This is the last two letter from Kati, the head teacher at the School Of Life in India, which is an extrordinary school that educates street kids in Varanasi as well as providing medical support and teaching them life skills like Yoga, capentry, Art and English:

26th September

"This year school runs much more smoothly then last year, because we are five teachers now and we have four classes. I jump from class to class to teach and give in-service training to our teachers who are progressing steadily. This is our current timetable:

7.30 - 8.00 Yoga

8.00 - 8.20 Assembly (All children sit together and we discuss general issues like violent behaviour, waste disposal, and so on. Techniques used here are story telling, discussion, singing and open theatre. Our main goal is to not only let the children gain knowledge, but to involve them in a greater reflection of their life - and the children are very interested in that.)

8.20 - 8.30: Teachers set up the classes and children drink lemon water

8.30 - 9.20: 1st period (In addition to subjects like Maths, English and Hindi, children have classes in Science, the older children also in Sanskrit and Environmental Science.)

9.20 - 9.40: Children have breakfast outside of the school and teachers set up the classroom for the free work period.

9.40 - 10.30: Free work period (We have and made a lot of different learning materials, the newest being Montessori Math materials. Every day in this period children work on their own and teachers focus on certain children who need help. Materials are available for clearing concepts in Math, like Multiplication, Division, and in English and Science. In the beginning it was quite noisy, but after some weeks the children now have adapted and most of them use and appreciate this freedom to choose what to learn. Considering the limited space for so many children, the free work period goes very well. I read a lot of Montessori's work and also did some training in a Montessori school, so I am very happy about this development. The teaching orientated towards an individual child is a nice addition to our group-centred classes.)

10.30 - 10.40: Cleaning time and getting ready for the next class

10.40 - 11.30: 2nd period

On Saturdays, of course, there is no school. Last week children made collages - you should have been here, it was so great to see 70 children cutting and pasting and the paper flying around :-) Oh yes, and there are at least 60 children now coming everyday, and this week the number has always been above 70. Our focus is now to pay a lot of attention to the small children from the ghat who need a lot of encouragement to come to school regularly. Since one week, I try to go there at least two times a week to pick the children up, and they really appreciate this. Chunmun is now coming regularly again, for some months he was gone to his village and after being back he only sporadically came to school. Now he comes on his own everyday and has been promoted to Nursery :-)

Some brief information about our teachers (maybe for a newsletter or something, because now we can be really proud of our staff):

Smriti: She is 26, married and has two small children. She has a master in Hindi and is currently trying to get admission in order to make her P.H.D. She is the one I feel most happy about, I don't want to miss her a single day, I think you will be impressed when you come. She is very descent, but very attentive (oh, and attractive) and whenever she sees some work undone, she will just quietly go and do it. Her teaching has improved a lot, and even when she came she was (for the teachers we can afford) a good teacher. Since one or two weeks I feel she has tries to speak English more - which she does really well. She is the class teacher of class one and two, who study in one group, and she teaches Sanskrit and Environmental Science to classes 3 & 4.

Suleka: She is about to become a very good teacher, especially for our smallest children. Her work is difficult: A lot of irregular children, and, especially, A LOT of children, sometimes I saw her sit with 30 children, some of them below three years, we even have some babies sometimes. When Delphine, an educator from Swiss, was here for some months last year, Suleka learned a lot from her and constantly tries to do new, creative things with her children. She is only 20 or 21, and to me like a little sister. She's newly wed, which was very sad for us, because her parents-in-law didn't want her to come back after summer break. Somehow, she has convinced her husband to stand by her side and he's dropping her to school everyday (and she lives in cant now).

Neelu: Neelu is about 20, and the teacher who needs most training. She is the class teacher of nursery and KG (they study together). Since her English is not good at all, Suleka takes her English classes, while Neelu stays with Pre-Nursery during this time. She is very shy and newly appointed, so we'll have to wait and see how she develops. At least now she talks to me :-) All teachers got the monthly planning and a new teacher's diary, so their only planning job is the daily planning.

Bhola: He is 19-20 years old and the class teacher of 3 & 4. He teaches Maths, English, and Hindi. He also teaches Maths in class 1 & 2, while Smriti goes to teach Sanskrit or Environmental Studies. Although this is a most personal impression, while working with men here (Sheelu is an exception) I usually feel that they think they know everything best. With Bhola, it was the same in the beginning, but it begins to change slowly now. It's good to have at least one male teacher, and he is quite versed in computers, so, later on, he will help in the cartoon project I told you about.

Some words about Environmental Science: While staying these two months in Germany, I read a lot about education for sustainability, not only because of my article (the result is still due), but because I am very unsure about the final results of our efforts. If we give education, what will it lead to? Of course, we want that the children are able to find a better place in life for them. But globally, the countries with the highest education are those with the highest consumerism and pollution. We somehow have to find ways to help our children become very aware of themselves, their real or perceived needs and their environment - without getting trapped in consumerism. This was one reason to introduce Environmental Science from class 3 onwards. The book  is a N.C.E.R.T. book, and very good. I bought the Hindi version, because I felt that time shouldn't get lost by translating everything in class, but the children should be able to discuss the concepts in depth. And, since Hindi is not the mother tongue of all our children, they need a space to converse in Hindi on a very high level. Smriti will do a great job enhancing their fluency in Hindi.

After the planning period, today was supposed to be the first day of E.S., but today we are going to a library in Assi (World literacy of Canada), so classes will start next Wednesday. Smriti will teach classes 3 & 4, and I'll stay with her classes 1 & 2 and we'll do project work related to the children's environment"

19th November 2009:

"Dear Andy,

We had a busy time renovating school and implementing an additional monthly teachertraining. From now on, the first Saturday every month will be an off-day for children (until now we were doing extra-curricular things on this day) and teachers will meet for a whole day training session. Our first meeting was very encouraging and it seems very important for the teaching team to meet without children being around to relax and learn together. If you want, I could send the training plan, so that maybe you could forward it to on of the other schools you are supporting. But it is very basic, orientated towards teachers without a prior training. Our teachers were very happy. One said: "Since I work here, I feel like living again" (She's married...), and one of our teachers spends 1200 rs. out of 2000 rs. salary just to come here every morning. But she says she doesn't care, because she does not want to miss one single day. So their salary increase will make me very happy because they'll get some better reward for their great work then before. Anyway, I'll send you our running record that we have recently introduced in order to gain a better overall-view on our children. It is very helpful for the daily observations the teachers have to make. Everyday after class they should sit for 5 minutes and just think about the day, the children and what was going on. I believe that only who observes well can learn how to teach better.

Classes 2 & 3 got an additional workbook for mental maths. Usually children only learn how to subtract, add, divide and multiply on paper, but they cannot do it in their heads, therefore we want to strengthen their capacity to to solve mathematical problems within their heads. The workbooks come from Germany, because in the local markets available workbooks don't support this kind of learning. Because of children's feedback we also re-started our Geometry lessons. Children love to work with scales and compasses and to learn how to connect different areas of their studies, like fractions, shapes and art.

Since August we have a big Science project going on, wherein we do lots of experiments related to light. We bought prisms, mirrors and torches and started discovering concepts related to reflection and colours. On one rainy day, when the children of the hostel had a day off, we took the full morning to talk about animals and their classification and children worked on posters with the help of encyclopedias.