the diary of a traveling dreadhead: Pictures, Projects & Points

Current fellows get their photos taken and hung in the office at Kopila Valley, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that the wall was complete. Jamie, Amy, and I all came in January and we finally got our photos up this week! Jamie’s says Sustainability Fellow, Amy’s says Early Childhood Development Fellow and says The Everything Fellow. Before arriving here, I was a little worried by the fact that I lacked an official title, but I quickly realized, it’s really awesome. I’m an English teacher, a Home fellow, an extracurricular coordinator, and a lot of other things rolled into one. I really feel like I do a little bit of everything, and I’ve taken on two big projects thus far: Sports Month and the Kopila Cup Celebration.

Each student is placed in one of four houses – sky, star, moon, or sun – upon arrival at KVS (yes, Harry Potter style). Throughout the year, the students accumulate points through academics, extracurriculars, least amount of food waste, being helpful, etc. All of the points and excitement culminates on the last day of school when the winner of the prized Kopila Cup is announced. This year, Sports Month played a huge part in determining the winner. During the month of February, I organized 69 different football, volleyball, and track matches, pitting each house against the others. I refereed almost every single game, and with matches at lunchtime and up to 5 games after school 6 days a week, I was quite busy! But it was a blast. I got to know so many students outside of my classes, hang out outside every day, and watch Nepali kids get way too competitive. The best matches were the minis’ football games, when girls and boys in kindergarten through 2^nd grade would run in one big pack chasing after the ball and stirring up clouds of dust along the way. It was some of their first times ever playing soccer and it was the most entertaining event by far! I remember coaching a YMCA 3-4 year old team a few years ago, and the kids could hardly walk let alone play football…and the Nepali kids were at this level. By the end of sports month, I think a few of them finally picked up on the fact that you cannot pick up the soccer ball with your hands. We finished up sports month with a 3K road run around Surkhet. The students ran barefoot along the rocky and dusty road as I rode backwards on a scooter filming the entire thing…check out the video below!

Sky House dominated sports month by racking in 322 points, followed by Moon with 250, Star with 200, and poor Sun House brought in just 146. The week leading up to the Kopila Cup celebration, we tried to even out the points any way possible. 10 points for each student that is on time to school! 30 points for each student wearing a clean uniform! Our plan didn’t quite work though, turns out the Sky House students are athletic, punctual, and value cleanliness. I even said I would give points to anyone smiling in the morning one day – and Sky House still won. Even though the Kopila Cup winner was pretty apparent, I wanted to make the celebration on the last day of school as exciting as possible. I created a slideshow, we had students perform songs, dances, poems, hip hops routines and dramas, we gave 5 awards to outstanding students, played cornhole and ringtoss on the field, had a dance party, did facepainting, and announced Sky House as the Kopila Cup Winner with the unveiling of a new banner that I made. A fun time was had by all, and it was really cool to see my two projects showcased together and that the time and energy I put in really made a difference at the school.