Education, Careers & Professional News
Drury Students Immerse Themselves In Teaching In India
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Kyle Robinson, a senior at Drury, returned last week from a 4-month trip through Asia, 2 months of which he spent teaching Indian schoolchildren at Ham Sheela Model School in Durgapor.
Twenty other Drury students also visited the school, and though their visit was abbreviated compared to Robinsons, all students had the experience of teaching in a foreign country.
The other students only got to teach at HSMS for a week as part of a study abroad program over the 2004-2005 winter term, but they were also able to travel to other parts of India and Thailand before returning to Springfield.
Of the students who went on the trip, five were of the School of Education and Child Development. Regina Garrison was one such and said of her experience at HSMS, I personally came away from this trip with a greater idea of the culture and the people within the culture, specifically in the school setting, Garrison said.
HSMS is a coeducational English medium school and includes grades K-12. The primary school was inaugurated by Dr. Moore in 1995, and the school as a whole has been a sister school of Drury since 2001. Drurys own Drs. Rabindra N. and Protima Roy sponsored the trip and are Founder-President and Vice President of the school respectively, though the day-to-day operations are handled by HSMSs principal and vice principal.
HSMS, like most schools in India, emphasizes science over humanities, and the children learn to speak English very early in life, often at the age of 3. In fact, children are not allowed to speak the native languages of Bengali and Hindi in the school.
If you want to do well in India, you have to speak English, Robinson said.
Robinson, a chemistry/psychology major who plans to attend medical school in the fall, taught biology to 7th graders and chemistry to 8th graders during his stay. In his 7th grade biology classes, he covered such topics as the nervous systems of plants and animals, as well as neurotransmission.
The science they do in 7th grade is far more advanced than what we do here, but the English and Humanities they do there is far below what we do, Robinson said. Its kind of a lopsided education.
However, HSMS is innovative in that the school attempts to take the best from both the Indian and American education systems.
HSMS is also somewhat unique in the fact that the students at the school are diverse in terms of their economic status; students range from being literally dirt poor to being fairly affluent. Robinson said that the less wealthy students are often aided by scholarships, and the school is generally open to any students who qualify, regardless of social or economic status. The school does, however, have high standards in terms of academic achievement and ability.
Overall, HSMS made me think that my change to an education major was the right decision and the school made me think very highly of the educational system in India. Maybe some day I will go back to HSMS to teach again, Katherine Easterly, a participant in the program, said.
John Cazort, another participant in the program, was also impressed with the Indian school.
I was overwhelmed with raised hands during this lesson, though not to ask for help. The raised hands were an attempt to get my attention… the children were so proud of their work that they wanted to show me their newly created web pages, he said.
Though Robinson stated, travelling through Asia is just a broadening experience in general, he did admit that his favourite part of the trip was the teaching experience.
Ive been on the receiving end of the educational system for so much of my life, he said, and for the first time in my life I had the opportunity to give back to the system Ive taken from for so many years.
The Drs. Roy hope to continue this study abroad program for Drury students in the future, and perhaps even implement a similar program in Volos, Greece.