Settling in and Preparing for the Classroom

Hello, everyone! I'm still catching up with myself, and I have more written but I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll post the next installment tomorrow or in a couple of days. The rain is pouring outside my window as I write this, and my desk is cluttered with origami-as-procrastination, art teaching resources, pens/pencils/inkbottles/erasers/brushes/scissors/glue/etc, and the cut-off water bottles that form the pots for my brave little sprouts, pushing up into the world despite the cloudy monsoon weather. I hope you're all doing well.



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Orientation of new staff began on Monday, July 9^th. At the time, it seemed like an unfair endurance test for those of us that had just arrived in India; little did I know, that in comparison to my teaching responsibilities, those all-day workshops would seem like absolute fluff.

We met all of the new staff, and I must say that the staff at KIS has been one of the best surprises of my time here so far. I think it’s fair to say that the school itself has brought me the most surprises of any part of India… I had a lot of expectations of the school, as it fits into a world I understand: private, American-curriculum-based education; whereas I came with very few expectations of India. Anyhow, some difficult surprises from the school: tense religious politics within the school, utter lack of central heating in a place that gets FROST in the winters as well as an impenetrable wall of mist that descends in a damp, freezing blanket for hours at a time. Fantastic surprises from the school: the staff is the most diverse and interesting and downright crazy group of people I’ve ever met. The student body is also chock full of fascinating characters, including a ton of Indian children who have been raised abroad (Canada, America, Australia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, you name it!); the racial breakdown is about ½ Indian, 1/4 Korean, and then a jumble of American, Canadian, British, Australian, German, Bhutanese, Nepalese, Japanese, and a handful of random Dutch exchange students.

Back to the staff. Remarkably, there are two Princeton ’04 graduates teaching here – they discovered the school completely independently of Princeton in Asia and were just as surprised to see me as I was to see them. We’d never met at Princeton, but we know a fair number of the same people, and – despite my ornery cynicism about the magical powers of the Princeton Connection – I was delighted to discover that they were from Princeton. There was a reassuring sort of familiarity; we understand a large part of each other’s lives right away, here, a million miles away from everything. It’s also nice to be around anyone from a country with a lot of immigration (America, Canada, Britain, etc.), because at Kodaikanal nobody really understands that I could look Korean but be mostly Canadian, or that I could major in biology but teach art, or that I could be just 21 and still qual – oh wait, in fact, there they would be right. I’m not really qualified to be a teacher. (Whoopsies…)

So, teaching staff – spot on. At first I was a bit alarmed, because everyone bowed their heads quite solemnly for our group prayers (those have slackened off now that we’re not doing workshops and are actually in the classroom), but in retrospect – I did my best to look solemn as well. Their quirky, irreverent senses of humor quickly started to leak out. I won’t write much about the religious politics of the school. It’s a complicated and – as I’m sure you can imagine – extremely touchy subject, but suffice it to say that last year things reached such a pitch that one woman threatened a hunger strike, several staff members had their jobs threatened, and at least one person was forced to make a public apology. Dinners out with certain groups within the staff are an endless tirade against the school’s status quo, and doing anything slightly against the rules can create an atmosphere of terrible paranoia; a teacher lost his job for having a drink, by himself, after lights-out, on a school field trip. No warning – just fired. Gone. No three-strikes. That particular episode irked me, because there are dozens of students caught drinking every year – probably every month! – without so much as a suspension, much less expulsion. But I digress.

In general, the convoluted world of school politics was pushed out of the minds of the new staff by the overwhelming whirlwind of orientation, workshops, dinners with mentors and hosts and department heads, meeting new roommates, dealing with the inevitable stomach problems, buying pots and pans and vegetables and blankets and pencils and pens and flip-flops and stove-lighters and tea and milk and strange not-really-cheese and packets of chips and mangoes and mangostins…

In the midst of this, let me explain my living situation: When I arrived I was taken to Airlee Main, a fairly large house on main campus that was formerly a high school girls’ dorm. I was initially living there with Marie (student teacher, volunteer – one semester, science-math, from Ohio) and Yisu (new Korean teacher, from Seoul). Then Vera (language teacher, from Germany/France/a bit of everywhere) arrived, but only temporarily, while her permanent house was set up for her. Then Lowri (ESL teacher, volunteer – one semester, from Wales) arrived. Airlee was getting crowded, particularly when Gabi (general volunteer – one semester, just graduated from high school, born in Korea but has lived in India for the past 8 years) arrived, and Jeanette (Human Resources director, from Montreal, wonderful woman) began to discuss alternate housing arrangements. In particular there was an apartment at Loch End, the middle school boys’ dorm: the apartment was huge and beautiful, but came with two catches. 1. The occupants would have to help out with the Loch End study hall. 2. The occupants would get a fair amount of noise coming through the walls from the middle school boys. After some discussion, it was decided that Lowri and I would move into Loch End, which was almost too good to be true; Lowri and I get along extremely well, we both teach at the elementary school, Loch End is far nicer than Airlee, and neither of us are religious, so we have similar schedules on Sundays and religious holidays, etc..

We had intended to move on the weekend before classes started, but the desperate race to create lesson plans before our first class overrode that plan, and we entered the week (starting Tuesday) still living in Airlee.

Up next: Starting out as a TEACHER!!

Love, Jenn