A Conversation with an English Teacher at Hills :- by Sweta
Image credit: Lens Tales (Nishan & Garima)
She says no body will believe she going to the hills where mobile networks wouldn’t reach, where narrow roads will take her away from her home and her family to somewhere unreachable from technology she is enjoying at her home town Kathmandu. People would rather suggest her to go abroad as other hundreds and thousands of Nepalese who fly away for better future of themselves. But here is Laxmi Khatri, who is breaking away the tradition that her friends and family would do and going to somewhere to “teach”. Nepal is somewhere, where teaching job is the most unwanted job as it pays less, facilities are less and may be it is the last option one would do. But it is not same for people like Laxmi, who is young, energetic and courageous to go to the hills, leaving a development career in Kathmandu and start a completely different career as a teacher in the remotest area of Nepal as a Teach For Nepal fellow. Teach For Nepal is working with young, energetic graduates like Laxmi to help enriching teaching in Nepal and adding a brick to the Nepali academia by targeting remotest parts of Nepal.
Meet Wonderful English Teacher Laxmi who is trying hard to Kill the Ghost of English in students at remote
Bidhyadishwori Higher Secondary School at Ashrang in Lalitpur where she teaches 130 students a day from Grade 7-10 and adding up the extra hours of extra classes is a situated at place without mobile network, without facility of road and without any other enjoyment or entertainment. But what entertains her most is teaching a Monstrous subject that is English.
So, what kind of child psychology is there at school, Laxmi? While I pose this question to Laxmi, she frowns and says that “they are unmotivated in every aspect, family, society, teaching and also a problem of caste differences lies there”. She further adds that “English is a Monster for them, I don’t know why they fear the subject so much and who demoralize them”. For, Laxmi it was strange when she didn’t have any kind of privacy and was living at a student’s home in an open area. This definitely reminded her of home and felt sad but she says while she remembers how her students walk for three hours in the ropes, through the waters to reach school, her problem feels nothing. “I feel even more motivated from the stories of children and want to teach them as much as I can and contribute to their career,” Laxmi says it feeling achieved.
Laxmi adds about how community praises her work as a “lady teacher”, who comes in shirt and pant and teaches English. She says “For me the achievement when these students can write a single sentence in English”. She adds, “as a teacher I want to together kill that monster with my students”. She is glad that Teach For Nepal became a medium through which she could do so much to build future of more than hundred children in the remote.
Let’s hear more from Laxmi from this video: