India Expedition: Day 5 — July 10, 2018 — The Walking School Bus
Today was another impactful and incredible day as our research teams continued their projects. Meaningful conversations, data collection, and infrastructure preparation characterized our day!
Stephanie continued to lead the SiMBi data collection through our randomized control trial. Learn more about SiMBi here.
Researcher Nick took the initiative to speak with our personal bus driver for the expedition, Aneel. Initially, Aneel was confused about why we wanted to speak with him, thinking he couldn’t help with our projects. Sure enough, Nick’s conversations with him (with the essential translation help from Sukriti) led to extremely fruitful insights about how taxis operate in the region, affecting how a school bus model unique to Suyalgarh would be best established. This information will be imperative to our transportation research for HPS.
Our Art projects continued to make headway, and today, the older students led some of the younger students in an arts and crafts exercise. The goal of this is to continue to make students comfortable with their new supplies as we prepare to work on our illustration collaboration with Pratham books.
The headmaster from the Chopra Campus of Himalayan Public School stopped by to check in on our initiatives with Suyalgargh. We also were happy to hand over the school supplies for the students at the other HPS campus!
We continued to work on HPS Suyalgarh’s 2nd water catchment system that is attached to the Solar Power classroom. Today we completed the important work of establishing the filtration system that will ensure clean drinking water for students!
Today we sat down with three of the fantastic teachers at HPS: Deepa Suyal, Pushpa Negi, and Dinesh Chandra. They each gave us inspiring insight in what it is like to be a teacher in the region and at HPS, as well as feedback on how the introduction of SiMBi and the Solar Power classroom has had an effect on the student culture at the school. Stay tuned for further insights from these conversations as the interviews are released!
Lastly, Nick ended the day by taking the bus home with the students of HPS! Using the map provided by the HPS headmaster, Nick was able to track and make notes of the journey to get a better understanding of the terrain and distances that are used on the existing route. This will also provide essential information to inform our transportation research!
Originally published at https://thewalkingschoolbus.com on July 20, 2018.
