Class Three

So we struck up this agreement, Prerna, my co-teacher and I. We will teach Prerna English, and she will teach us Hindi. Prerna, a beautiful young lady of about sixteen is the most advanced in our class. (Her name pronounced with a long "E" and somewhat silent "R". She says her name beautifully. My western accent transforms it to a pharmaceutical company.)She has had at least a decade of schooling, completed her "ten plus two" she called it, and hopes to take the university entrance exam in the spring.

Today, Prerna taught us how to say "What are you doing?" in Hindi, and we reviewed the past tense so that she could correctly say, "I went to a dance party this weekend." We've had class for three sessions now, and we're off to a good start.

While Prerna is focused on entrance exams, the other seven women in the class want to learn how to use the basic English they've mastered. Their vocabulary includes rudimentary phrases like "One fish, two fish, red fish blue fish," but not essential ones like, "Where is the bathroom?" or "Please say it again." The school didn't provide a curriculum for our lessons, but no worries, we've got a conversational English/Hindi guide, and believe that those chicas will be able to get around a bank or airport in about five weeks' time.

The girls are diligent and fearless with their attempt at rowdy, unfamiliar English sounds. Where Hindi seems to flow like a wave of water off the tongue, with tilts of sound in between syllables, English is a sound produced on an assembly line and they struggle to work the machines to make the "V" and "F" sounds. I'm doing the "white man's overbite" big time to emphasize the "F" sound in "fish" is made.
Though I taught high school history to uber-cool teenagers, I'm not afraid to invoke elementary theatrics to get the point across. Aren't we reading Dr. Seuss? (Gandhi--and I mean Indira--will come later in the session).

Today's lesson focused on using the verb "to have" accompanied by the useful phrase "May I?" By the end of the lesson, we were asking to please have everything within physical reach. As well, most of the ladies picked up "See you tomorrow."

Oh, and here's a cute story. To reach the center where we hold class, we walk through the main road of the slum (of course, being a PC American, I don't like calling it a slum, but that's what they're called here), and pass nearly everyone who lives there. Often, we arrive earlier than the coordinator, and stand around for a few minutes waiting for her. This morning, a curious little girl peeked her head round the gate to get a look at us, my co-teacher and I. And I looked at her, then looked away. And then looked back at a crowd of eight very small, very curious residents. I pulled out my camera and they dutifully arranged themselves in rows for a "class picture."

A link to what UNICEF says about Educating Girls in India.