Shishur Sevay

I was up and dressed early this morning.  It’s not good to deal with such issues before showering and putting on a sari.  I decided first that I had to get more information;  I had to make a decision based on the events, not on how much I needed or didn’t need someone here.  House supervisor did not know what the problem had been, and being in the midst of another crisis, said, “I’m tied up, go directly to Mummy (that’s me) and tell her.”   She said she had no idea it involved the feeding.    Am I certain, of course not, but things she said made sense.  The teacher denied having told the girl to keep Sonali’s mouth open, and denied force feeding her.  Do I believe her, not sure.  The teacher, the older girl, my assistant and I met together.  The older girl changed her story twice.  She is totally unreliable and has vehemently denied things I’ve actually seen her do.   I honestly don’t know what is the truth.  As for my assistant, she didn’t know what she had done since (eventually) she told me.  When the teacher explained something, she said she didn’t know that….  She was vague in parts, and absolute in others.  But it still didn’t register that she should have told me immediately, and all this would have been resolved right then.  She kept insisting she had told me, as if it didn’t matter what day she told me, and I think for her that is true.  I cannot trust her.   We don’t live by the same set of rules.  Painfully for her and for me, I said that trust had been broken, and that she couldn’t stay.  

There have already been negative repercussions of her firing.  I live in a culture where immediacy is not understood, and often truth is irrelevant.  I am so aware of being a white woman writing about Indian culture, aware of how I am sometimes heard.  But my focus is on the children, running an orphanage, so I’m going to talk about what I deal with in this realm.  I am also a boss, and a woman boss.  The more I learn about the “combined family” which has been romanticized in the West, the more I think I’m seen as the Mother-in-Law of a combined family with all the subterfuge, alliances, secrecy, jealousies… the ultimate power who everyone wants to please and to control.

I am only referring to the staff and other people around me, not the girls.  To the girls I am mother, even when they defiantly say, “You aren’t our real mother!!!”  It’s so “on cue” developmentally.  I tell them of course I’m not their real mothers, but I’m mother to them now.  Sometimes the girls and I are fine and sometimes we are not.  But it all feels normal, and I’m experienced as a mother.  I’m not experienced as mother-in-law of an Indian combined family!

My singular mission, is the safety and well-being of the children.  I won’t let myself lose sight of that, not for a moment.  It’s hard.  Of course I’d love to bend to accommodate needs of others, but that would take me off mission.  It’s ten-o’clock and I DO know where my kids are.

I am so appreciative of the support I received from readers.   I am trying to bring in people from other places.  Part of the problem though is that not many people speak Bengali outside West Bengal and Bangladesh.  I have two people coming from abroad.  And I’d love to have more.  I’d love to have interns.  It’s just that each of these things requires me to get involved in some way, and that takes me away from the kids.  So, I’m trying but I’m just not there yet.

Well, enough of that.  I’ll blog soon about my start of a new math program.  I’m the new math teacher and this evening we had a really great class.  I’m so excited about this.  Next post.

I’m blogging my I struggle with  a situation of abuse.   I haven’t yet decided what I will do.  One part of me says to hide my conflict, not to let anyone know I’m ashamed because the answer isn’t totally clear t me.  Here is what happened:

Today, Thursday, I learned at 1:30 pm that one of the teachers, on Wednesday, had forced food into one of the children with disabilities.  She instructed one of the older girls, whom we are training as a helper to special ed teachers, to hold open the child’s mouth with her fingers, and then the teacher pushed food into her mouth.  Her lip began to bleed where it was already dry and rough.   I’ll use the name of the little one, Sonali, because she is known to people who have visited.  Sonali is our youngest, is visually impaired, microcephalic, and delightful.  When she arrived she has terrible feeding problems, screamed when fed, and had esophageal spasms.  Calming her down was a long slow process.  Mostly she was only willing to eat if someone would tap her on her head or if she held something over her head.  She also preferred that someone be singing to her at the same time.  Well, all that has passed, but she is a fussy eater.

Six months ago we went to a public function with all the children.  I suddenly noticed one of our childcare workers holding Sonali flat on her lap and pouring in a drink.  I went over and stopped her.  When we got back home I fired her.  Yes, she had been trained.  In this case she was just not bothering.  It takes work to feed these children without endangering them due to choking.

So now back to what happened yesterday, what I learned today, and what I will do tomorrow.

1.  The teacher has been with us over a year.   I also learned today that one of the girls had seen her scratch Rani to get her to behave.  She hadn’t told me because she thought I wouldn’t believe her, and the teacher had said I’d approved of this, which I haven’t.  So what do I do about the teacher?  Can I replace her?  Will the next one be just as bad?  If I were reading this, my blood would be boiling and saying “fire her immediately,” and maybe I will.

