The Jyoti program is all about helping kids from a nearby government school to speak English. They have a whole load of trouble speaking the language because in their school, they speak in Kannada. A bunch of parent and student volunteers teach. The student volunteers try to do whatever they can and try not to be completely out of their depth when they are teaching kids who are older than them. The parents come up with a curriculum and teach it. Well, I guess you couldn't exactly call it a curriculum  There is no rule that the school will give the parents a bunch of subjects and tell them what and how to teach. Most of us are people who have no teaching experience at  all. We don't get textbooks or any books at all, for that matter. We either bring our own printed matter (huh...printed matter...for some reason, that sounds really formal to me...and I really don't like to sound formal when I write) or find we find a website with "educational games" and "educational stories" as their called (personally, I think their just a bunch of simple stories that some guy somewhere is payed to write, which they probably are, but that is just a question of opinion). and we all love it. Well, most of us do. Sometimes, some of the volunteers complain that they would rather be at home playing than at school, trying not to look bored and waiting for the parent to ask them to do something. I'm sure, however, that that is a feeling that only exists until the parent asks you to do something. They always do. I think it helps them. When they can break up the class into a few smaller groups of four or five students each, they can give each child individual attention. And an other thing that most of the parents are constantly commenting about is the amount of enthusiasm the kids show. Not the student volunteers-we are always enthusiastic (maybe every once in a while the heat gets to us and we feel bored, but lets not get into such matters that need not concern us), but the students from the government school. You'd think that after spending seven hours studying at school and then walking to our school in the hot sun for extra classes on top of the seven hours of classes they already went through, they would be tired and irritable, right? I know I would. You probably would be too. But they are not. On their way to school, they walk past my mother's office. They never fail to greet my mother with a cheery "good morning, miss!". I dont know how they can manage it. I guess this is starting to get a little bit boring, so I'll leave you to go do other, more productive things than reading blogs by random people about random things :D.