May 4, 2012 - Panighatta

Panighatta Tea Factory Entrance

Tea spread out to dry

At the sorting machine

Returning to school

Power was still off when woke and remained of most of the day. Sarah and Nikki went for a 2 hour walk early in the morning. After breakfast many of us went to Mass at the local church.  It was First Friday, so the Catholic students attended along with many of the staff. Although the Mass was the same and we knew exactly where we were in the liturgy there were a few different elements.

·         The worshippers removed their shoes at the door.

·         Most of the students sat on mats on the floor.

·         A few sat on benches at the back of the Church.

·         The priest was barefoot.

·         The singing was accompanied  by various drums

·         The children willingly and loudly sang

·         Except for one incident where some boys were talking, they were exceptionally well behaved. (At the end of the school day they were kept behind where they were reprimanded.)

·         Background noise to the mass included cows lowing, hens squawking, and  goats bleating

On return to the school, we were introduced to the staff. In smaller groups, we talked about different teaching strategies. For example Les held an impromptu in-service that talked about the three part lesson, mind mapping, learning styles, and concept attainment. They dealt with a specific problem that had to do with difficulties students had with correct sentence order. Les suggested that each student in a group be given a word of a sentence. They would make a page size poster with the word. Students would then be asked to put themselves in correct sentence order.

From there we each dispersed to our assigned classes. In theory we were to observe, in practice we started teaching the classes almost immediately. Jan was dragooned into a moral science class. Les taught about rainfall types.  Jackie attempted to play cricket with the class 10. When students answered a question, they stood. They would remain standing until they were told to sit down.

After school we went for a walk into the local tea factory. Tea is taken in from the fields, chopped into finer particles, dried, processed, and sorted. The tea is then packaged for transportation. According to Jan she was out for a duck, but Michelle gave her an A for effort. Sarah taught a class 8 English Vocabulary class vowels by playing hangman. Michelle also taught a moral science class. She taught on the exceedingly ethical subject of toads. Natalie taught two periods of Physical Education and taught the students how to play tag. Nicky taught Math, life science, and a conversation class. After returning to the school, we had a nice chat with Sister Loyola who told us how she joined the Loreto sisters.