Students are learning Hindi in a Wellington classroom by picking up the language via their own mother tongues.
The Wellington Hindi School, which marks its 30th anniversary this year, practices an inclusive method of teaching Hindi to its non-Hindi speaking students, who form the bulk of the class.
This is done by finding equivalent meanings for words in the language the students speak at home.
Children drawn from Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam speaking households across the Greater Wellington region are acquiring basic proficiency in spoken Hindi through this teaching approach.
Parents play a key role as enablers in the learning process.
The school has three branches located in Lower Hutt, Newlands and Wellington Central, respectively, which have reopened to students keen to return to in-person schooling after Covid restrictions have been lifted.
However, many parents are still wary of sending their wards to the reopened schools and prefer to continue with virtual learning.
The school operates every Sunday for two hours, between 10am and 12 noon. In addition, it conducts a regular on-line class for senior students.
The student strength across the three centres fluctuates between 80 to 100. The age group ranges between four and 18 years.
The school has an eight- member board of governors, with Kashmir Kaur as its chairperson.
“The school started in somebody’s living room 30 years ago,” says Vijeshni Rattan, Principal.
Rattan, who joined the school 15 years ago, says the school meets the needs of migrant families worried about their children losing touch with their language and culture.
Sunita Narayan , currently the operations manager , is credited with taking the school away from the living room and out into the community.
Though the founding families were from Fiji, most of the teachers are from India.
The school uses culture as a tool to promote language.
Festivals have pride of place in the teaching methodology.
For instance, whether it be Holi, Diwali, Pongal, Onam, Christmas, or Eid, all festivals are celebrated at the school, with parents addressing the class to explain the customs and history behind them.
“It is about acknowledging the individual child’s culture and identity, and making that present in our school, so that no child feels left out,” Rattan points out.
But the school’s distinguishing feature is its approach to teaching Hindi to non-Hindi speakers.
“Teaching Hindi to children who know zero Hindi is a challenge,” Rattan concedes.
She encourages them to use their mother tongues to identify words and then provides their Hindi equivalent.
The curriculum followed by the school is not transplanted from India or Fiji. It is customised to suit the needs of Kiwi Indian children who are school-goers in New Zealand.
The teaching techniques are adapted from mainstream New Zealand schools. Children are not subjected to the conventional blackboard-centric method of teaching. “Our syllabus is aligned to the New Zealand style of learning,” Rattan says.
But the method of learning by association with other Indian regional languages, followed by this school, is a proven tool for beginners to help them find their way around an unfamiliar language such as Hindi.
“We use the culture and language the children already know to teach them the new language,” Rattan explains. “Learning becomes easier for them because they are able to make the connection with the new language.”
The major focus of the instruction is on verbal communication, with the stress on spoken Hindi.
“Though there is no formal recognition for Hindi in New Zealand schools, we align our syllabus and teaching techniques to the NCEA system,” says Narayan, who looks after the school’s overall development and community engagement.
She emphasises that the school does not aim to push Hindi down the throats of children with no background in the language.
“We encourage our children to bring their own cultural elements into the learning process. For example, we tell students to find out from their parents how a particular festival is celebrated in the region they come from and then share that with the class. We want them to be themselves first,” Narayan says.
In other words, the teaching of Hindi aims to unite children from disparate linguistic backgrounds, and stay alert to the pitfalls along the way that end up separating them instead.
“Our goal is to produce smart young cultural ambassadors to New Zealand,” Narayan says on a closing note.