2.  The supervising special educator was right there, but feeding another child.  I called her this evening.  She has no idea what I’m talking about.  Do I believe her?  No.

3. The staff member, officially my assistant, who observed it all  told the teacher and the girl she should not be doing that and then didn’t tell me until today.  Well actually, she came to me at 1:30 saying that she wanted to talk to me tomorrow.  I said that sounded like something I needed to hear now.  She looked toward yet another staff person who apparently already knew, and said she didn’t want all the teachers to be angry with her.  I said to tell me, so she told me the story as I’ve written it. 

4. The house supervisor she tried to tell yesterday, who said she didn’t want to hear any more and to go and tell me.  At that point the house supervisor felt her responsibility was over.

The Victims:

Sonali, who was force-fed.   

The older girl who is being trained to work with teachers.  She is doing this because of severe cognitive disabilities.  She is extremely vulnerable.  She has been in tears because she was part of something that wasn’t right and can’t sort out her place.

Spacial layout matters.  While all this was going on yesterday I was sitting in the next room, with the door open, about 25 feet from where all this was going on.    Our entire ground floor is only 900 sq. ft. and from my desk I can see most of the space.  I was sitting right here, and that’s what is also so creepy!  I’ve said from the first weeks here, that no one will tell me what is going on.  I pay them to tell me but they will not.  In this case, no one wanted to be blamed for telling.  Lost was the issue that a child’s life was put in danger and that the same teacher would be here today feeding her.

Is not telling me, a “factor” in whether I keep someone or is it a deal breaker?  That’s really the dilemma. 

I try to balance the emotional and practical aspects of what I do.  Emotionally, I just don’t want these people around me.  It upsets me to look at them and know there may be things they are hiding from me.  This is not first time for either of them.  They work for me but they are more worried about others being angry with me for telling.  This IS the culture I’m in.  I was asked recently if there was anyone her I trust totally, and I have to say no.  People tell me what they want me to know.  Some of that power comes because I don’t know Bengali, but today’s news was all in English and all the people involved are fluent in English. 

The internet is my connection to the world from here.  Joe Paterno was fired today for his inaction in the face of sex abuse.  What he did was a deal breaker.  So maybe that’s my answer.  I don’t have other coaches standing in the wings.  I’m just more on my own.  Maybe that’s better.  It is so horrible to have people working for me, knowing they won’t tell me.  It eats at me.  It makes me afraid to leave at all, as it is so bad even with me sitting here.

My children were in a special school a few years ago.  We would drop them at 9:30 and pick them up at 1 pm.  In the car they would start thrusting their tongues, what they do when they are thirsty, so we brought water and gave them water in the car.  Then one of our workers told me that the full bottle of water we took there was always full, so they weren’t getting water.  I saw the principal standing outside the day I learned this and I went to tell her, and she said, “I’ll look into it,” and walked away.  After we got home I called up the founder of the school, went to her flat, and told her I was taking the children out.  She said, “you are denying them education because of water?”  I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was, “Why would I let my children be with such a person that would deny water to them?”  What sort of person does this?  I’ve learned that this is common practice in all these schools because it minimizes the child’s need to urinate. 

This morning I was talking with the house supervisor because she is having problems about where to live and I’m concerned about her and was trying to find solutions.  But all this time she was not telling me about the situation of the teacher and Sonali.  In other words, I think I’m on some equal level of trust, concern, extending myself, and she is worried about teachers getting mad at her for telling me. 

I’m probably going on too much.  If I really post this instead of hitting delete, please notice the guts it takes to say these things out loud, and appreciate that I am certain I am not the only one with these conflicts.  I reach out so I am not so alone.  I also reach out so you, the reader who has faced such situations, can know you are not alone either.  It’s hard stuff, hard stuff to get right.  I think I know what I will do in the morning, but not there yet.

About a month ago, the older girls came home with a failing grade on their math test.   Math isn’t their strength, but they haven’t done this badly before.  We had a new math teacher, as the previous one left without notice to take a good job.  I asked the girls, “what went wrong?”  If they had done “medium” I would have assumed they may not have studied enough, but all failing meant something else was wrong.  “They changed the numbers,” one of the girls told me.  “The numbers were different from the ones we studied.”  I looked at the teacher.  Yes, she had been working from the question bank books and didn’t routinely change numbers.  So if a girl got the SAME problem correctly over and over, she was considered taught.  So I told the teacher she had to change numbers. 

