I can and I will change it

June 3, 2016

By 2015 Fellow Susham Rajbhandari

 

“I can and I will change it” was what I had in my mind when I was first being taken to my placement community. I was full of energy and enthusiasm as everything was new for me. New people, new place, new experience.

The first day was quite overwhelming as there were over 200 kids with whom I had to interact apart from the teachers and other people in the community.

While talking to them, I had already started preparing a list of students who I thought could be challenging students for me. A couple of days later I asked them to write about themselves; their families, what they liked and disliked, the aspects they thought were hampering their studies and their solutions. Some of them were really excited and wrote quite a lot while some barely penned a few lines.

Among those who didn’t write much was a student from Class 9. He was one of the students from my “challenging students’ list”. When I asked them to write, he came up to me and asked me if he could submit it later during the lunch hours. He submitted the assignment later, writing that he didn’t know how to write properly, that he was not a studious student. There was also an apology for not being able to write and for grammatical errors.

Time went by. I could count the number of times he actually showed interests in the class. However, after the first terminals, he came to me and told me that it was the first time he didn’t cheat. All the answers were his own and not a word of it had been copied. I appreciated him for his attempt and honesty. He scored 4 out of 100 in that exam.

He was one student who was quite forward when it came to extracurricular activities, especially during different programs in school. He was an exceptional actor. He used to participate in dramas and did really well. Almost everybody loved his performance.

I used to ask him to focus both on studies as well as acting. He sometimes used to listen properly in the classroom while there were times when disheartened me. There was this one time when class test was going on and he was making noise and distracting others as he knew nothing. I asked him to read the questions properly before solving the Math problems and at least write “Given” for as many questions as he could. And what I got in return was “Given”, “Given”, “Given” for over 15 questions. I was really angry and irritated that day.

I continued taking classes, trying my best to make them realize the importance of studying. I gave more attention to this particular student from time to time. He slowly started showing interests. He started thinking about the logics behind the sums. He began showing his willingness to learn. He scored 20 in the second terminal.

I knew he had improved a lot but since there were a lot of things going on around, I hadn’t been able to give him more time and attention. We were in the final days of our session and in one of the classes, I had solved a problem on the board. Everybody started copying but the boy. He was looking on the board curiously. When I asked him why he wasn’t copying the sum, he said something that made me smile for a long time. He asked me how I could tell him to copy a sum without him understanding the content, when it was me who insisted them the whole year to understand and be clear before copying. It was a blissful moment for me. A student who I thought would give me a harsh year gave me something to smile about. He passed in the final exams.

I had many more things to do this year. The quake not only shook the nation but also my dreams and plans for the first year of Fellowship. I have not been able to do things that I initially planned of doing. There were times when I felt like leaving the Fellowship and there were times when I was consoled being said that even a single child matters, even transforming a single child is to be considered as an achievement.

Yes, every single child does matter but I am here to change all of their lives. And being a stubborn person, I want to give it all in my second year of Fellowship to bring about some kind of transformation in each and every child I teach. So that, at the end of the Fellowship, I can proudly claim on doing something important for my nation, something important for my kids, something important for me.

2015 Fellow Susham Rajbhandari is teaching in Shree Buddha Secondary School in Lalitpur.

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