Priorities

I've had a frustrating past few weeks at school. There are several reasons for this, the most significant being that there is an inspection of the school happening this Friday, the 30th. It's not clear to me exactly who is doing the inspection--I think it's some people from the New Delhi Municipal Council, maybe some Navyug people or other Board of Ed bigwigs--but I know that it's a really big deal. The administrators at school are freaking out, having all kinds of meetings and trying to make sure the school is in tip top shape. Unfortunately, their idea of tip top shape is not exactly the same as mine. Before I knew about the inspection at our school, I had heard about the one at Tangi's school because the vice-principal had her bring in her laptop so she could do mad amounts of paperwork for them. She said the day of the inspection was awesome because the kids had been so scared into behaving well that she had very productive lessons.

I knew something was up at my school when all the bulletin boards started changing. The school consists of two square blocks with courtyards in the middle. On each side of each of the three floors of the blocks is a bulletin board, minus the floor with the primary school, making a total of twenty boards, plus a few extras here and there. After having the same displays up since I visited the school in August before I started, that looked like they were already well past their prime, the boards were suddenly cleared. Kids showed up outside to hang new drawings with themes and many a spelling mistake, on topics like global warming, corruption, and love for your parents. Pre-made borders for bulletin boards don't exist here, so the kids make do by cutting very large sheets of colored paper into long strips, accordion folding and cutting it to make one long snowflake that they place around the edges. In addition to the boards in the halls, each classroom contained two small and one large bulletin board which also had to be decorated. When I say the past week and a half has been dedicated to decorating bulletin boards, I mean that every single day since I came back from Mumbai I've had students borrowing my scissors, cutting paper during class and going back and forth between class and the supply room to get paper like ants scurrying to a picnic. For the past three days, the art teacher has been directing the decoration, with three tenth grade boys in tow. To be clear: these three boys spent three whole days out of their class and decorating bulletin boards. Because of the inspection.  The icing on the cake came yesterday when I was teaching a class of seventh graders. When I walked in, the class teacher was there, and the kids were in full decorating mode, drawing and snipping and gluing away. I told them they could keep working on their stuff as long as they were sitting in their seats and not talking (as much as they can reasonably not talk). I had planned a whole lesson about Hanukkah, and was excited to be able to share such a fun and important part of who I am to kids who have never even heard about Judaism at all. The kids were surprisingly interested once I started talking about it; I drew a timeline of BC and AD, illustrating how Jesus was born in the year zero and Judaism began almost 2,000 years before that, which is why I don't celebrate Christmas (the main point of confusion, as "all Americans celebrate Christmas"). I had busted out my menorah, passing it around and showing the kids, when the class teacher entered the room, with two girls who had asked to go see her. "Please let them do their decorating," she said, and left. As soon as she said that, the kids jumped out of their seats, took out either their crafting materials or their homework, and set about doing whatever they wanted. I was so frustrated--there was no way I would regain control of the class in time to finish the lesson, and the teacher had just made it clear to the students that my class was of no importance compared to the crucial task of decorating the bulletin board. I just sat down and stopped talking. After about five minutes, one girl, Anju, came up to me. "Ma'am," she said, "you're not going to teach us?" I gestured to the chaos around the classroom and told her there was no way. "But those girls aren't decorating," she said, pointing to three girls in the back who were unoccupied. I told her that if she wanted, they could pull chairs up to the teacher's desk and I would tell them the rest of the Hanukkah story. Sure enough, five or six girls came up and squeezed into a few chairs to hear me speak. It was so sweet and validating, which made the teacher's interruption that much more irritating. How can it be that in a school, making the board nice is more important than education?

Then on the metro on the way home, a lady wanted to give me her seat during rush hour, when people will elbow you in the face if it means they will get a precious place to sit down. I was confused until she said, loudly, in the packed train car, "But you're pregnant, aren't you?" Nuff said. Though what I should have done was taken her seat and then told her I wasn't.

