Hello everyone near and far,
Welcome back to the blog as I have not updated for 3 months! I am sure many of you have seen my regular posts with photos on my Facebook page. Thanks to all of you who commented so positively. Here goes the update:
- I SO cannot believe that it is 8 weeks from today that I fly back home after one whole year!!! A cliche, but HOW on earth have these 365 days gone by in a jiffy???
- My job here continues to give me so much satisfaction, but not without many many challenges across the project.
- 3rd and final training module tomorrow for 3 consecutive weeks for 3 groups, totaling 70 participants on the theme ‘Holistic support for the Deaf child’
- This will be followed by 2 weeks out of the city into the far remote districts to monitor and support the participants in their work, and provide further on-site training/demo’s ( a repeat of the 15-hour sleeper train journey)
- Then the final 3 weeks back here will include 2 bank holidays, loads and loads of reports and data to write up, 2.5 days of meetings with management, a certificate celebration on Aug 31st with ALL 70 participants and management plus my line manager who is coming over from London, to tie things up and preparing the way forward for my wonderful colleague, who will sustain this project for another year. The idea is for the management to eventually take full responsibility to run the project.
- Module 2 last month was very intense as the content focused wholly on ‘Teaching and Learning Pedagogy’ – I introduced several new documents for them to use e.g. Baseline Assessment of the deaf child, the curriculum, IEP and re-vamping the online tracking system. Everything is very new for all participants in terms of understanding WHY and HOW their current teaching curriculum and methods are not successful at all. They all need time and practice to implement all they have taken from the training.
- It was all about getting away from their usual ‘the deaf child cannot understand, the deaf child does not know, the deaf child cannot remember, the deaf child cannot read and write’! to looking at themselves and what the barriers are, etc.
- Baby steps but the board of the organisation I am working with, have finally agreed after 8 months of persuasion from me, to fund for an ISL trainer to teach ISL, plus taking on all our 5 new recording documents. Some staffing changes have also been made as per my recommendation…fingers crossed for gradual and continued improvements for deaf children.
- The daily newspapers have been talking a lot about how the monsoons have affected India e.g. people being killed, huge floods as high as a person’s thigh, homes and buildings being damaged and causing havoc to traffic….also interesting to see our Indian Prime Minister Modi interacting with PM’s of other countries lately…and now at the G20 summit…very political….
- Another big and an ongoing issue is the constant dumping of rubbish and waste into the roads, lakes and rubbish heaps all over the place….debris all over too…am sure that eventually, they will have dustbins and collections….
- I have been reading some good books…one of which was ‘Malala’ and only yesterday, Malala was mentioned in the newspaper about finishing her education in Birmingham, UK after moving there from being shot by the Taliban in Oct 2012!
- Am SO fortunate to be able to travel around via Uber, as communication with tuk-tuk drivers is treacherous!! and with Uber, I can track my journey for safety, no communication with the driver is needed at all, and no hassle of having the correct amount to pay!
- And Skype is a total godsend! I talk to Barry almost daily and to my boys and friends at weekends…and if Skype isn’t sharp, then FaceTime comes into action! Thank goodness for the advanced tech!
Will write again next week….bye for now,
Sandra x