Schools - some observations, some comparisons

It seems funny now to think that one of the biggest worries I had about moving to the US was whether Puttachi would adjust to school. Would she understand the accents of the teachers and the students? Would she make friends easily, considering that she would be entering at a time when friendships have already been established? Would there be a period of adjustment, would I have to suspend all my work and stand by until she is settled in?

As it turns out, all my apprehensions were unfounded. She has no problem with the American accent. Probably due to the fact that kids are shuffled around between sections at every grade, she entered a class where all the kids were more or less new to each other. And so, she had a best friend by Day 2, and had exchanged mothers' phone numbers with her by Day 3.

After the first three days, I asked Puttachi what the most glaring difference was, between school in India and school in the US. She thought for a moment and said, "Our classroom here is so silent. I love it." Now that wasn't what I expected at all!

However, two weeks into school, she herself told me, "The biggest difference is that school here is very activity-ish. In India, we would just sit and listen to the teacher. Here, we DO a lot of things." There you have it, in a nutshell.

By the way, if you are wondering why her classroom in the US is so quiet, it is not because of the number of children in a class, because she has 30 kids in her class here, and she had 25 kids in one class in India. It is just that her teacher has devised some signs to tell each other to fall silent if they feel that the noise level has increased. It is a kind of self-regulation system.

Talking about self-regulating, there is another system her teacher Mrs A has in place, which she told us about when we went to the presentation that the teachers gave the parents last evening in what is known as "Back to School night". This is to reduce tattling and discourage tell-tales. If a child has a problem with somebody else, he or she has to do two things out of the dozen suggestions that have been put up on a chart on the board - which involves things like talking to the other child, etc. If those strategies don't work, the child has to write the complaint on a piece of paper and drop it into the complaint box. At the end of the day, Mrs A empties the complaint box, and deals with the more serious of the complaints. But more often than not, both the students in question would have forgotten about it entirely, or else, they would have already sorted out the problem! 

The teacher also has some coloured post-it notes on the board, and it works like a football game, where one instance of misbehaviour or irresponsibility means you get a yellow card, which has a loss of privilege associated with it, and two mistakes in a day means an orange card, meaning a further loss of some other privilege and so on, until a red card, which is the worst case. This, says the teacher, is to instil discipline in the kids. Puttachi, for instance, came back one day and said that she got a yellow card, which means she lost the opportunity to gain a "Well-done" sticker, because she forgot to put her chair up on her desk at the end of the day (to make it easy for the cleaning staff to clean up.)

They also have duties and responsibilities, about monitoring themselves and the rest of the class on various aspects, and there is a rotation of the responsibilities each week. For instance, this week, Puttachi is in charge of transporting the snack box basket, which post she begged for and got, and is very proud of.

As for the subjects themselves, I cannot do a comparative analysis yet, because classes in all subjects haven't started full swing. I do know that Puttachi is ahead in Math compared to what is being taught to the class now, but because the way they teach them is different, she is not getting bored. The kids analyse the problem, and the focus on many problems is on how to solve them, the approach, rather than the final answer. Besides, in some cases they are encouraged to formulate a question on their own, based on some data that they are given.

English is interesting, centred around a lot of activities. They use thesauruses in their work, and suggest composition topics to each other. They have to apply their brains for most of the things, and in many cases they can choose and they have control over what they want to do. For instance, homework for the last two weeks, consists of a list of twenty words, and the children have to do various things with those twenty words, selecting from a "Menu" that they are given. They can build a story, or just write them in capital letters, or write them backwards, or draw a picture and hide the words in the picture, and fun things like that. Puttachi chose to create silly sentences around the words, and write them all with her left hand, and think of rhyming words for them, etc. So it is nice, I guess, for them to be able to do what they want to, and at the level they are comfortable with. The basic idea is to get the children to be familiar with the words.

