What went well?

The progress I made; what was achieved and done

The aim for this week was to develop practices to help the students be comfortable in speaking in English. This is why, every night, I wrote a paragraph about a daily life event/struggle/experience the students go through, such as job/internship applications, the difficulty of leaving their homes to come to Sajhe, and their life in the hostel. I asked my colleague to translate these paragraphs into Hindi, and every morning in class, the students had to translate the paragraph from Hindi to English. This was an incredibly beneficial exercise for each class as it highlighted 1) difficult vocab, 2) sentence structure, and 3) new grammar rules. This exercise was met with excellent feedback!

As I look to long-term benefits and impacts, I have decided to assign writing prompts to the students every day in class, and I have asked them to share their responses in Google Docs for proper documentation. This exercise was great for the following reasons: 1) It helped induce thinking in English without the fear of mistakes or embarrassment and 2) it allowed the organization to not only notice individual weak points but also to collect data on collective weak points and how that can inform pedagogy.

What could have been done differently?

Things that did not get done and/or could be changed

This week, I learned that being an effective communicator, especially as a leader, extended to the WhatsApp group chats and Discord chats. After some feedback from the other facilitators, I began to use a better tone in my messages. Especially when I am assigning something to the students on the chats, I am beginning to include notes of support and explanations as to how these assignments are helpful.

One thing I also could do differently is utilize the resources I have at hand. The privilege of being in person means I can have a good opportunity to always discuss with students how they felt about a session and what doubts they have. Additionally, I can ask the other facilitators questions when I am trying to understand the student’s needs since they have grown up in the region and can speak Hindi. In other words, I can share my doubts!

What did I learn about myself when working with others?

Contributions, behaviors, and values I exhibited

I learned that the space I work within matters deeply to my investment. Being in the mountains always gave a space for me to be present and to reflect. When it came to having conversations, with the students and with staff (like Uncle who cooks the most delicious meals), I was able to be present and curious in all aspects of their lives. I was curious about the vegetables they grew and what they used to make the Sabzi. I was curious in my students, what languages they spoke at home and what their cities were like. I learned also, that in my most exhaustive and trying moments, I always maintained my love and respect for those around me. The respect and the curiosity fueled much of my creativity when it came to pedagogy, as the interactions I have outside of classes inform my observations as well.

What did I learn about leadership?

Leadership attributes and insights I developed

As a leader, I need to think for the students as well. I need to, somehow, be able to understand them and their way of thinking better than them. And I need to accomplish this with close observations that can come with attention and love for the students. This cohort of women was not always in positions where they got to experience innovative, rigorous learning environments. They do not have a good grasp of what it means to introspect, only follow instructions.

Since the aim for this week was for the students to gain comfort in a new language, I had to think about what does comfort mean for them? How do you comfortably switch from Hindi to English? How can we use the tools and thinking that they are comfortable with to create contextual, friendly exercises? Teaching comfort and confidence begs the facilitator to consider it from the student’s point of view. We cannot teach something new as we learned it growing up with a rigorous, institutional Western education, but we need to teach it the way the student’s minds are most familiar with taking in new concepts.

What do I want to develop or focus on next?

What I still need to develop

As the English facilitation does not require additional modifications, I need to gear my focus on holding the most efficient, informative algorithmic thinking session. This final session will cover types of algorithms (binary search, sorting, etc) and their efficiency ( in terms of time and space complexity). Additionally, I need to hold meetings with the other coding facilitator to discuss creating an algorithmic thinking module for future cohorts!