We are working at the Arivu School in Mysore. Our work started 7 months ago and we are really enjoying it. Arivu School has classes from lower kindergarten to ninth standard, but we only teach the first to fourth standards.

We are trying our best to make the lessons exciting and interesting for the children. Therefore we base some classes on activities and mix spoken, listened, written and read parts. This helps to keep the subject English fun for everyone.

In the first weeks we observed other teachers taking their lessons to get into the flow and build up some daily routine. Therefore we also talked a lot to our project coordinator Kushalanna.  Kushal is also the principal of the school.

Arivu follows a certain name policy: All female teachers are called “Akka“(Kannada for “Big Sister“) and all male teachers are called “Anna“(Kannada for “Big Brother“). These are substitutes for the more common “Sir” and “Madam “in other schools and they create an almost family-like atmosphere. Soon we took own classes on a regular basis and grew a lot more confident with our work. As now we had a fixed timetable we became a part of the staff like everyone else. The school starts at 10:15 am, but at 9:45 am the staff already assembles for a morning meeting. All students and teachers have lunch from 1:15 pm-2:00 pm. The school day ends at 4:30 pm.

To ease these relatively long school days some periods are used as activity based classes. In the afternoon next to the regular subjects the children can participate in music, drama, crafting, dancing, etc. We also prepare such classes as we create certain games to challenge the kids physically and mentally.

One of the highlights of our work was the various trips the school organized. As we spent more personal time with the students and teachers our responsibilities grew, we got the chance to travel throughout Karnataka and we also learned more about Indian culture.

Speaking of Indian culture: Given a hint by Dr. Maruthianna, one of the founders of the school, we joined an international yoga camp conducted close to Mysore. We really enjoyed the five days of yogic practice and even participated in a second camp.

We had a great time here and we are looking forward to enjoy the months to come even more.

-By Phillis and Tim