Occasionally, we ask those who have served on a team to Nepal to reflect on their experience. Here is a taste of what a Service Team is like.
I was with a team of 8, including Marian, Jonathan, his two kids, Mandy, Ben, Dami, and myself. Our goal was to teach teachers how to step out of the “normal” Eastern/Nepali way of teaching and jumping into the “normal” western teaching style. This mainly includes teaching the children how to use tablets and critical thinking in general. We had the opportunity of traveling to Nepal and teaching in two different cities (Kichahi and Tikapur). We taught about 10-20 teachers in Kichahi and around 50 in Tikapur. We taught them how to better teach their children how to use tablets, which involved mainly getting the teachers themselves comfortable with the tablets and some basic ideas of how to integrate them into their classes. We also taught the teachers some basic English grammar; tenses of verbs, etc. The last thing we taught the teachers was helping their children step out of the "memorize and repeat" method of teaching and into actually understanding the material and the critical thinking behind it.
It was an amazing experience shadowing the team and helping where I could (mostly answering questions and helping lead sections of the larger group) as well as growing relationships with the teachers and the other team members. I also had the opportunity to join Marian in a church building inauguration which was an amazing experience seeing the joy and celebration that occurs. I would highly recommend the experience.
