At my internship, there is a group of older children that I help teach English to. We sing songs, learn different English phrases and learn the alphabet. There is a volunteer that comes in 3x a week to help teach these children as well. This past week, I had a very interesting experience with this group.
When I walked into the room where the volunteer teacher and older children were, I saw a new face in the group. There is a new girl that is in the fifth grade. I don’t know where she came from, but I would assume that someone found her on the streets or found her wandering around. It’s so sad to hear about the condition that these children were in before they got to the orphanage. But it’s good to hear that since they are now at the orphanage, they’re being taken care of much better than before.
The new girl is actually leaving in a month or so and will be adopted by a family in the United States, specifically in Texas. I’m surprised that a girl that old is being adopted much quicker than some of the babies, but I’m so happy for her. At the same time though, I don’t know if she’s already been at the orphanage for a long time or not. The only thing I know is that she just started coming to the class here. After thinking about it though, since she’s being adopted the sisters might have thought that she needs to learn English since she’s now going to be going to the U.S. Before, she was under the impression that she would be living in India so her main language wouldn't have been English.
Since she’s being adopted and is leaving in a month or so, one of the sisters told us that she needs a crash course about America and living. Even though I’m from America, the sister wanted the volunteer teacher to teach the girl about America and our way of life. I found that kind of disappointing. The things that the volunteer teacher was teaching her was kind of outdated and wasn’t the way that the average American does things. I found it hard for me to tell the teacher differently though because she was so confident in what she was doing that I didn’t want to constantly interrupt her and tell her that that was wrong.
It was interesting to see an Indian woman trying to teach another Indian girl about the culture in the United States, when someone from the U.S. (me) was sitting right next to them. Some of the ways in which the teacher presented the culture made me think about my own culture in a different way. When they talked about using the bathroom, she said to me, “you use paper, right?”. Other things that she was teaching the girl, I could tell she picked up from television serials/shows. But a tv serial/show is something that Hollywood creates, and sometimes it does not resemble a real American lifestyle. After all of this, I keep wondering to myself why the sister wanted the volunteer teacher teaching the girl things about America when I could help her out as well. It just doesn't make sense to me.
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