Elizabeth's nepal education blog : Science training and spiders

Last week I travelled to Mugu in the far west to monitor schools and to train Science teachers in practical Science techniques. The journey involved two flights, a nights stay in the searing heat of Nepalgung then a spectacular but alarming flight in a 15 seater plane to Mugu. As you approach the high airstrip the plane has to turn through nearly 90 degrees and goes so close to the mountains it seems likely to touch the rocky slopes before gliding onto the high airstrip without losing any more height

After a few days in the main town we took a jeep out to the road head and then walked for 6 hours with a stop to monitor one of our partner schools before we reached Mangri, a Tibetan style settlement with a school which has improved dramatically since our project started supporting it . It has a very committed school management committee and a well equipped science lab so it was chosen as the training venue for my first field based practical science training.
I had brought some equipment with me but strict weight restrictions meant that I had to wait and see what was available in the school before finalising my training. Also there was no internet, phone or mains electricity so I had to rely on a borrowed low voltage projector and posters in case the solar powered batteries failed.
When I arrived the lab had obviously not had classes in it although some science was being taught as demonstrations in classrooms. My main objective was to teach Science practical and classroom management skills to teachers who had only learnt science theoretically themselves and so were ill equipped to teach practical science to their students.Firstly I opened the shutters to get some light in and was inspecting the large range of unused chemicals and glassware when I noticed what I thought was a large painted mural on the wall. I am somewhat arachnophobic but I was not frightened because my brain told me that such an enormous(at least 25cm leg span) black thing on the wall must be a painting.I asked the member of staff who was helping me "yo ke ho"( anglised script) which means "what is that" and he replied calmly "tyo spider ho" meaning "that is a spider" at which point I left the lab very quickly and waited outside until it had been removed. On return I started to remove a poster from the wall to make a screen for the projector and there was another one almost as large behind the poster! Once again I fled and explained I was not going back in until the spider had been removes. It was carried out on a grass broom which it was trying to bite and I was told they are very dangerous since their bite is very nasty. Since the local health post had only a couple of health workers and no doctor , and we were nearly a days walk from the nearest road I was right to be cautious!
Anyway I completed my preparations and the next day the training went really well. The best bit was when I was showing the teachers how do make a practical lesson plan including identifying risks to students . Several of the teachers not only completed lesson plans but demonstrated the practicals to each other.

teachers demonstrating experiments to each other

preparing lesson plans

By the end of the training all the teachers had completed several simple experiments and they were given my student worksheets, lesson plan templates and lab rules all in both English and Nepali. My two colleagues will be able to continue helping these teachers for sustainability in the future.

posters of key points

In our feedback session afterwards we have agreed that I will extend the training in our other working areas to 2or 3 days so that teachers will hav emore tiem to paln their own practicals. I will then produce a practical handbook in English and Neplali) based on the Nepali curriculum to help many more schools introduce practical Science