Warning: Lots of EducBabble in this Post :-)... The Galaxy Education System

We have begun working at our host school in Rajkot. We are at the Wadi campus, which is part of The Galaxy Education System of schools (TGES). TGES is a private school, in the top ten private schools in all of India. This school is expensive compared to the other private schools we have seen. The school has standards (grades) 2-9 and the classrooms are located in what the staff and students call "huts." They literally have straw roofs and look like little resort cottages.

The huts that are classrooms. 

The Wadi campus in the rain...

I am still trying to figure out the schedule, but this school, and the TGES, are committed to a curriculum that encourages thinking and analyzing over the traditional Indian teaching that is very "talk and chalk" and teacher centered. The TGES promotes Teaching for Understanding (TFU), which was developed by Harvard professor of Education, David Perkins. At the school today, I observed a lot of the same strategies and activities that teachers in my school utilize. I saw Think-Pair-Share, graphic organizers, a lesson on how to summarize a non-fiction article, the Habits of Mind curriculum, vocabulary word walls and Point-Evidence-Explain writing structure.

Music teachers playing the harmonium and tabla drum during the morning meeting Sanskrit prayer. 

Students in "Wellness" class (P.E.) practicing field hockey skills. I even picked up a stick and juggled the ball for awhile. 

I got to co-teach with Pritha, a 7th grade literature teacher. 

The teachers work incredibly hard and even tailor the kind of learning (based on Multiple Intelligences) to each specific "batch" of students. Students are grouped by their preferences on the Multiple Intelligences inventory, so teachers make sure to include kinesthetic activities for one class, while doing more linguistic/verbal activities for another. A teacher told me that she never uses the same plans over again because the students and their preferences are always changing. Teachers on a learning team collaborate constantly, making sure to make interdisciplinary connections as much as possible.
Since we are looking at global education, I would like to see how other cultures, beliefs and ideas are imparted into the curriculum.

Some observations from today:

• there are no bells and if a teacher decides she/he needs more time on a topic, they can talk to the other team members to extend the lesson. 
• Students all have laptops and some of them are touch screen. They didn't have any problems logging on or issues with the network. 
• Students begin learning English at the age of two, so they have been learning academic English for their whole school careers.
• a consequence for not listening, arguing with the teacher or not paying attention in the class is a week out of class, doing assignments independently in another part of the building.
• Technology is a centerpiece of these students' learning, not a supplement.
• Teachers are called by their first name, followed by m'am or sir. 
• Teachers spend a whole class period (50 minutes) on something that we would spend maybe 10 minutes on in American classrooms (i.e. copying notes from the board, unpacking one stanza of a poem)

Inside the hut. 

Morning prayer

A 5th grade teacher, introduces the different genres of literature.