This Week in Gwalior

Today is our last day of volunteering at the Gajra Raja Girls’ School in Gwalior, the hometown of Ishan’s father, Anil Kumar. The Kumar family has supported the school for many years and believes strongly in exposing the 2000 mostly lower-class girls at the school to outside perspectives. Many of the students have never left the immediate vicinity of their homes and school, so to have a small group of outsiders like us come to them is an unexpected break from the ordinary.

We began on Monday by taking a tour of the school. Most Sierra Canyon students and families would likely be shocked by the facilities—a rusted out school bus sitting in the yard, rooms with peeling paint and nothing more than a chalkboard and a bare lightbulb in some cases, a computer lab with only two computers, small ceiling fans that serve as the only source of relief from the stifling humidity of the monsoon season; there is no denying that the differences between the Sierra Canyon campus and the Gajra Raja campus are vast. However, the physical environment in which the girls here find themselves seems to have done nothing to dampen their spirits. They are bright-eyed, eager, curious, and unendingly sweet. Good teaching and learning and a fervent commitment to the pursuit of knowledge can, as we’ve seen this week, happen anywhere.

Beginning on Tuesday, each afternoon we’ve given short presentations on various aspects of our life in America. We created a short quiz on basic facts of American history and cultural life to see what the students knew about our country. While few of them knew who the first president of the U.S. was, “Barack Obama” was quick to come to their lips when we asked who the current president was. Many of them also knew of Abraham Lincoln as well. Reminding us that the reach of American culture may not be as long as we thought, most of the girls were unable to name any American cities or movie stars (though many of them seem to have already seen the latest Harry Potter movie and, much to our chagrin, profess an interest in Justin Bieber).

The best part was when the girls got to reverse the questions in our quiz and ask us who the first leader of independent India was and whether we could name any Bollywood stars. We’ve since made sure to memorize the names of Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan so that we don’t embarrass ourselves!

After our ice-breaker quiz, Max, Peter, and Ishan rotated through their presentations: Ishan on the daily life of an American high school student and the college application process; Peter on the basics of the American Revolution; and Max on American speech and debate programs. The girls seemed to have the most fun practicing the spar style of debate that Max explained to them; after he lectured on how speech and debate competitions work in the U.S., he turned the floor over to the girls to debate such topics as whether Hollywood movies are better than Bollywood movies (the consensus, unsurprisingly, was no) and whether Indian food is better than American food (take a wild guess on what they said).

Although shy at first, the girls seem to have gotten more and more comfortable with us, some even returning to the room where we do our presentations during their free time to catch a repeat performance. Their questions to us are pointed and sometimes difficult to answer—do you like India better than America?, for example. Regardless of whether our answers satisfy them, however, they certainly seem to enjoy our presence. The most surprising moments to us are when they ask us for our autographs. Over the course of the week, each of us has given at least 50, scribbling out our names on the scraps of old homework papers or spiral notebooks the girls thrust at us. This may be the closest we ever get to celebrity worship—we’re not complaining.

As we come to the end of our time with the girls, we’ve naturally started to wonder what effect our visit has had. Although at times we’ve questioned whether our being here has had or will have any tangible impact (after all, we haven’t constructed a new classroom, purchased smartboards for the teachers, or donated thousands of dollars), the Kumars insist with a knowledge that can only be gained from the multi-year commitment they’ve made to the school that our presence here does matter. Seeing people who look, dress, and act so different from them—people who’ve chosen to spend time in a simple government school rather than devote their vacation time solely to the pleasures of tourism—resonates with the students. It reminds them, the Kumars reassure us, that there is a larger world out there, and that maybe that world is something they will want to see and experience for themselves in the not-too-distant future. That is the salve for feeling, as we often have this week, that we are gaining from these girls far more than we are giving.