These teachers nEverest.

Today I was sat in a maths class taught by Sunil, an inspirational Teach For Nepal (TFN) Fellow.

We are running an LRTT course for the TFN fellows next week so before Sunil's lesson, I asked what the Fellows' biggest challenges are and what they would like to do in the training. He spoke about wanting to improve group work and classroom management. But, like I said, five minutes later we were blown away by his lesson with a year six group. Sunil was engaging, full of praise for the students and mixing up a range of teacher-talk, pair and individual work. He had a charming praise tactic of shaking students' hands and an alternative praise tactic of carrying students around on his shoulders!
 
It filled me with slight apprehension but our LRTT team are a fantastic group of teachers and it will be a great experience for us to get to know the TFN Fellows, impart our experiences and see what they think.

 

 

The weekend began with a Friday afternoon visit to an 800 year old Buddhist temple in Patan. The calm sense of zen was maintained at a nearby rooftop bar and augmented with some acappella karaoke. Nirvana was reached on the floor of Thamel's techno club. Clare R was reincarnated as a hamster, Tom, Dan and Jack as elephants. It would be an insult to the animal world to assign the remaining flailing of limbs.

The next day half of us went to the medieval city of Bhaktapur, sat in the shade of a temple adorned with lewd carvings and drank coffee. After extensive temple-wandering we were shown around a paper making factory of questionable authenticity with an incredible rooftop view. Genuine or make believe we exited through the gift shop to devastating effect. The others climbed to a hilltop nunnery in the Shivapuri national park with stunning views over Kathmandu. We found them recovering in a restaurant and compared stories beneath the UV-lit clouds.

On Sunday, Tom and I climbed a 2700m peak. The views from the summit were underwhelming but we washed away the slight disappointment and copious sweat in a raging mountain stream. Turns out a waterfall massage can be just as pleasant as having a woman walk up and down your back. The rest of the gang chilled in a coffee shop, learned to cook Mo-Mo, went shopping for saris and took up residence at Namaste Bar, in the company of beer, cricket and cheese balls. Oh, and Kay got a tattoo.