r u n a w a y m a n g o: schools

The big news of the week is that Maya did start school last Thursday. It is a long story of how she was admitted, but the fact is that now she is a student at Lakshmi school in Madurai which is the most prestigious, the most elite and selective institution in town. Eial worked very hard to accomplish this, but divine intervention had as much to do with this as our best efforts. What can I say, getting your child into a school you want is like getting elected into an Indian Parliament. Educational institutions are such pillars of society here, you have to respect that.

The other thing I want to address is that I failed to find any time to blog. I am constantly taking pictures and planning stories in my head, but I simply can not find couple hours of continuous quiet alone time when I could sit down and write. I have a long list of excuses which I am sure you don't want to hear. So much for my big plans of staying at home and regaining some "me" time. It's busy and hectic as it's always been. I guess it's time to adjust my expectations and work with what I have...

Here are some random photos of the week that I wanted to share:

Grinding his teeth while writing his letters. I love the little desk I got for the boys to do their homework on. Only two weeks of daily homework and Raphael has made an incredible progress in writing. Who knew...

Checking out a possible school for Maya

The school is only as good as its playground

Checking out commotion at the emergency room as the ambulance has just pulled in

Maya's first day of school - she is so ready

Mr. Selvakumar gave Maya a present, some chocolates and a motorcycle ride to the bus stop. That's how excited he was for our girl

A worried mother

Maya on her first school bus ride

Doing never ending math homework

I love these headless pictures that the boys take of us whenever they snatch the camera

Yinon is jamming away with Eial's ipod

Homemade rice noodles served with fresh ground coconut milk, all gone...

Blogging away while beating the clock. What will happen first - power outage, kids movie failure, kids biting each other?

If you haven't seen yet, check out this article and reader comments from NY Times about high-school graduates from India entering US colleges for undergraduate education: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world/asia/squeezed-out-in-india-students-turn-to-united-states.html?_r=1. We've only been investigating schools here for couple weeks, but the differences between US and Indian education philosophies seem load and clear.

The first school we visited couple days after our arrival was Mohatma Montessori school. They tentatively agreed to accept all our three kids and gave us a very warm and extensive tour of the school. First we checked out Lower Kindergarten (LKG) classes for Yinon. LKG is an equivalent of Pre-K program in the US, the only difference being admission age of 3 years old by the start of school year (May or June). Since Yinon was born mid-May he would be among the youngest in his class. We saw five or six classrooms with 30 kids and one teacher in each of them. All kids were sitting tightly around desks arranged in a circle, cute as buttons in their uniforms and name tags hanging around their necks. The atmosphere was loud yet cheerful, as the kids burst into a song to greet us, the foreigners. The classrooms were pretty bare, no toys, no distractions. Definitely not a relaxed kid-friendly environment that we are accustomed to for kids this age. The school day for three-year olds starts at 9am and ends at 3pm, same time as for all other grades. Recess is 10 minutes long and 20 minutes are set aside for lunch. Three-year olds have been studying for four months now, and work they have accomplished so far was writing all alphabet letters in lower case in cursive.

After that we climbed one floor up to Upper Kindergarten (UKG) for four-year olds which would be a fitting class for Raphael. Very similar situation, 30 kids per class, one teacher. This would be kindergarten in the US, except that Indian kids are a whole year younger. Again, we are shown some writing samples - spelled out words, numbers up to a 100, everything in perfect cursive. We're told they do lots of art - the teachers show us perfectly colored coloring sheets. We ask about Montessori practices in school. We are assured that all teachers have completed Montessori training on top of their teaching degrees, and the school has a classroom with Montessori work. Once they show us Montessori room, boys barge right in as, finally, they discover something familiar - shapes, puzzles, sorting. Well, it turns out that kids spend only one session per week doing Montessori work, the rest of the time they study regular curriculum.

Finally we visited 2nd standard classrooms for Maya, which we later realized was the equivalent of US first grade. We took a look at student's work, and again we got mixed feelings - despite perfect handwriting and coloring, all they were doing was filling in the blanks, circling correct answers, extracting one correct word. There was no creative writing, no free style art, no story telling, no individualized instruction. One teacher, one curriculum, and you sink or swim.

For the next few days I was in a state of shock. Whoever I spoke to India, told me to simply get over myself, because that's what education is like in India. Mohatma Montessori is among the best private schools in town, and I should expect similar experiences in other school as wells. I just could not see Yinon pulling in a full day at school behind a desk with a pencil in his hand. Or Raphael, that eternal wiggler, who can not stay still for five seconds, and has shown no interest in studying until just few months ago.

We ended up enrolling both boys in Euro-kids preschool which is a small neighborhood place.Yinon and Raphael have successfully completed their first week and now we have a clearer picture of what challenges lie ahead. It was just a lucky coincidence - we got a colorful brochure to Euro-kids with our local paper and decided to check it out. The school is less than a mile away from our home - it takes us 15 minutes to get there by walking in very slow pace. There are another 3-4 similar preschools in our neighborhood. They advertise themselves as new-style, exciting, creative places where learning experiences are fun rather than rigid. Our preschool is colorful, cheerful, and has Montessori work in all classrooms! The main advantage is that it is a tiny neighborhood place, and it will give our boys time to adjust before they enter a full blown Indian school system. Right now Raphael's class has six students, Yinon's has seven. That means lots of individualized work with their teachers, while they are still getting their hugs.

Of course, the expectations are the same - both boys should be writing by now. Raphael's first homework was writing all letters of the alphabet and numbers up to ten. Yinon's homework was numbers 1 and 2, and letter L. Well, Yinon can not even hold his pencil. Raphael has never been interested in writing and we have never forced him to practice. Yinon has time to learn at his own pace, but Raphael will be starting first grade in June. So here we are, sitting with both boys 2-3 hours after school, cajoling, bribing and threatening them to pick up the pencil and write those letters. Other than writing, we were told that our boys were well prepared and were in the right grade for their age - thank you Lifespan Montessori and Barrow Elementary!

Maya's school story is even more complicated. Since the school already started in June and we arrived mid-year, we are being quoted some strange law that no new students can be admitted after the end of September. On top of that, all the best schools are very competitive, and they only admit students during annual admission season in April. We've been following some leads, calling principals, showing up with appointments and without, with little luck. One of the better schools in town agreed to admit Maya to 3rd standard (equivalent of US 2nd grade) if she passes the entrance exam. We have another good lead to the most prestigious school in town, but we're waiting to hear from them on Tuesday after a long weekend. In the mean time, Maya is at home, practicing multiplication tables. Although math is her strong subject, her Indian peers are far ahead when it comes to math. One way or the other, next week we will be making some decisions regarding Maya's school.