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Assuming Ash survives the next few weeks, his final medical examinations before being the illustrious Dr. Patel, without having a heart seizure, he’ll be joining me, Deepak, Ina and teh team out in India again on the 25th of June. I’m really looking forward to us all getting together again. I’ve been really impressed by what Deepak has been doing over the last three months since we were last all together, and a little concerned that it is actually very difficult for him as there are so many things he is up against. By way of example, Deepak keeps immaculate accounts, but when he handed them over to the main accounting team at RBKS they lost 7 vouchers adding up to over £1000 of expenditure. The auditor, naturally, won’t clear our accounts until they are found. The RBKS accountants can’t find them and no-one will take responsibility for the loss. Deepak wasted three days trying to sort a mistake that he didn’t make and should have anything to do with him. It is the multiplicity of such episodes that is one of the hardest things to deal with, problems frequently there to take the wind from you sails. It is frustrating, to have to waste time so completely unnecessarily, when there is so much to get done.

The arrival of Ina though will greatly facilitate the running; two heads going at things on a daily basis rather than the one, and it is always good to have someone to talk things through with and sound things off. With Ash coming over and us all having a month together, we have a fantastic opportunity to bring about further improvements in our management and consolidate our plans for the coming year.

On Sunday I was met with rather a brilliant email. Ina, who if you will remember was to be our coordinator then at the at the last minute hit a problem at home that prevented her from coming, has over come that problem and will finally be joining us at Hunar Ghar! It’s funny to think that she doesn’t already work with us, we’ve been chatting back and forth so much over the last 6 months, and she always coming up with good ideas and suggestions and doing plenty of personal networking with other alternative schools in India that it feels like she already does. That’s a great way to start a ‘professional’ relationship, and so it is fab to be able to finally have her officially on the books.

It will be wonderful for her to finally come to Hunar Ghar too.  So assuming that everything is as Deepak, Ash and I have described it to her, then our longs earch is over. Long it may have been, but it is definitely worth the wait to have someone that truly cares about what we are doing, is hard working and compassionate as Ina. We’re very happy to have her aboard.

Moving house is always a pain, and particularly so where we live as you just have to ask around and wait as the turnover of accommodation is very low, and people are sometimes a little xenophobic in who they are will to rent to, be it me and English man or Deepak, from another part of India. Unfortunately having just recently moved into an new, very convenient, place the landlord is asking for his house back, and we too no provision at the time to say that it would be ours for a minimum term, so off we have to go. There are no other houses in Mandwa, a nice 10 minute walk from Hunar Ghar, so now we have to shift to another town 12 km away, or back to Rohida, 25 km. Both is a pain for what has been very convenient and very nice for us to live in the same community as our teachers and local friends.

Children can make their own plan. Last time, while I was teaching children about trees, I gave them one exercise. I asked all children to write the name of big trees that they had seen. Then I divided them into two groups. But they told me that they did not want to participate in groups. They prefered to work individually, “we shall write by ourselves”, they said. First, they were quite excited by an assignment that I had given them. They wrote at about 25-30 names of the trees. Some of them could figure out many name of those, while some responded by only few name. After a while, children started to be more active by their curiosity which brought them to find some more names of trees. They asked each other and split themselves into two groups unintentionally. They asked and told each other and learnt. Helped each other. After some time children wanted some more name of trees. They made their plan. 3 children’s told me that we wanted to go outside and see big trees. It was very a good plan of children. That time a lot of children in my class because some teachers did not come to Hunar Ghar. I had the fear that if all children went outside, they would fight each other. So I made my plan that children would go out one by one. Then, he would see the trees and come back while another child would go out instead. So all children could go out to see big trees and discuss together in groups. Then children would find a lot of trees. Some of them had read about trees before. They opened their files and started to write the name of trees. Some of them wanted to have a long list of the trees’ name, so they went to other groups and copied the name. Another group of children complaint with me that our group would have less name. They said, “ Deepak you should record the name of children that copied our work.” This plan was made by children, I think it’s very a good plan to make by children. My conclusion -: 1 First, when children knew that they had to work in group, they did not want to join the groups. 2 Children wanted more knowledge, so they started to split in groups & discuss, know and help each other. 3 Children wanted to work on field. 4 if children have knew or read before, then children will use that knowledge. 5 That time, children had a competition among each other, so they copied other’s work even though they knew that it was bad. 6Children don’t like others to copy their work 7 If children have new idea coming up, and they can work very well, they will take lots of interest.

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