Team Work

The other day Tejas came home from school and said we all missed out on free time. I asked for what? He said we were all slow in cleaning up and so we all lost on our free time.
Yeah he was talking about his school activity.
I have been observing the kid from the day he has started going to school here. I find now that he automatically, trashes the chocolate cover in the dust bin, and automatically says thanks, when ever I give him any thing. Initially I was worried about his schooling here. He had done his first standard in India and he was able to write very well in cursive hand, he could say by rote the tables upto 10, and in addition he was able to write in kannada also. First few days of his schooling here I was disspointed with the methods of teaching here, and was thinking whether it is a come down for the kid .
Now I am slowly coming to understand that it is about the behaviour and way of life they teach here rather than lessons and they learn the lessons as a byproduct. Once again I have learnt lesson not to jump to conclusion.

The kids do every thing as a team. It is the class which behaves good or bad and not the individual child. He says our class will lose out if we do this or that wrong. Each child takes some snack for the class once a month (the turn comes once a month) so that he can share it with the class. He is supposed to take what ever he likes. So now Tejas searches to get what he likes and loves to distribute it to class in the snack time.
Each child is assigned a job and and jobs are named as door holder,(has to hold the door for others) line leader,(is responsible for forming a line while going to the class) calendar changer(responsible for changing the day for yesterday, today and tomorrow in the calendar), lunch box helper(should keep all the lunch box in a particular place) etc. Some days he comes home and tells me sadly I did not get any job today.
Some times he tells me that some body's mom comes and helps them out in writing and also in arranging the party (fall party for example for halloween day) I am told parents can do voluntary work in assisting the teacher in the class. How sweet.
Each child has a desk and four of them form a table.
No child is compared with the other. When I see his writings which he brings in his home folder (he does not carry any book just a folder called home folder and a lunch box) I ask him how the others performed. He says I don't know I did not see the other's paper.
By and large I see a lot of subtle but welcome change in his behaviour. When I saw him and other kids waving happily to the bus driver yesterday I felt real happy.
They make the kids think on their own. For subtraction he says each child is asked to arrive at the number 2. It is like a game. he came and played that with me saying 31 - 29 is 2 and so on. and was telling me when some kid started going to thousand and got stuck the teacher said it seems don't go beyond 100 . He said so we can not go beyond that number from tomorrow for other problems.
There are certain things which can be added from our system. The tables can be learnt by rote as it is so easy for kids to remember and it is so useful when they grow up. certain simple multiplication they can just recollect so easily because of the rote system. The kids have to be asked to write a little more as the importance is given to reading than writing at this stage here.
I heard a friend in K.L. who lived in USA telling me that once the kids in USA come to Grade 5 they really find it tough to write as they are not used
By and large children are taught to share and do things as a team without losing the individuality.