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Left to right: Supna, Monica, and Me.
Supna speaks basic english and tried to help me with translation when
needed. Monica has very little spoken English but I think she understands
most of what I say because she always responds how I think she will facially
and in Hindi. They are unbelievably sweet and helpful and they've been
with me every day this week.
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This has been ... a week.
Explaining my topic and my month of research/field work/writing seems a little extreme for a blog. But in the most general of terms I will outline what I am looking at and what I've done so far. Please no judgements on the research or ideas ... I am pretty much just brainstorming and blabbering here ...
nothing is concrete.
So, during my proposal period, before I even came to Shimla, I was planning on looking at how teachers/schools were implementing the state mandated health curriculum. But alas, this is India, and there is in fact no health curriculum. First hiccup.
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This is a typical hill of Shimla. We have been tromping around the foot- hills of the Himalyaians going from place to place and walking an uncountable amount of miles. Lets just say, among other things, my legs are definitely regaining some strength! |
During my research, I found information about the three levels of health literacy - an enormous aspect of what I planned to look at and something I still want to have as a part of my ISP. I also found information about the two general methods of teaching health practices (Problem-Based and Health Promoting, Leger 2001). One of the interesting parts about the Health Promoting system, is that it may be better (creating a higher level of literacy) and it also does not necessarily use any direct health messages (which could be perfect for a school system with no health curriculum).
So, using these two ideas, I now am thinking (preliminarily) that I will be focusing my 50 page ISP paper on ... what type of health education method the government primary schools are employing and which level of health literacy are they creating in the students.
Knowing this general idea of what I wanted to look at, I designed my 22 question interview for teachers / headmasters / head teachers and was off and hiking.
Everyday this week (I am writing this on Friday night ... an example of the exciting life I live here in Shimla ...) we would head out at about 10/10:30 in the morning. We (the other two girls and I) were together most days and we would meet up with 2-3 workers from the NGO that is helping us, HPVHA (Himachal Pradesh Volunteer Health Association). The two women that I was with all week were Supna and Monica (see the first picture).
As you can see in the picture to the right, field work is most definitely in the field. Over the course of the week I was able to go to eight schools and get nine interviews (some not so great and some absolutely golden) for my own research and I was also able to learn about Sophie's and Mimi's topics (Anemia and HIV/AIDs respectively).
Below I am going to post six pictures of different classrooms from the schools I have been visiting and also five pictures that I took during Sophie and Mimi's focus groups and interviews with the migrant workers.
Keep in mind that all the schools I visited were all a part of the same Government of Shimla School System. Each school ranges in the ratio of migrant worker's children with local children, but each school serves at least some (if not all) migrant children.
Sidenote: I am not really working through the NGO, but am using them to help with navigation and also with minimal translation. Sophie and Mimi are working with migrant workers, so in addition to navigating, they are completely relying on the HPVHA workers' translation and also their connections as ANMs (auxiliary nurse midwives).
This school was beautiful and the Headmaster and teacher that I spoke with were incredibly warm and welcoming. They spoke decent english and I was able to get some really interesting information.
One part of the interview that I found interesting was that they showed trust in the government health workers. They are supposed to come to each school once a year, and there are also health workers in the health centers that are scattered around the city.
When I asked them where students should learn about health practices if not through the school's curriculum, they cited the health workers.
This was one of my favorite schools. The Head Teacher was awesome. Super passionate and had amazing ideas about teaching and the state of the children's health and personal hygiene (a huge topic among all the teachers/schools I've talked to).
Two great things about this Head Teacher was:
A) She was working on learning Napali in order to better communicate with the students. Because most of the children at the school were migrants, they spoke a variety of languages. One of her main struggles was the communication barrier (for obvious reasons) and so she is taking steps to reduce it. None of the other teachers I spoke with mentioned the language issue.
B) She is teaching the students to take care of the environment and their own spaces. Littering is an ENORMOUS problem in India. People literally just drop their trash on the ground wherever they are or in whatever ditch they can find. Every Saturday (there are 6-day school weeks here), she and the students clean the school and incinerate all of their trash rather than throw it into the ditch next to the school.
Burning may not be the best environmentally, but I think its better than throwing it to collect in mounds around the school ...
