Welcome to our 2020 visit to the children at Hastings School, Kolkata.
Celebration day 🎉
We have had a lovely busy day today in the hot sunshine. At 9am we travelled to the boys school where we had taught the teachers. It is a private school and one of the best in India; certainly the opposite ends of the spectrum from the CRS slum schools we have all been teaching…
Teddy Edward makes lots of new friends
Teddy Edward came to Hastings with us today and the children loved him. We did lots of rhymes and counting and then gave the children paper plates to make faces so that they could practise the names of body parts that we learned on Tuesday. We did some multiplication and showed them how to draw…
Making India’s national news
It’s been another busy day, starting with our second morning teaching the teachers. This time we were showing them ways to work on English prepositions with their children. For some of them it was difficult just to learn to pronounce the words and then to use them in a sentence. With others we got into…
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Further adventures in India... 
Good Luck Miss Gill and Mrs Maynard we hope you have a good journey and we can’t wait to hear your stories when you arrive back at school in a weeks time. We will miss you The infants.
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Hello Miss Gill and Mrs M looks like your having a great time!. Have you seen any children you recognise from your last trip?.Hows the weather?
love From Katie and Jessie Treasure
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Good morning ladies- we’re about to set off to school so we’ll let you know later all about the children. The weather is lovely at the moment, although there is rain forecast for tomorrow which I’ve never seen in Kolkata (and I don’t have an umbrella!) xx
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Hi miss gill and miss m,are you having a nice time?is there any nice food and is it different than ours?iv done really hard work at school,want you to see it.love from jasmine xxx
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Hi Jasmine
We are having a lovely time looking at such a different way of life. The food is very tasty and quite spicy. We are eating vegetarian food and have had some that we don’t know what it is!! That makes meal times quite exciting!! Miss Gill can’t wait to see your lovely work. Xx
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Do they like there desks
Do they like doing pictures
Love from edie and Olivia. Minnie
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Hi Edie
The children love their desks especially as they have games on them. They also love doing art and they do a lot as their teacher is very good at it. Even the youngest child is good at colouring! xx
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HI! Hope you are having a great time! Just wondering how the food tastes and how old are the oldest and youngest children are.
Lots of love from Evie xx
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Hi Evie
How lovely to hear from a year 6 at last.
The youngest in the class is 2 and a half although we had a new child start who looked really young. The oldest is about 12/13yrs.
The food is yummy – quite spicy but tasty. Xx
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Hi Jennie and Rachel
I hope you’re keeping well and aren’t too tired. Can I please ask you two questions, first, what is the priority and aims of education in the schools you’ve visited and second, what’s it like being a Christian in a country where you’re very much a minority? Sending you and all the children lots of prayers. God bless you all. Revd Stephen Monk
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Morning Stephen 😁 well…the first one of those is one we ask a lot and you get slightly different answers everywhere! At Hastings the first priority is getting the children into a semi safe environment for a few hours a day and not out on the road system or with people who would do them harm. The aim is to get them at least the minimum education that their peers who are at a government school would have. They need a basic level of English to be able to function in Indian society because anything formal happens in English and this community is Bengali speaking. They also need some number skills to be able to work, even just to negotiate with money they beg for. The phonics work we are doing with them, so we are told by the CRS staff, actually gives them a head start if they manage to get into a formal government school.
It’s been the national Indian day this week and they made quite a thing of their constitution which says that, in a secular Indian society, all faiths are respected and protected- and we’ve never felt anything else. The Cathedral and the CRS are certainly well respected and we have been made very welcome by the entirely Muslim Hastings community.
Love from us both x
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Miss Gill, I love your beautiful pictures, I hope you’re well. But could you please explain when we use among and amongst?? From Sharon Monk. Xx ps. Perhaps we parents could do with a lesson when you’re back!!
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Any time, Mrs Monk- and you’ll wish you’d never asked!😜
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Hi Miss Gill and Mrs M. I hope you’ve had a lovely time with the hasting children. How old are the children and do they like colouring ? It looks really nice and I like the pictures. Can’t wait to see you when your back at school 🙂 love Ella xxxx❤️💕
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Hi Ella, we had a fantastic time with the Hastings children and they have some of the neatest colouring I’ve ever seen! The youngest chosen were only two and I think the oldest is about 13. See you in the morning xx
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