Our students having a great time dancing after the Final Assembly
It’s really hard to believe, but our first year at
Lillyfield Academy has come to a close.
It’s also so hard to believe that it has been so long since I have
posted anything here. Please forgive
me. The school pretty much consumed me
full time and I found that I never got a chance to catch my breath let alone
write a post. Now that we have a break,
I have a bit of a chance to do both.
To celebrate the end of the year we had a Final Assembly on the last day of school. It was a fun time to enjoy everyone's success in the past year.
Me giving the welcome address at our Final Assembly
Students praying during Final Assembly
Class Nursery saying nursery rhymes with the help of some Class 2 and 3 students
All our students singing some action songs
Giving awards to the students
This year went really well.
We had 16 students in Classes Nursery-3.
The students came in knowing little English, misbehaving (mostly because
they didn’t understand anything), and at first I felt like there was no way they
were going to learn anything. Slowly
they started understanding, I started to figure out HOW to teach (this is my
first time really teaching anything), and in the end they all made really good
progress. We had two AMAZING teachers to
help me out. They are both well experienced
in teaching school in India which was awesome since I had only ever experienced
school in the west. We were so blessed
to have them with us this year. They
came to us after much prayer and after our school year had already started, but
it is clear to see that God provided us with exactly the people we needed for
the job. They did an incredible job this
year and have assured us that they will be teaching with us again next year as
well!
Our awesome teachers - Reena Miss and Sabina Miss
One of the main comments we received from parents and others
is how good the students’ English is.
Students in other English schools learn English, but are often hesitant
to use it outside of school and would have great difficulty conversing with
someone from the west because their classes are taught by non-native English
speakers. Our students, however, gained
confidence in their English skills through much listening and use at school. They also got exposed to a wide variety of
accents as our other two teachers are non-native English speakers. We have several reports of our students
talking with each other in English outside of school in their play and as they
are walking to and from school. Such a
good sign of their success!
One of the other main comments we received was how much the
students improved in their Nepali reading and writing skills. This, of course, is something that I can take
NO credit for. Our other two teachers
did a fantastic job teaching Nepali to our students and the students’ parents
really took notice of the improvement.
This year was one for me to observe and understand the
culture and traditions in schooling over here so that we might improve on some
things which are lacking while not throwing out those things which are already
done well. School over is quite different
than in the west. The main difference is
that students learn primarily by memorizing questions and answers (that the
teachers give them) so that they can rewrite the answers word for word on the
exam. At first to us westerners this
looks like a terrible way to learn, but I’ve come to realize that, while it
certainly has its downsides, the memory capacity of the students over here is
absolutely incredible. I have seen
student memorize dozens of full paragraphs of information and write it exactly
word for word. The drawbacks, however,
are clear once you ask them to explain what it means or to come up with their
own answers to questions – for the most part, they can’t! My goal is not to make our school entirely
‘western’ but to implement some of the methods we use in the west to help
students with English comprehension and with their reasoning and critical
thinking skills. I hope to slowly, over
the next few years, begin to make slight changes to the way things are done. Hopefully we will, at some point, achieve a
happy mix of the two styles.
Our goals for next year are to continue to give our students
good-quality education while hopefully being able to grow our school. This year our school went from Class Nursery
to Class 3 and we hope to add Class 4 next year. We need more students to be able to continue
to pay our bills, so we are praying that God would provide us with all the
students we need, but not more than we can handle :)
Aside from all the school work we have been busy with, we’ve
also been cooking up something else. As
of now I’m 29 weeks pregnant and we hope to be welcoming our baby Sherpa
sometime at the beginning of March 2015!!!!
This has certainly been a busy year for us! The pregnancy is going well and I haven’t
been sick or had any other complications.
I was able to finish out the school year with no problems and hope to
teach the first week or so of the next school year as well, providing I’m still
feeling good in February. We don’t know
if it’s a boy or girl since it’s illegal here to find out the gender, but we’re
SO excited and can’t wait to meet our little son or daughter!
Well, that’s pretty much what has been going on over
here! Thank you to all of you who have
helped with our school through donations, encouragement, prayer, etc. We really appreciate it and are so thankful
to each and every one of you! We would
greatly appreciate your prayers for the coming school year as well as for the
new addition to our family. Thank you!
