Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Class 2



After my first experience teaching class 2 how to draw a sad-looking, cross-eyed rat dog, I knew I had to be more prepared. Even with my art background, I'd never really learned how to draw animals, and the techniques I was teaching the older kids were too complicated for class 2. Using the internet, I taught myself how to do cute cartoon drawings of dogs and cats. I even taught them some of the drawings I was doing for the older kids-- they loved learning how to draw rockets.

Before I started teaching at Hopkins while working on my MFA, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, but I realized that I absolutely loved it. When I began teaching the kids at the Naxal School, I wasn't sure if I would like teaching kids, but in some ways, I've enjoyed it even more than teaching college students. The kids have boundless energy, and at the end of teaching, when I am walking by the little pond and down the back paths of my neighborhood in Hadigaon, I find myself incredibly happy, and feeling tremendous love for all the children, as if they were my own. I'm sure if I spent all my time with them that my patience would be tried, but in class their enthusiasm gives me energy, too.

I enjoy playing soccer with the boys during the lunch break, or kicking around a bundle of rubber bands tied into a hackysack. After school sometimes, I talk with the older kids, and they teach me new Nepali Sign words while I teach them American Sign.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Class 4


The boys of Class 4. Girls always sit on one side of the classroom, and the boys on the other, but I still doubt that it really minimizes distractions.


The final product of learning how to draw a landscape. All the techniques I've taught are displayed here: the five basic three dimensional shapes (cylinder is the trunk of a tree, cone is the mountains on the horizon, etc.), shading and perspective with a vanishing point.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Class 5





I've been teaching class 4 and 5 basic drawing techniques. I started with teaching them how to draw three-dimensional shapes, such as the cone, cube, cylinder, sphere and pyramid and then showed them how to shade each object to give it more depth. Then we discussed all the different things that could be made with each shape. A cylinder can become the cones for binoculars or a telescope, the pillar of a temple, or even a person's fingers or arms. From there we began to combine the shapes-- a cone and cylinder to make a rocket, a cube and a pyramid became a house. I wanted to show them how they could learn to combine these things themselves, instead of copying them by rote. Then I showed them how to combine these buildings once again to make a city or a village landscape.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

I visited the main hostel for the Naxal School yesterday. It is in Handigaon, less than ten minutes from where I live, at the deadend of a quiet alleyway near the Bhatbateni Supermarket. I stepped through the door in the metal gate. There was a pingpong table in the middle of the dusty courtyard, and a group of kids gathered around. One of the kids from the second grade class, a small chubby kid with solemn brown eyes, is the scorekeeper for the game. A few moments after I step in, there are faces peeking at me from the windows. A woman asks if I want tea. Both of the students I met in Langtang come out to say hello, and a group of insistent kids charge me, pulling my shirt and asking my name. The kids I already know ask if I remember their names, and as much as possible, I try to show that I do, though by this point more than 75 new names are dancing into, and mostly out of, my head. A first grader signs the Z at the end of my name with a smile and a shout, then leans forward and traces the design of the leaf on my shirt.

The kids at the Naxal School, both at the hostel and while in class, seem to get along incredibly well, as if they are one huge, jostling family. Though there are clearly groups of friends, none of them have the exclusive feel of cliques. The older kids get along with the younger, the students share their snacks with each other, and I haven't seen a fight yet, though I'm sure they do happen. It may be an idealization, and I'm not an insider yet, but these kids know they have to stick together, and being deaf, just as it does in America, creates a strong bond.

Around the kids I feel almost overpowering feelings of affection and camaraderie. We share this bond of deafness, and while we come not just different ethnic cultures but different deaf backgrounds as well, I know they respect me not just as an American but particularly as a deaf American, just as I respect them for the challenges they face, for their incredible enthusiasm, and for our common bond.

I'd like to strongly encourage other deaf Americans to consider working with deaf Nepalis. It's a strong, vibrant community, but it's also one with many needs. There are deaf schools in Kathmandu, Kavre on the rim of the valley, Pokhara, Gorkha, and Bhairawa, near the birthplace of the Buddha, among others. There are many more deaf associations. And while there are whole new generations of deaf being born with more opportunities, one that includes sign language, schooling, and prospects of work and marriage, there is an older generation of deaf people that has been left behind.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Teaching at the Naxal School

Today I began my second week of teaching, and my first sessions with Class 4 and 5A. It's a challenge to keep up with all the different sign names. After trial and error from last week, I have a basic introductory first lesson in place. I start by introducing myself and the students, and then I sketch a map of America on the board, marking a dot in the heartland, near Chicago, where I was born and raised. After finishing university in Iowa, I moved to Portland, Oregon, on the west coast, and I tell the students that I lived there for 5 years. Then I moved to Baltimore (of interest to the students because it's near Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., the only all-deaf university in the world), where I completed my M.F.A. From the midwest to coast to coast.

Then I asked them what they wanted me to teach them. What did they want to learn how to draw? Everything from tigers to tears, villages to the Statue of Liberty.

I've also had the opportunity to tell them about Barack Obama's historic win as president of the United States. Yesterday, when I visited the school in the afternoon, I hung out with a half dozen of the older boys, who all had questions about America, including our new president. Did I like him? How old was he? Does he have children? Yes, he's 47, he has two children. Why did Islamic militants attack the U.S.? Wasn't Obama friends with the terrorists, one student asked. I couldn't answer the first question, but the second was an obvious no. Why was Abe Lincoln assassinated? I tried to expain as best as I could, with my limited Nepali Sign Language, the reasons for the Civil War.

Aside from their misconceptions about Obama, the students are excited about him. It's significant even here that our country elected a black man, and I think Nepalis sense a major paradigm shift, not just in America, but in this part of the world, too. While Obama's of a different race than Nepalis, he's of a similar hue. The students also want to know if Americans like Nepal, and I tell them that Americans know about Mount Everest and the tallest mountains in the world, but not much else. How many deaf people are there in America? And of course they want to learn American signs, too.

Teaching has been trial by fire, which I learned last week after the kids asked me to show them how to draw a dog. While I studied studio art in college, my experience was mainly with drawing people. Here I was, in front of more than twenty excited second graders, expected to draw a dog.

I've been trying to encourage creativity, so I showed them different ways to draw the ears-- floppy like Spot or pointy like a wolf? But my attempts to have them draw a dog using their imagination, and with several different templates, fell flat. I drew two cartoonish cross-eyes, and then a rat-like snout with whiskers. It was a terrible drawing, and I could hardly keep from laughing at myself. Meanwhile, the kids were dutifully copying my drawing exactly as I'd made it, holding up their notepads and asking for my approval. Still, I sensed some disappointment that I hadn't drawn much of a dog.

I was asked to teach this class on two days' notice, and only now, in my second week, am I beginning to formulate a plan. I want to teach them basic artistic techniques, such as shading, three-dimensional objects and perspective. A cylinder can become a vase, and a cube and pyramid a house. Cylinders and cubes can be as grandiose as castles. My eventual goal, if this is possible in two months' time, is to teach them to draw the human face and body using their knowledge of basic shapes, which is also made up of cylinders and spheres. I hope that I can use these techniques to teach them not to draw from memory but from observation and imagination.