This (above) was an interesting school. I was able to talk to the Head Center Teacher and also a third grade teacher (who started at this school on Monday).
Again, they were awesome and friendly, but they said some pretty concerning things.
1: Even though they catch some of the older students (middle/high schoolers) smoking in the primary school's kitchen, the headmaster does nothing about it and they don't use it as an opportunity to teach them about tobacco use (a huge issue/campaign here in Shimla).
2: One of the government/district's schemes is a scholarship program for BPL (below poverty line), SC (scheduled caste aka untouchables), and other students in need as designated by staff at the school. They give out small amounts (1-3USD) at a time and instead of using cash, they create bank accounts for students and use direct deposit. This method has been used for about seven years (and is also used in other government programs) but as it is India, there is inevitably corruption.
I asked the Head Center Teacher about it and she said they don't ever create an account under a fake child/not-in-need child's name. However, what does happen, is the account number for a child will not fall into their hands but the hands of "Anyone. Even a teacher's."
This next school was interesting. The teacher hadn't been teaching very long, and a lot her responces had to do with the fact that teaching was hard. Why was this a warented response? We all know that teaching is hard and a much undervalued profession. Well, she is one of two teachers for a total of five grades (1-5th standard) and they don't even have a classroom.
The teaching is a very long topic to talk about ... but the space issue I can mention.
This large open space is a community building. From 10am to 4pm it is the primary school. The government rents a space (see where the lady is standing?) for storage. Everyday, the two teachers have to unpack and pack up all of their materials (a few chairs, a single table, mats, cooking/food supplies for the government funded Mid-Day-Meal program, ect.).
One of my questions in the interview is "is there anything you think the school needs?" Well she said she couldn't even think about more books or desks or anything until they had a permanent classroom ...
At this school (above) I did not have a super productive interview but there were some interesting points - and he was a very nice teacher. The first was that for almost 50 students (double what the previously mentioned school had) there were still only two teachers.
This teacher had been teaching 5times longer, and didn't mention the struggles of teaching the combined class.
He also noted that students aren't learning health practices in the classroom; but he didn't know where students would learn them, because they can't learn from their migrant worker parents. He found this to be an issue, and really struggled to answer my question. He never came up with an answer.
This school (above) was ... an experience. I almost died getting to it, as it is at the top of a hill with a path that is practically vertical and made of loose rocks and unpacked dirt. We sat outside and soaked up some more sun (as if we needed it, we'd been walking/hiking for almost 5 hours) as I interviewed because this school has no inside at all, they sit and learn/teach outside.
They also mentioned how they need a classroom (not shockingly), but what stuck with me most was their response to my question about where students learn health practices if not in school. They said students can't learn about health practices at home/away from school. Ok, but the shocking part was that they didn't talk about it as a problem, just as a fact.
As you can see, I've seen quite a variety of schools. I've learned a lot of information and (starting tomorrow) I am going to have a lot of work to do to sort through everything!
Ok, now quickly on to some other photos and tidbits.
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These are some of the children of migrant workers at the anganwadi we went to today. We sat in a room, about 8ftx8ft with approxamately 12 children and 16 adults. Why so jam packed? It was pouring down rain and workers need to seek shelter when it rains because they don't usually have a change of clothes.
The women (the mothers of these children) that Sophie and Mimi did a focus group with were pretty incredible. As compared to the other focus groups I have sat in on, they had a lot of knowledge about both Anemia and HIV/AIDs. I was impressed.
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This is one of the allies of a migrant worker area. About 30second after I took the picture, the place was swarming with 20 women coming out to see who we were and to participate in a focus group. |
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This was the location of another focus group: an abandoned/in progress building. Not all the spaces looked like this though ... |
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... some looked like this. The floor was finished and they had brought in some mats to sit on. There was also chalk writing on the walls with educational information and inspirational quotes. Health workers and other community workers use this room with migrant workers as a sort of makeshift classroom. These women didn't know much of anything about anemia and knew nothing about HIV/AIDs, not even that it existed. |
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One of my favorite little drawings on the wall from the space pictured above. |
It has been such an amazing yet exhausting week. I feel so lucky to be able to be experiencing all of this. Never again will I have this type of access or resources.
I hope I didn't bore you too much ... its hard to express how exciting and interesting the field work is without actually being here ...