Coming Ready or Not!

Like in the game of hide and seek sometimes life sneaks up on us and it boils down to coming ready or not! This could be how I am feeling about my upcoming trip to India, I’m not really ready but it is coming, and fast!

In fact, this time next week I will be in India. I fly out to Melbourne on Friday and Saturday morning I meet my fellow teachers from New Zealand and we fly to New Delhi on Saturday morning.

A couple of weeks ago, I met most of the team in Christchurch. On rather a brisk morning we came together to get to know each other a little and to prepare for our days in Dehradun. A couple of times throughout the day, I sat back and had to pinch myself asking if it was really happening.  What I have wanted to do for quite a while is work with teachers to help them with teaching strategies and general classroom practices. When I resigned from my full time teaching position a couple of years ago, I had a plan. My plan hasn’t played out the way I thought it might or as quickly as I thought, in fact I discovered God had a different plan! One that would take almost two years to come to fruitition and a whole lot of frustration. However as I sat with the other teachers in NZ I realized how privileged and blessed I felt to be amongst others who so willingly shared and gave of their time to help others. For many on the team this is not their first trip with Rata, so drawing on past experiences and collective wisdom sure is inspiring.

Let me briefly fill you in. The purpose for my trip to India is working with teachers. Rata (www.rata.org.nz) the organization I am travelling with is all about teachers teaching teachers and working to empower untrained teachers to confidently deliver content in the classroom.  Our planning day was spent working out how we can best utilise our time over the twelve days we are there.  We will begin the day after arriving in India and spend five days of intensive training with the teachers.  Here we plan to discuss what made us all become teachers and the joy that comes from that.  We will work with teachers to uncover their passions and then spend time working on learning outcomes, lesson planning and success criteria.  After our intensive days and night activities (just remembered I still have some things to organize and purchase for them – whoops!) we will visit the teachers in their schools as they begin their school year.  Watching implementation and supporting them through these days is something I look forward to.

 

Well my to-do list seems to be growing and time in which to complete it shrinking, but like the game, I take a deep breath and forge ahead ready for the challenges, fun, learning and excitement that are sure to come our way.

Your thoughts and prayers would be much appreciated.

So now from here it’s coming ready or not!

The beautiful day in Christchurch which was spent planning for India. It was certainly colder than it looked!

Looking in the opposite direction across the bay at Sumner

New Zealand to Prepare for India

Early tomorrow morning I am heading across the ditch to NZ to meet up with the RATA team I will be travelling with to India in July.

We have a couple of days of meeting, planning and getting to know each other for our upcoming work in Dehradun. Our time in Dehradun will be spent working with teachers. This is Rata’s sixth trip to India and my first. I am looking forward to the first couple of weeks of July and all that it has to offer.

There will no doubt be some extremes with these trips. The first being the weather. As I type it says 12 degrees (Celsius) in Christchurch and 40 degrees in New Delhi which is relatively close to where we are going.

Please pray for our work and our safe travels.
I’ll try to keep things posted as they happen.
Take care, so now from here it’s see you after a chilly NZ!