniques.

We start with a few simple call and response games, which get gradually harder as the calls start to contradict the expected response. So if the caller shouts 'Walk!', the rest are expected to run. If the caller shouts 'Stop!', the rest are expected to go. You can imagine the confusions. Eventually, the caller is not one of us but a student, we step out and the game progresses independently. After this, we divide into four groups. Two of us taking approximately 20 children and we introduce increasingly more difficult activities and games. Often, the odd song gets exchanged one way or the other. After a mid afternoon cup of tea, the workshop becomes almost entirely led by the children, as we introduce tasks that encourage their own ideas. If there is time, the students perform some of what they have learnt to each other.

A highlight for us was this afternoon when a mini-performance was arranged for us at Bal Vinod. Two students from year 10 performed a short drama about a disagreement between a father and son. They had written the piece themselves, it was tense and dramatic and we enjoyed it very much. After that we were treated to a Nepali song, some impressive dance moves from a couple of younger students and some music-hall style physical comedy from the very talented school caretaker. A great moment to cap off what has been a fantastic few days. Thanks very much to both schools and everybody at NSA for facilitating this, it has been a great pleasure.

Cambridge students act the part!

Eight students from St Catherine's College, Cambridge University, work in a couple of our schools to introduce pupils and teachers to drama.

Tutors give "added value"

Though we say it ourselves, converting some of our salaried Nepali teachers in Kathmandu into NSA Tutors has been a masterstroke! Now, instead of working as teachers solely in their own schools, they do other work to spread our methods and learning for other teachers around all seven schools too. In addition we have gained extra trust from their respective communities who fund 50% of their salaries alongside us so as to continue their employment as in-school teachers.
They each have a three fold focus on Personal Development, Training Workshops, NSA Projects, with a major emphasis on the first of these. We are extra encouraging about their own personal learning in all sorts of areas such as teaching methods, child psychology, assessment strategies, English language learning, managing & reporting ............. Each month they write a monthly report to advise us of their work and achievements which in turn helps us to do a summary with a few examples on this blog.
Their Personal Development is a bit scattered at the moment, quite naturally, as nobody has ever placed so much emphasis on it with them. Perhaps the best example is of Babita who is focusing on various aspects of child psychology. This month she has examined the stages of child development in three different age bands across physical, social, emotional and cognitive aspects. All valuable stuff showing how age banded children should be approached differently.
They each have 2-3 projects: Bashu's current projects are aimed at helping us to prepare for next year's teacher development week and include sorting holiday schedules, identifying specific needs and getting nominations for various workshops from all seven schools. An additional topic requires him to become our expert on Global Schools Partnerships. Krishna's projects are subject specific and are related to the English and Maths curricula as well as creating advisory notes on setting up English language clubs in school. Babita's projects relate to teacher training and identifying the current national training curriculum in Nepal together with what the teachers in our seven schools think they need more of.
In the last few days they have collectively run another one day workshop on Child Centred Learning which follows on from the longer workshops run by our UK volunteers from Cumbria last April. The workshop was run for teachers from our two central Kathmandu schools, Kesh Chandra and Himalaya schools and the photo is of one of the sessions. As you can imagine, this is REAL added value work as they spread their skills across maybe 100 Nepali speaking teachers who could not attend our English medium workshops. Priceless!!

 

No learning without change.

The headline is a virtual motto for the technique of action learning, commonly applied to develop management skills in semi-experienced individuals. The basis of the technique is that individuals work on a project then meet regularly to share progress and learning, but also to subject themselves to intense questioning. There are often casualties too!
The reason for highlighting this is that we have just kicked off an action learning programme for the Head Teachers of our seven schools, all of whom are working on a project to create a five year Vision for their respective schools which is accepted with their staff, their management committee and their communities, and ....... meets the requirements of the government's School Sector Reform Plan! Not too much to ask then!!
We are fortunate to have a friend in Kathmandu, Professor Rajendra Suwal who is facilitating this programme for us and we have high hopes of completing it by December before we embark on the next project ........ values and ethics which in turn continues the development of leadership in our Head Teachers individually and schools generally.