Calling it home

One month after we have spent our first day & night at our host family all of us seem to finally feel home in the community of Serachaur.
From the very first day on we were treated as brothers (dhaai) and sisters (didi) of the Adhikari family. Waking up and returning home from school knowing that we will be served meals and offered our own rooms does take away a lot of work and stress for sure. Due to our caring host family we therefore are able to spend all our energy on project matters.

Ke garne?

If there is no school to work with the students there is no school...
And if there is no power to charge laptop or cell phones there is no power...
Even if the main path in Serachaur village turned into a strong river after the last rain fall... there is nothing you can change about that fact!

It is what it is. So no need to get all annoyed about it. Well that's what a Nepali person would answer you. The Nepali solution facing whatever problem is: "What is there to do?" (in Nepali language: "Ke garne?")

And it's actually pretty simple. The sad feelings about something gone wrong will never help you from now. For a Nepali person it's all about the present & the future. That is what you can still control, can always control. Living in a community that is structuring all its life around this saying can sure offer you a new thrilling insight. Facing loads of daily power cuts did help us come closer to and understand this special way of meeting life.

The never-ending evaluation period

Against all our expectations the evaluation of all research results was one of the our most exhausting and time-killing jobs. Since we had implemented many open questions within both teacher's and student's questionnaires it took us one and a half weeks to sum up and analyze all research results. To mention just two results that especially caught our attention:

 Just 1 out of 12 teachers said that it is due to the teaching methods that the less talented students are continuously facing the biggest learning difficulties. Most teachers named the poor family background and economic condition as the biggest reason why less talented students cannot follow class.

Moreover research proved that teachers talk directly to the best students more often than to the less talented ones.

All other consolidated findings are listed in the files below:
Analysis of teacher questionnaires
Analysis of student questionnaires
Summary

Conducting research

Facing the problem that students are afraid of expressing their personal feelings and thoughts we were in need of a good solution how to conduct some research anyway.
Our first way around was to also question the teachers about the less talented students. Furthermore we interviewed the principle of DACS school. But since the students were within the main focus of our work on the project we also wanted to involve the students themselves. To get the most personal answers from them we implemented a few easy questions within the questionnaires to make them feel more comfortable (e.g., "What is your favorite color?"). Besides that we separated them to avoid cheating by copying the sentences from another student.

All in all we questioned 35 students (all students in grade 6, 7 & 8).