We are at exactly the middle point of our time here in Hyderabad. We have been teaching now for a little over four weeks and are now heading into final project time at both the schools. We wish that we had more final projects to share with everyone at this point, but finishing projects (especially where all the work has been done by the students) has proven difficult what with power cuts and other equipment problems.

This week both of our schools are having exams for three days so we have had to suspend and rearrange our teaching schedule so that our students can complete their other exams. This has put a slight delay on the start of our final projects but hopefully we can make up for lost time starting this next week.

What we have learned from doing the small “Letters to Our Leaders” project is that things are going to take much longer than we had expected them to. All of the students want to be working with the camera at the same time, especially at the Boy’s school and this tends to lead to an inefficient waste of time, video, and battery. We are trying to work around this by dividing the class into smaller groups to work on smaller projects, but it seems that the grass is always greener on the other side and boys who are working on one part of the project want to on another part because it seems more important or more exciting. No matter how many times you explain that all parts are important they all seem to want to be doing the other thing. Hopefully with a little pushing they will get on track and be able to finish a complete project.

We are going to have some visitors to the project in the next few weeks. Franny Bohar, another Middlebury alum, is coming to Hyderabad for a short visit and will be coming to classes at both the Boys and Girls schools. A theater major in college, we are hoping that she can bring a unique artistic eye to our final projects. After that we will have a visit from Sergio Gountas, coming for a visit while on leave from his work with the UN in Juba, Sudan. We hope that these new faces will bring energy to the classroom. Until next time!