The children are also arranged around tables, six to each table, and they have a desk each which they are expected to keep neat and clean--homework is usually in sheets which they have to file responsibly in binders--these are things which make Puttachi swell with importance. :)

One teacher usually handles all the subjects at this grade - and this is crucial - this is where the teacher is of paramount importance. The teachers here are extremely invested in their job. There is no other option. Each class has a teacher who teaches those kids in their own way, and the number of resources and the amount of work they have to put in to make this happen--it makes my  head ache just to think about it. And that is why, I think, a good school is that important, and that is what makes for a good school district and that is why we are paying such high rents to stay in this school district!

One teacher for one class (in Puttachi's case, a different teacher comes in on Fridays) ensures a kind of bonding between the child and the teacher. The teacher is also much more informal, telling the kids about themselves, about how many children they have, where they are from, where they are going to for the long weekend, etc. In fact, Mrs A had to leave early one day to catch a flight, and after she left, the kids found a bunch of keys that the substitute teacher said look like suitcase keys, and Puttachi worried for the entire weekend about what if they were Mrs A's keys and whether she would be able to open her suitcases. She looks upon her teacher like a family member. Though she adored the teachers in her school in  India, this is at a different level. I think the classroom setup itself is like that.

I can see why people complain about the standards being very low here compared to India-- that children in India are learning far more than the students in the US. And I also feel that way sometimes, that it is like Puttachi is going backwards, esp in Math, but I do realize that the entire teaching system and intention here is different from what it is in India.

The above are just observations made after seeing Puttachi go to school for two weeks. And it is not the intention of this post to make comparisons and show up one method of schooling as the better one. As the year progresses, I'll be in a better position to comment, I think. But I find it immensely interesting to observe the difference, and how Puttachi is reacting to it.

School update (after 2 months)

Nearly two months after Puttachi started school, she is well-settled. Apparently, she cried from time to time during the first month, but not any more. She likes going to school, fussing only on rainy mornings when even I feel like chucking everything and curling up to go back to sleep.

When she gets back, she is bursting to tell me what she did, what they learnt, what so-and-so said, and what X did to Y, and of course, what snacks they were given, and how many helpings she took. (Yes, she takes multiple helpings!)

She is full of news about her classmates, telling me in detail who sits where, and who wears her hair in ponytails and who doesn't. I had no idea kids chat - after all, what can a bunch of three-year-olds talk about? But apparently, they do, because she tells me what each of her friends said to her.

Since I speak to her only in Kannada at home, there was a time when I worried slightly that she would have a problem at school. I feel so silly now. Not even two months have passed and she has picked up so much English that I would've found it impossible to believe it had I not seen it myself.

Thanks to school, she is obsessed with colouring. She doesn't want to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet or do anything else, but colour. A friendly autorickshaw guy said to her yesterday, "Child, study well, okay?" She got down and told me, "Amma, I will study well, but I will also draw and colour, okay?"

Looks like she's having a wonderful time at school, and I only hope this lasts for the entire duration of her education!

At the montessori house

I never thought it would happen - but it did. I drop Puttachi at her Montessori school and she stays there happily, and I pick her up at the end of the day!

Up-side: I get a lot of work done in the morning, I can put my feet up, drink a 10 30 cup of tea...
Down-side: I haven't read a word of any book since Monday!

How the transition happened:

Groundwork: As I had told you before, I had been sitting outside at the school for quite a long time, and I knew for sure that Puttachi was entirely comfortable. I had a talk with the head of the school last Friday, and she agreed with me that it was time to try and leave Puttachi alone at school. She told me that they would try and distract and engage Puttachi if she cried, but warned me that if she became uncontrollable, they would call me back.

After we got back home, last Friday, I casually dropped the idea to Puttachi that I would leave her at school and come home, starting Monday. I used the words "When I leave you at school...." I used it often when speaking to S~ too, in a matter-of-fact tone, until I was certain that Puttachi had understood what was to come. I also told her that I would come back home and make Kesaribhath for her. (She doesn't even like Kesaribhath, she just has a fancy for it.)

Yet, inspite of all this, I had nightmares about Puttachi bawling and me walking away. I wondered if I could go through with it - and I nearly backed out at the last moment.

