Latest news from Mirge from Phulkaji Lama

Kalidevi Nature Club

“Last week, ECCA training was good because students from four schools participated enthusiastically and eagerly. Herbal garden tools were distributed to two schools, Kalidevi who also made an Herbal Garden and Laligurans this time, and plants were added to the Majhgaun School.  

KHSS Nature Club

ECCA during the training conducted a proposal competition and KHSS Nature Club (NC) has won Rs 5000/- for proposal writing on Sanitation topics among the four schools. The topics were 1) Workshop program was given to students by teachers on sanitation around home, school, and where they live. 2) Purchasing Dust bins for each class room. 3) Making holes for waste collection. 4) Held rally from school ground and across the village to inform villagers about sanitation and posted notices to ask everyone to keep the environment clean by collecting waste around houses and shops.

Mana Maya conducted door to door program with the help of Kalidevi NC on Thursday selling WATASOL and informing villagers about the advantages of sanitation across the village and around the school. On Friday, she repeated the same program with the help of MLSS NC.”

Phulkaji’s reflections over the past 20 years’ of my involvement with Mirge

MSEIP Nature Clubs

Planning as a team

Thank you for developing the BlogSpot about MSEIP. You have written the story of MSEIP and how it was generated. So this makes me feel comfortable to keep in touch with community and ECCA for betterment of MSEIP in the future too. Now I feel more relaxed and comfortable seeing the changes in the leadership of children, youth. Everyone now sends their children to academic institutions such as schools and boarding schools compared to the 19 years ago. Back then, nobody could speak English, but now most youths speak English, villagers lacked knowledge about importance of education, but now they know.  In those days, schools, health post, sanitation (making toilets, using clean drinking water and collecting waste) were not done, but now they are done by the community. The numbers of SLC [School Leavers Certificate] who have passed, has increased in the village more than in 18-19 years ago. Some trekking guides followed my ideas and  they start to help in the community schools, health posts and other community sectors with the help of abroad social workers and INGs and NGOs. For example, Kaule Tamang guided "Classrooms in the Clouds UK" to MLSS to build school building and Mahesh has established boarding school with the help of "Chris and Dot" from UK.
In Putalikath HSS, one of trekking guides guided Europeans to construct school buildings for one hundred lakh (big money). I mean here I am proud that youths followed my ides. I just shared my relaxed emotions with you but I am not jealous of them. I thanked them for doing such actions for the community.

Seeing these changes in the community, I think I was the first to generate ideas and I heartily thank you for being a good partner of me to change the community. In the village now, people have schools, roads, academic youths, electricity and hardworking people in the community but no medical facilities and employment. But I want to see these two things too in the future for them, and then they will have quality life style. Anyway now, seeing these changes I feel relax and comfortable.

 Phulkaji Tamang Lama

New developments at KHSS

There have been some wonderful developments in Mirge this year since my last post. Kalidhunga Higher Secondary School has completed their new building for classes 1 – 3 and have been furbishing it with more modern, child centred equipment and materials. They have also adopted a new curriculum that includes more instruction in English Medium and better quality texts and teaching materials. This self-initiated and independent action is exactly what I have been working towards. It is an exciting development and I am even more motivated to support the teachers in developing better English skills so they can achieve their goals which essentially involve improving the baseline educational skills in the early years so that they have a better foundation for future educational successes.

 In addition, the most significant new initiative is the employment of a local young women to work as an ECCA field staff member. Her name is Man Maya Tamang and has completed her +2 (Year 12) and has been involved as an ECCA counsellor for this year and as such has worked alongside the trainers in our programs. Now she has been trained to take on quite an extensive proactive role in furthering the work of ECCA through the six schools we currently work with in the village. At the moment she is on 3 months’ probation and if she demonstrates effectiveness and shows promise then we will continue to employ her for as long as we have the funds. Stay tuned!

 

Finally, last week Bipin, our field trainer, a volunteer counsellor and Man Maya conducted a 5 day Nature Club program and I am keen to read their report. I will post news of the latest developments as soon as I get them. In fact I am becoming more and more excited because I can sense that our goals are being achieved albeit slowly. That's all for now -  exciting news eh!

2 Day THRASS literacy training held at Majhgaun Lower Secondary School

Training Room at MLSS

ECCA, Classrooms in the Clouds and I have embarked on a new round of teacher training since the 2011/12 trials. After much deliberation on the results of many needs assessments we decided to focus our attention on the early years and build a sound phonemic foundation in English pronunciation, reading and spelling skills. I chose the THRASS methodology because I have been successfully using it with ESL students for a number of years and its direct and explicit teaching approach was a perfect match to the Nepalese approach of teacher directed learning. I felt that the adoption of the new methodology might more be easily accepted if the approach was a little bit familiar.

Teachers from Mirge Cluster of Primary Schools

THRASS means ‘Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills’ and these skills are based on phonetics. In Nepal, reading has been taught using the ‘One Letter Makes One Sound Method’. Considering that there are 44 sounds in English and 26 letters in the alphabet no wonder only a small percentage of students have been successful in learning to read and spell in English, which is one of the core subjects in the national Curriculum.

In addition, throughout the public system poor teacher modelling of pronunciation has been a significant barrier to the acquisition of good speech. To address this problem, the THRASS program includes the use of a CD that not only helps consistently present excellent modelling of the sound sequences for the students, but also is an invaluable tool for teachers to use in improving their own pronunciation.

In all, six schools participated from the cluster of primary, lower secondary and secondary schools. Our key School Environment Improvement Program schools, Majhgaun, Kalidhunga and now Laliguran English Boarding School participated and we welcomed new schools, Yarsa, Janashramic, Kalidevi and Janashramadan to the training and joining our quest to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Mirge. Twenty teachers, including the Head teachers from each school who were present on the first day, enthusiastically embraced not only new skills but a totally new way to look at reading and spelling, namely the phonetic way.

Follow up trainings will be conducted over the next two years to support the skill development of the teachers and explore further effective implementation strategies for improving literacy.

However, to have a long term and sustainable improvement in education in Mirge more is required than merely training teachers in the use of more effective methodology, the teachers themselves need to improve their own standard of English. I address this challenge we have instigated a volunteer program and are ready now to accept volunteers to conduct English language classes for teachers, which will be conducted from the Majhgaun homestay library or at a more central point depending on participant demand. Unfortunately attracting volunteers is difficult and a continuous source of trainers is unreliable. Therefore, we have launched a new program to train Nepal locals to act as trainers.

Train the Trainer, as it is commonly known is the first step towards creating a more sustainable model of teacher improvement. First a small group of committed English teachers will undertake a self-directed pronunciation program in conjunction with a General English Course. Mohesh Prakin and Phulkaji Tamang will coordinate the program and maintain progress reports t me via email. This should take about one to two years to compete if the teachers work at it consistently. After the trainers reach a upper-intermediate or advanced standard they then can conduct English language programs at their own schools or from a central point.

Overall, through implementing THRASS, conducting refresher courses and training local trainers, we anticipate that the improvement of teaching will be significantly evident within three years and be reflected in the improvement of student attendance, enthusiasm, examination results and both teacher and student confidence in using English in communication.