St Joan of Arc - Udayan

I’m Beverley Schramm and have been teaching French at St Joan’s since April 1998. Before that, when I was mainly at home with our three children I sometimes came to school to help out as a supply teacher in the MFL dept as my husband, Nick, has been Head of MFL for the last 22 years.

Once Caroline and I were chatting at the photocopier and I said that if ever I could help at Udayan she only had to ask.

After the second pilgrimage to India she approached me and said that James and Bivash were desperate to get spoken English going at Udayan because it made such a difference to the kids’ job prospects. Would I be interested? Of course I said ‘yes’!

Since then I have made many friends at Udayan, visiting for three weeks in 2009 when I set up the spoken English project with Bivash and the staff. I then returned for two and a half weeks in 2010 to refresh and reinforce the project including training some of the older students to take small conversation groups with younger students.

I love Udayan, the children and staff and I’m so looking forward to returning, especially as this time it will be with Caroline, Chris, Dominic, Camilla, Sabina, Joe, Jamie and Shaunagh.

It will also be wonderful for me to see some sights of India this time as it will give me plenty of inspiration for topics for conversation classes with the staff and older students at Udayan and an insight into Indian culture beyond West Bengal.

Last year as part of the spoken English project we put on a production of the ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’ which was great fun! So this time I have some plans for a new production…

Watch this space!