On Thursday, our group went to the school to help tutor the children. I was talking to one of the coordinators today how helpful it is to have so many volunteers here during the summer. The volunteers come right after the children have a 1.5 month break where they return home to their colonies and don't speak much English. So when they return, their English can be pretty rusty. Having so many volunteers that they have to speak English to helps them get back on track a little faster!
Before I came to Rising Star, I talked with my friend Amy (who is the former Executive Director of RSO) about what it is RSO is doing here. And she told me that children that learn English in India are 500 times more likely to get a good job. 500 times! Rising Star is really helping these children to have a better future. Without this education, the chances that they would be anything other than beggars would be so slim.
Tutoring was hard work. We had 4 40-minute sessions in the morning before lunch and 2 40-minute sessions in the afternoon.
Trying to get these children to pay attention for 40 minutes straight was not an easy tasks! Especially with the younger ones.
This was Rokth - one of my better students for the day. But after about 25-30 minutes, he was done practicing sounding out words!
Then I had Ajay and Kartich. Trying to tutor 2 children at once was definitely not easy! And it was so hard to get them to read! After that we had a quick break and my morning ending with Michael and Gokul.
Michael was difficult. He had a hard time reading and he just didn't want to do it! And I was running out of ways to get him to work on his reading. It was exhausting. Gokul, however, was great. He said to me, "You read one page, I read one page!" - I was all for it if it was going to keep his attention.
And it worked. He read his pages very well and when it was my turn to read, he would snuggle up to me a lot and listened.
Then it was time to eat lunch! One of the fun things about going to the school to do tutoring is that we get to eat with the kids during their lunch time!
They all grab a tin pan and get their food dished into it - rice and some kind of sauce of course. And then everyone sits on the floor and eats with their hands!
After cleaning our plates, we hung out behind the school until the next bell ran. These 2 cute little ones came up to me and said "Auntie, Auntie, Up, Up"
And they did not want to let go when it was time to go to class! I had to practically peel them off me! How adorable are they???
Then it was back to class to do more tutoring! We then got to tutor some Math! I was able to tutor Trisha and Tikshore! I realized what they struggle with most is the word problems. Which makes a lot of sense since English is there second language. I could tell that Trisha was very good at math. But she just had a hard time with understanding what the word problems were asking.
My last student was David. We read a book together and he did so well. He wasn't as fast as the other readers in the room who all finished before him. But he probably understood the story better then them. I was just so proud of him. He would say a word he was unsure of and then look at me to see if it was right. When I would nod my head, I loved seeing how happy he was to be getting it right.
It was definitely a tough day. Tutoring young children is kind of draining. But it was so rewarding. These students need one on one time. It's really too bad there aren't more volunteers throughout the whole year to give them more of that.
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Location:Sirungozhi Rd,,India
