Getting Inspired from Christine Stone

I have a few traces of memories how my father taught me the first letter 'A' of an English alphabet in my small patti, blackboard with a chalk. At that time I never knew how important was it to learn that letter. When I wrote the letter I was happy not because I learned to write a letter but because I was successful in completing what my father had told me to do. Later, during the school days too, we never thought about the purpose of learning in our lives. We just went to school so that we could fulfill our responsibilities. What if the lessons that we learned at school were filled with joy it really would change our perspective of going to school. And today, I felt that joy and this changed my opinion about going to school or to be more straight, my point of learning English language. 

English is an international language so we should learn it. It's important and so on... 

I never had much interest in learning English until I reached grade six and met Chankhey (I think all the students of 90s know him). When I used to open the book and see smiling monkey doing his tricks all over the pages of the books, it used to make me laugh with him and at the same time learn with him which later on became my passion and now I enjoy reading thousands of pages written in English. Not only this it made me love English language and it's rhyme. So I even joined Humanities majoring English Literature and right now I am doing my masters on it.

Until today, I had never thought that one day I would meet the person who indirectly motivated me to learn English in such a joyful manner but today I met the person who was behind me all the time,  Christine Stone, the person who imagined 'Chankhey' and developed the curriculum of English that I learned at my school. Stone, who is now in her early 70's is packed with energy. We had two days training with her at TFN House and her experience and extraordinary life really mesmerized us. 

She joined us every day with her Heaven ( her lovely dog). I found her so humble that I can't explain. An educator, teacher to all levels who prepares curriculums, writes childrens's books, consults for government and private schools and helps just about anybody who asks, also helped us with her teaching materials and answered all our queries.  Living here 30 years, she knows so many things about Nepal that we being a Nepali don't know and speaks Nepali in such a beautiful way that no one can imagine. I became surprised when she said during our talk, " I have nothing with me except my dog and a bicycle." Really she has devoted all of her life in teaching selflessly. 

She really inspired us not only when she was guiding us but also during her informal chats. Christine first went to Gorkha District for five years at a government school, then another five in Pokhara Gandaki Boarding School. She reminisces that her best experiences were reading to students evening-time. In Nepal nobody ever read stories, but with a stack of Ladybird books Christine ignited fires. By the end she was reading classics like Les Miserables; even teachers asked her to read to them too. And I am happy that I got the opportunity to learn from her and even meet her. She is really a role model for me. 

Christine Stone, who loves Chankhey so much is sad as it has been removed from the new curriculum of grade six books and is going to be removed from grade seven next year. But I do hope that though it's going to be removed but the students like me who had become inspired through her book will never let her down in the classrooms where we would be teaching and always make Chankhey alive among us sharing his tricks and stories.

All the photos of Christine that I had clicked got deleted by mistake , so searched this one from  Fulbright blog