The school has around 122 students and 4 teachers- 4 are supported by the government. It runs from grade 1 to grade 5 and also offers a Nursery class. The children are aged between 4-13.
NOTE: Following the devastating earthquakes in April and May in 2015, several of our partner schools including Bhotenamlang suffered major damage, which destroyed much of its infrastructure including classrooms, toilets and the playground, as well as vital educational resources such as whiteboards, desks and benches. As quickly as possible after the quake, we helped to build over 225 temporary classrooms across 45 schools of which Saraswati Basic School was one where we made a substantial contribution.
Subjects taught:
All the textbooks except English are in Nepali and the students are mostly instructed in Nepali.
(Compulsory) Mathematics- arithmetic, algebra and geometry more significantly divided as you go to higher grades.
Science- basic ideas like living and nonliving things, plants, etc. in junior classes while textbooks in senior classes have physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy lessons.
English- stories, poems, biography and similar texts and grammar
Social Studies- society-its problems and solutions, geography, history, organizations
Symphony- stories with meaningful themes for the children
Nepali- stories, poems, biographies, Nepali grammar and similar texts
Environment (E), Population (P) and Health (H) - basics and inter-relation between E, P and H
Students’ Level of English Comprehension
Senior Classes (Grade 4 and above)
Reading- can read the texts in their books with very much difficulty, without properly understanding them.
Writing- Very few students in a class can manage to write grammatically correct sentences.
Speaking- the pupils cannot properly communicate with volunteers and students can be shy, but in higher classes their confidence increases and they are better at communicating.
Junior Classes (Grades 3 and lower)
Reading- very few students in a class can manage to read the simplest texts in their books.
Writing- Can barely write some of the simplest words they learn.
Speaking- can manage to communicate with the volunteers but are shy
Teacher’s level of English: They can communicate in English but their level of English is not that good.
Exams: Teachers construct questions and exercises from the textbooks. They have simple monthly tests and more important exams every 4 months.
Resources available:
All classrooms have whiteboards.
3 Desktop, 1 printer & 1 projector.
Drinking water supply is regular and so the toilets are adequate and well managed.
How to teach effectively: The school owns a textbook for each school subject. You can copy a list of topics from the textbooks that you feel you would like to teach using the materials you have brought and/or the techniques you have acquired and teach in your own way. This will give the local teachers an idea of how to teach the rest of the chapters in the book in an interactive way. You can be an inspiration for the local teachers.
The children love doing homework, so keep giving them some creative homework every day to make sure the students are revising their lessons. Try making the students to take advantage of the environment they have. E.g. herbarium, collection of wild fruits and flowers, etc. You can bring stickers that you can paste to the exercise books of students who do the best homework and classwork. This really excites the students and the class environment hence inspiring them to learn properly and also to be disciplined.
Things that could make teaching easier for you: Card games for improving vocabulary and to teach sentence structures, teaching aids to help teach pronunciation (as most of the teachers learnt English pronunciation in a wrong way, the children learn it wrong as well. It is a wonderful opportunity for you to make the children’s basics of English up to date). White board markers would also be useful.
What/How HELP-Mondo has supported the school:
Saraswati School was one of the schools HELP identified in 2013 and the local community has remained very supportive of the ideas of improving educational quality. We believe that the support and encouragement of the community is vital for the sustainability and long-term development of the school.
So far, HELP/ Mondo has partnered with the school/ community in the following projects:
After earthquake
Emergency shelter kits such as tarps for all the households in the village
Contribution towards the building of TLC
Six classroom building and four-room toilet building.
School Bags for school children
Teachers training
Sports materials and participated in the third Himalayan Games.
School in a bag for 115 children with copy, pencil, pen and soon.
Desk & Bench
Whiteboard
ECD management
School Dress
Sports materials
Future Needs
Teacher training
Classrooms management- especially the lower classes
Computer lab management
Teaching materials
musical instruments.
Labse Village
Location:
Labse is a 3 hours steep uphill walk from Tipeni Bazaar, which in turn is reached via a 4-hour bus journey to Melamchi from Kathmandu and an hours drive from Melamchi or 2.5 hours walk if the roads are damaged. The village is situated at roughly 1800m and serves around 150 households in the village. It has a rainy summer (JUN-AUG), quite a cold winter (DEC-FEB) and warm sunny days during the remaining months. The village has a sporadic electric power supply.
The People:
Lapse is populated by people from the Tamang indigenous community, whose history can be traced back to Tibet and the people follow Buddhism, which is evident from the presence of stupas and prayer flags in the houses and around the village. Bozman, one of the clans of the Tamang ethnic group is supposed to have originated in this particular village and the name of the village is related to a legend involving the Guru Rinpoche. Most people practice subsistence farming and mainly grow rice and wheat on their farms that lie below and off the village; maize and millet in their farms in the village itself. Although economically poor, the people have a rich cultural heritage and they love to share their hospitality, which one can experience by attending one of their occasional village festivals or by visiting their homes when invited. Many of the villagers still practice traditional cattle raising mainly yak and sheep for cheese and ghee and wander around with their cattle throughout the year.
Accommodation
Volunteers stay with a host family about 10 minutes walk from the school. There is a communal tap and squat toilets outside the main building of the house and volunteers get a private room (though they will have to share with other volunteers). You will often see a lot of children around, who love to come and join you in the mornings and evenings to play and chat.
Major things to do
Attend local social functions. Though the villagers have more social functions in the winter, they have fewer in the summer, for the people remain busy on their farms throughout the monsoon, which still feels like quite a lot.
Visit Okhreni, a village on the hilltop- 3 hours walk from the village.
Visit nearby villages; Bhotenamlang- 2 hours walk across and meet other volunteers working in other HELP partner schools to share experiences.