This was not the first time this has come up.  I’ve insisted a lot of math teachers do this, but I forget when a new one starts.  I thought we were OK.   The girls are in Bengali Medium school so all their work is in Bengali, including the numbers.  I’m able to do the numbers but can’t read the problems.  I’ve been helping them with fractions also.  Two years ago I found wonderful fraction sheets, strips, online and printed out worksheets.  At that time I gave them to the math teacher, and she gave them to the girls for artwork.  I asked if she told them it was about fractions.  No, she was planning to in the future. 

Last night the girls asked for some help with math.  We got through the first three problems, with them trying to translate, and my knowing the numbers.  Then we came to a problem:  a field has an area of 360 sq. meters.  How many meters on each side?  The girls all agreed the answer was 90 meters.  I went over the Bengali with them, and yes they were sure the 360 was SQ. meters.  So I showed them that the area would then be 8100 sq.m.  They insisted the Bengali asked for area, not length.  So then I tried to figure the square root of 360 and went to the internet to refresh myself and then figured since 3600 was a perfect square, maybe the teacher left off a “0” in the problem.  Or, she made the error in saying it was area, not length of perimeter.

Today I asked the teacher.  I put the problem up and she insisted the answer was 90.  It was clear that even in Bengali (I had a translator with me) she was confused about area and length.  Finally after going over length and area with her I asked if she understood what she had done wrong.  She told me, “Yes, I should not have changed the number given in the question bank.”  Namely she doesn’t know how to do the math.

I pay all teachers and I pay well.   But I can’t really “vet” them because of the language.  The girls have been very happy with her, probably because she never yells at them, and always answers their questions and helps them with numbers.  This has been a chronic problem, teachers who just give answers.  The teachers in school do the same thing.  And in the government school they were in earlier, teachers even give answers during exams.

We have a system of “tuition” here where the school teachers (for fees) teach the same students at night that they have in school.  If a child is getting tuition from a school teacher, then the child will also be given advance information of what is on the exam.  We were in the system briefly and we were paying a math teacher for after-school teaching but the principal intervened and said our four could not be taught there.  I’ve written about this before.

Our solution is that we will move the girls to English medium, a hard task but necessary at this point.  We will have a four-month period in which to do intensive teaching here.  I’m putting together a team.  The girls in special education have been taught in English since the beginning.  I did this because I wanted to be able to bring in teachers from outside West Bengal, and I also wanted to be able to know exactly what was going on with them and their teaching.  There are some computer programs in Bengali but they were made proprietary and require their own switches which are no longer being made. 

I desperately need help here.  It’s a learning process.  I simply can’t find the kind of committment I’ve known elsewhere in teaching.  Special educators do not have to be college graduates or teachers before taking a course and becoming certified.  And they are products of the educational system where you stick with the question bank.  I sold what I had in the US, and with my retirement money came here to take care of children no one wanted and no one considered worthy of education.  The problem isn’t funds; it’s people, skills, curiosity, belief in the power of caring and teaching.

Thanks for your interest in listening.  I have this crazy idea that orphans are as deserving as any other of our children. 

Oh, the math teacher?  She will leave in two weeks when exams are over, and in the meantime she is teaching history and geography.

Rani is pointing to the computer. She is being taught by one of our older girls.

Ganga going to school with the big girls. Bornali is smart but does NOT like to study! She tolerates it because she likes pleasing her teachers.

Sonali has little vision, but manages to organize people to meet her needs (wishes) quite well.

Bornali is smart but does NOT like to study! She tolerates it because she likes pleasing her teachers.

On this morning everyone is learning. Four are in the dining room studying for final examinations at their school next week. Three of the children with disabilities are upstairs in a classroom with three teachers, one a special educator.. Gordon, our new English teacher is in our big room working with five other girls, one who is multiply handicapped with CP, but who follows all that goes on, and loves education. She is with a helper who is learning. Another girl in this group is severely dyslexic. For the girls with dyslexia and with CP, I am producing Widgit papers so they can keep up, and indicate thoughts. I’m printing up sheets with words like happy, sad, school, computer, no speech, no walk… I’m also trying to finish the website, just managed to finish writing a short bio… We are an orphanage and school operating in 900 sq.ft. on ground floor and then a classroom on 1st and on 2nd floor, each about 250 sq.ft. All furniture is on wheels.
One day I hope we will have a bigger place, with a ramp from floor to floor, and accessible to all.
I’m the hold up on the website as I’m pulled in so many directions, but in my mind the immediate needs have to come first… like writing up Widgit pages. My BIG dream would be to have an expert with Widgit come and work with us for a while. Anyone feel like coming for Kolkata? You are needed!