While I was in New Delhi, I was missing all you DSMS people. The streets of Delhi can only be described if one was to position themselves in the middle of the 7oo building on a Friday, at the end of 6th period, when Ms. Wilson has a sub... but instead of middle schoolers, imagine a mixture of auto rickshaws, people, livestock, and what not. As I was navigating this mess I happened to see in a shop a silver scorpion, which I promptly bought and decided to carry it around the world to remind me of you teachers doing real work.
Feel free to read my other posts to see what we have been up to. We (my wife, the scorpion, and I) are in the village of Palalom, state of Goa, country India. We have been passing the days on the beach not doing much at all when into my head came the idea that the scorpion and I should start a school. Well we did, and we are calling it Ocean Springs Middle School, or OSMS.
Currently, our average daily attendance is still at 0% so we are not expecting a bonus check at next year's kick-off.
Just to get things started we had a world cafe to talk about the difference between DSMS and OSMS. We decided to organize our thoughts on a double bubble thinking map and since we were a bit short on paper we did it in the sand.
I know it s a bit hard to read, as the light of the setting sun was not helping, but these are the first things that we came up with.
First, students: we don't have any. What we do have is an abundance of cows. They roam the beaches freely. Will have to get SART after them.
Second, food: one of the things we miss is the Mexican food, which is non-existent in India. But it does seem that every restaurant serves something called "Maxican" food (not a spelling error of mine), and the sad thing is their spelling is better than the making of the food.
Third, coffee: teachers run on Starbucks, which we don't have here (can you believe it?). What we do have is Chai Tea, made fresh and hot.
Fourth, dress code: the thing that surprised me the most is that there is in fact a dress code here in Goa... you must be in some kind of local hippie garb, or swim wear. Now, I am not advocating this dress code for DSMS but I did find it interesting.
The only thing that I could find off the top of my head that the two schools have in common is massive amounts of sand. So that is where we will start.
I also figured we would use the local rules that are already in place (take special notice of the third rule in the red section, it is one I think DSMS could adopt):
This is an interdisciplinary team meeting:
Good news, we do have a CST... it dosen't stand for California State Testing, it is the Central Train Station in Mumbi:
Just thought you would like to see the view from one of potential classrooms, makes late night grading seem a bit more appealing... not much, but a bit:
Applications to OSMS can be sent to Beach Hut #4, Palolem, Goa.
No comments:
Post a Comment