What happened on Monday: I set out the ingredients of Kesaribhath on the kitchen counter and showed it to Puttachi, telling her htat I would make it after I left her at school, and she accepted it calmly.

While I was locking the door while leaving for school, she said, "Amma, don't leave me!"
I looked at her questioningly, she clarified, "I meant, don't leave me at home and go, but you can leave me at the montessori and come back."

I took it as a good sign. when we got to the school, I opened the gate and started walking in, when she said, "Oh, are you coming inside? I thought you would leave me at the gate." My jaw dropped.

When we went in and I found the teachers, I said, "Ok, Puttachi, bye," as she started going inside. She suddenly stopped and turned. "Wait, Amma!"
"Yes?" I said, thinking, "Uh oh!"
But she said, "I want to hug you!"
She hugged me, kissed me on each cheek, and said, "Ok, bye, thank you, go home, come back later, ok?" And she bounded in without a backward glance.

I could have screamed for joy. We had actually done it without making her cry!

I am hoping that now that she is used to the idea of going to a school, leaving her at the big school will also be easy. If that can also be accomplished without too many tears, nothing like it.

Still to go: Puttachi is not very comfortable with the last activity of the day - sitting in a group and learning songs. Though she loves songs, something about that setup bothers her - she would cry even during the time I was sitting there. And she continues that even now. So I have to go half an hour early, just at the moment that she starts getting jittery.

Let's see how we overcome this little hurdle! :)

Big School

And along with the lookout for a suitable playhome, the hunt for the perfect Big School was happening too. I had done a bit of research and shortlisted two schols X and Y as being suitable. (Teaching, teaching methods, values, distance, etc being the criteria.) I made the necessary enquiries and applied to both the schools. I also applied to school Z because it is a traditionally sought after school ;)

Puttachi gained admission in school Z first, but since that wasn't our preference, we waited.

Schools X and Y balanced out kind of evenly, and I would probably have been in a fix if we had heard from both of them at the same time. But as it happened, school X contacted us first, took a 1-minute interview in which Puttachi was in her element, and got back to us the next day to tell us that Puttachi was through.

So I made some more inquiries, talked to parents with children studying in the school, and came to the conclusion that this school is probably best suited to what we want for Puttachi, and so today we paid the fees, and she is in.

So there you go! My little baby will go to a Big School starting this June.

School Time!

And so, that was the longest break that I have ever taken from blogging. Wasn't intentional, no.

So what's been happening? A lot, actually. For one, Puttachi's been going to a Montessori centre. I wasn't really very keen on sending her to school before she turned three. But there was only so much I could do for her - I felt she needed more stimulation than I could provide. Empty, directionless mornings made her very restless and we decided that she ought to go to school. She has just turned 2 and a half, by the way.

So I scouted around a bit for good playhomes in our area, and zeroed in on this one for many reasons. (You can write to me if you need to know what to look for while selecting a playhome/playschool. I will tell you what little I know.) One of the many nice things about this place is that you can go and sit there for as long as you want, as many days as you want, until the child is comfortable. That appealed to me.

The first week was great - she went, was absorbed in play, and it looked like it would just need another week until the time Puttachi would walk in, wave goodbye to me and disappear inside without a backward glance. But just then, both Puttachi and I fell sick with this really strong viral flu that had us out of circulation for two weeks. So when I took her back to school after two weeks, she clung to me, and refused to even go inside. At home, she would say that she wanted to go, but once there, she stuck to me. The teachers told me that this behaviour was quite normal after a break, especially when it was due to illness. I persisted, and I go and sit there for all the three hours.

It has paid off. She is now comfortable, is interacting with the other kids and is doing much of her work herself. The only problem is that she still wants me around. She even comes out from time to time to check if I am sitting outside. The teacher has assured me that a day will come very soon when she herself will tell me to go home. I am waiting. But meanwhile, I finish my cooking in a rush in the morning and I go and sit at that montessori centre and read for three glorious, uninterrupted hours.

You can expect many book reviews shortly!