Miss Maia the Teacher

November 7, 2008
Sorry that it has been so long since my last update, there was nothing really exciting to report, but I was kept busy. I started teaching a couple more classes. I finally started my 10th grade tutoring on Monday. I was holding off because one of the three was not coming to school because he burned his hand during Diwali, but he is feeling better now and is back in school. My goal is to get them ready for their 10th class exam, which determines if they graduate or not and if the local Junior College will accept them. Once I started them, Srilata (Ratnam’s niece) joined the classes, so that she can take her 10th class exam again this year. I have mostly been working on Reading Comprehension, because that is basically 75% of the exam. Even though this is basically the blind leading the blind, I have taken so many class, that even if I can’t put the tutors advice into practice, maybe they can. I also added some more classes to the computers. Now 5th, 6th, and 7th are also getting the chance to learn to type. Luckily, 9th class has been able to help with both my 5th and 6th class, so that they can understand me and so that I can have some more eyes and ears. One set back was that they typing program can only have 5 names as users, so by the time 5th class got to class, a lot of the computers had maxed out. Luckily the older classes are quite small, so a couple of computer still had space and there were just enough so that only one group had to have three girls in it while the rest had two. The younger classes are doing quite well, but I have to remind the 9th class every so often that they started out slowly too and to not rush them. While I was in class, the 9th class asked me if I could be their English grammar teacher. Their teacher was the Headmaster, who had a stoke a month ago, so their Social Studies teacher has been working with them on other aspects that they need to learn, and I have been working with them on Parts of Speech and punctuation. Right now I have a class every period and after school, which is keeping me busy. And then after school I have to come up with lesson plans. The math tutoring is a lot easier because I can just work from their text book, but there is no really test book for either 10th or 9th because they are doing it in their normal English classes, meaning I have to come up with the lesson and the materials. The web has been quite helpful though, with practice grammar exercises and past 10th class exams that I can use the stories from to get the 10th class prepared for the type and layout they are going to see in March. Today I am hopefully going to meet up with TT, and really good friend of my uncle, who lives just out side of Hyderabad. The only problem is that it is on the opposite side of Hyderabad, so it is over an hour away. He offered that I stay over, to make the trip worth it, so I will get back tomorrow afternoon. I am really excited. It will be nice to be around people I can really talk to, and also he has tickets for his whole family and me to go see the new James Bond movie that comes out today, which should be fun. I will let you know how it goes.