Mentor India: Friends, I’ll be there for you…
“I’ll be there for you…
‘Cause you’re there for me too”
This title track by The Rembrandts from one of the classic shows on television, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, was a hit amongst our students, who have never heard it before. We taught them a part of it (as a part of Mentor India program), and they sang it out loud and clear. We had a blast teaching them the meaning of this song, and finding Kannada hit songs with similar lyrics was an icing on the cake.
“Naaviruvude Nimagaagi…” (We’re here only for you)—This popular number from the movie, Mayura, sung by Rajkumar, a 1975 song— is still popular in a 2016 rural set up is what we found out from this activity!
Thanking Friends with F.R.I.E.N.D.S
We taught the students the Friends’ song as a part of our team activity, which was also our way of thanking our supporter-for-the-week for investing in us!
What we Accomplished this Week at Mentor India
Our third Saturday at Govt. High School Chikkarasinkere started with a Q&A on previous week’s homework, which was to go through the article printouts we handed over to them, based on Vilas Nayak’s life and career.
After a good 30 minutes, we started off with the agenda of familiarizing the students to the world of prepositions and articles. We had a list of notoriously confused words for them as well, where we helped the students understand the differences between words that look or sound the same. The whole activity involved answering many quizzes, followed by a sentence-making challenge.
New Learning for Us, New Heights for Them
We are now midway in our program, and we couldn’t help but evaluate our journey so far. On doing that, we were really happy to learn that our course is positively affecting the personality of the students. The main challenge these students were facing was not just the lack of English knowledge, but the lack of self-confidence and motivation to face a world where English is unfortunately a must to succeed.
As communicated to us by the headmaster of the school and our observation, we now see a newly instilled confidence in these young hearts and a high level of motivation in their tender minds. From speaking No English, they have progressed to speaking and writing in Broken English. We see them try to converse with each other in English, which is simply amazing!
We are trying to show the students different career paths, formed by people from different walks of life, to sow the seed of confidence in them, which is THE most important thing at this juncture in high school education for these bright minds.
What’s Next?
This Saturday, we plan to engage the students using innovative music and street play. We’re trying to take Funglish to a whole another level! We have high hopes, our fingers are crossed, and we are waiting for you to join us!
