It’s the time of year when students all over the United States, and especially here in the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district, are thinking about going back to school, and when teachers have already planned out that “What I did this summer” homework assignment. Every year I have always groaned, along with everybody else, when the teacher announced this assignment. But this year I am actually looking forward to writing about my experience working with children from the slums of Amdavad, in the northwestern part of India.
Last spring I wrote a letter to the editor of this newspaper explaining my plans to work with the Aware Foundation, an organization whose goal is to use education to rehabilitate disadvantaged children from the same area of India where both my parents were born (WW-P News, April 3). As a son of Indian immigrants who has benefited from the opportunities of America and this school district, I wanted to give children less fortunate than I the chance to receive a complete and proper education, something most of us take for granted.
This summer I spent a month and a half in the town of Amdavad working with some of India’s poorest children, the same kind of children who were brought to the world’s attention in the Academy Award-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” Every afternoon I went to one of four Community Resource Centers, a place where the children would go every evening to receive instruction that helps fill in the gaps left by the usually poor public schools that they attend.
I worked one-on-one with each of the children, numbering almost 100 in all, to identify each child’s areas of strength and weakness, allowing the centers to best suit each child’s needs. I was surprised that when it came to their general inability to read well, there was very little difference between the younger and older children. For example, I had a second grade student and a sixth grade student and shockingly, neither was able to read grade one text. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that when it came to math, neither could do basic subtraction either. Most of my students couldn’t tell time, but of course, they could count money perfectly.
At the end of my six weeks working with the children, I compiled the data I had collected on each of the children’s strengths and weaknesses in learning, information the Aware Foundation needed to help develop programs to educate the children more effectively. The foundation has invited me to speak at an international fund raising event in London this coming October to speak about my experiences and to share my insights about the children of Amdavad.
Next summer I plan to go back to India and continue to help the Aware Foundation to make a difference in the lives of these children. All I can say at this point is that as much as the children learned from me, I learned so much from them — about appreciating education and its role in shaping our lives, and also about appreciating what I have here at home.
Shivang Patel
Class of 2011, High School North