Straight lines, class monitors in front

Anyway, another way of preparing for the inspection is making sure the assembly is totally up to the highest military standards. On Friday, the morning assembly, which rarely lasts more than 15 minutes and has never gone over 25 minutes since I've been there, went on for two hours, skipping the first two periods. Why, you might ask? First, every kid "not wearing proper uniform" was made to stand on the other end of the field. You might think this would be embarrassing, except that literally half the school had to move. Girls whose hair was in any style other than two braids were considered in improper uniform. While the rebel one-braiders and colored sneaker-wearers stood in separate lines, the remaining students responded to the art teacher's barked commands of "Attention! Stand at ease!" by shuffling their feet together and apart. Then, as they do every morning, they sang the national anthem. Only I guess they didn't do it with enough spirit because they were made to sing it again, louder this time. And then again. Apparently the third try was acceptable because it was the last of the day, and I hoped this signaled, as it usually did, the end of the assembly. Not so! The entire school was told to shift and stand in lines parallel to, rather than perpendicular to, the concrete. When this was still too squished, the students were moved again to stand perpendicular, only this time on the other end of the field where they could spread out. Each time they moved, fifteen minutes were spent getting the lines perfectly straight and in order from shortest to tallest students within the class. Eventually, the uniform rebels joined the others, leading to more line rearranging and standing. After an hour and a half, one of the teachers told me to just go inside and have tea, which I happily obliged. The war that had been waged on one braid had succeeded--every single girl came in on Monday with their hair in two braids, even the sixteen year olds who looked like they had forgotten how old they were when they did their hair that morning. This video shows the insane "exercises" the kids do as part of their We Are The Perfect School routine:

The emphasis on what I feel are superficial attributes of the school really drives me crazy. There are so many kids who are struggling, who want to learn or maybe don't want to because there is no effort to reach them. Kids who are deemed less smart or good or capable or willing, for whatever reason, are given up on without a second thought and taken out of class for three days to decorate boards instead of preparing for their (life determining) exams. There was a staff meeting Friday afternoon during eighth period in which every teacher was present. To be clear: every teacher in the school, on a normally scheduled day, left their classes to sit at this meeting. The first item on the agenda, I kid you not, was the principal going around to every class teacher with his observations about the boards in their classroom. "8th B, border incomplete. 9th A very nice job. 7th A incomplete. 6th C needs plastic covers," etc... I wanted to scream! Is it really possible that the inspectors will come and say, "Well the school is alright but the border on the bulletin board in 8th A wasn't quite finished," or, "Gee, we'd love to pass you but so many girls had their hair in only one braid!"It's so frustrating to feel like I have so much that I can and want to give and just can't because teachers are coming in to tell me to stop the lesson to let the kids decorate the board, or what happened in my class later in the day when the class teacher came in the middle to escort all the students to get inoculations (another weird cultural difference--kids get immunizations and check ups at school). There is such a different conception of teacher vs. student responsibilities. During the lunch period, 10th and 11th graders are made to patrol the halls, making sure kids stay outside. And don't get me wrong--anyone I worked with at Clear View can tell you that I love me a good bulletin board and will spend lots of time creating them. But to prioritize the things that are marginally related to the overall objective of the school, which I'm pretty sure is always education, is to do a disservice to the children, and it's hard for me to stomach.

Today during my free period, I walked by an empty room off the foyer and saw through the large window the majority of my 8th A class (which I LOVE). They motioned for me to come inside, where they were sitting with their books around them doing "copying" work, which consists of them writing down verbatim the answers given to them by teachers to the questions in the book. I sat cross-legged on the floor with them and chatted, especially with a few boys that are smart and sweet and goofy. I suddenly felt a wave of sadness when I thought of having to say goodbye to them in a few months, with little hope of seeing or hearing about them again. At one point, the principal walked by, and all the kids quickly hushed up, until they saw him smile at the scene of me on the floor schmoozing with them.  Later, when I was signing out for the day, he told me how nice it was to see me spending time with them like that, how good it was that they were getting to know me better. It was the first genuine piece of positive feedback I've ever received from him. In India, you win some, you lose some, and you do your best to keep your priorities straight in the meantime.