Aims



I will be flying to India on 13th September to begin 8 months of volunteering in the NE of India in West Bengal. I will be working with a charity who operate in 13 schools in this fairly isolated, rural area.

For those of you who don't know me, I am a qualified teacher with 9 years experience of teaching and managing the care and education of children, primarily between the ages of 2 and 7, in both the UK and abroad - most recently in Mongolia.

My role in India will have three main priorities. Firstly, I will work with classroom teachers (all local) to help develop their spoken English, planning, interactivity of lessons and resourcing. Secondly, I will work to assist the Head of one school with long term goals and the direction of the school. Thirdly, I will conduct centralised training for teachers of a number of the schools on things such as phonics, classroom management etc. This will involve travel to the different villages.

It is a hugely exciting, if slightly daunting opportunity.

So you can keep up with what I am doing and ways you might be able to support my volunteering I will be keeping a blog. Despite intermittent internet I hope the blog will be updated frequently as I plan to focus on my working and living day to day with the local population in Kalimpong and the surrounding villages which are located in the foothills of the Himalayas. This is the blog - please do contact me if there is anything specific you'd like me to write about.


Many thanks


Mark

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