Library: Getting them to discover

We have a lot of story books in our library. We have also made a conscious choice of stocking our library with content heavy books on Science, Geography, Math and History . However, most of our students do not read these content heavy books naturally. One reason for the creation of the library was to make students take responsibility for their own learning by providing them an avenue where resources are available. We brainstormed quite a lot about how do we get our students to extract information out of them. We came up with projects.

Over the last 3 weeks, I have started giving them mini-projects. Projects are synonymous with fancy charts, art, glitter and models. Since I am a lazy geek, my projects are less of an exercise in display and more of an exercise in finding out information. My objectives - They realize that they should come to the library, find out the relevant shelf and then browse through the books.

Project 1 - Find out and draw (optional) means of transport.
Result - The childcraft books on science and technology were opened. I saw many versions of the rocket.

Project 2 - Find out names of the countries starting with each letter of the alphabet. Also write capitals.
Result - They know what an atlas is. Globe has been rotated continuously for the past week. They know at least some countries now. I gave a mental fist-pump when I walked into class and 40 agitated and worried kids complained about not finding any country with W or X. We had a discussion about why West Indies is not a country.

Project 3 - Find out any 5 rulers of India before 1857.
Result - All our new Illustrated History books were opened. We had a discussion on why I wasn't going to accept Ram, Krishna and the like. They learnt the word mythology.

Project 4 - Find out the names of 8 bones in the human body.
Result - I announced it today so I'll have to wait and see the effects of it.

Your ideas on this are highly appreciated. And once again, if you are interested in buying books for the library, check out my wishlist on flipkart.

On a separate note, Anurag Behar provides the best reading material on Indian education that I have discovered. Considering all the narrow-minded articles and opinions that I have heard and seen recently, his recent article resonates a lot and makes me want to write more. It's just that it's difficult for me to write if it's not an experience but a general opinion or argument. Education is such a complex issue that it's hard to isolate one factor and analyze it completely. I remain hopeful though. 

Social Evils: Adventures of Krishna Mehta in USA

"Bhaiya, my tuition teacher complains that you don't teach everything from the school textbook. He asks: why are you teaching about female infanticide and dowry?"
"My dear child, what's the use knowing about social reformers in your textbook if you don't know understand what social evils are in the first place?"

The Adventures of Krishna Mehta in USA
This is the title that my students wrote in their notebooks at the beginning of the history period. I had initially planned on naming the character as Krishnamurthy Iyer. However, Shruti, (my co-teacher) being South Indian, took offence and I had to think quickly to be in her good books again. It's fictional and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Krishna Mehta is a conservative Indian who has grown up believing all the social evils like caste system, female infanticide and dowry. He gets a job in America and goes abroad for the first time in his life where his views are challenged through different incidents.

I thought of using a different narrative to make the kids look at these issues from a different perspective without me making any judgement calls on the these practices directly. The plot unfolds like this -
Late on a cold night,  Krishna is lost and stranded. A helpful stranger (NRI) offers to help him out but Krishna refuses and insults him when he finds out that the stranger is from a low caste.
He survives and goes on to fall for a pretty girl. However, his marriage proposal along with his demand for dowry is met with complete shock, anger and insult. He is forced to contemplate about his ideas. He changes himself slightly to return again. However, he is turned down again when he outlines his expectations for a male child and describes female infanticide. Such events only lead to him coming back to India, single and disappointed.

The story is extremely simplified. However, even these ideas were novel. I needed to get the message across to the 5th graders surrounded by superstition and blind beliefs, even in their own homes. Parents of one of the students took him to see the 'mata' because he is extremely weak in studies. Maybe 'mata ke darshan' will change his report card.

What made me extremely angry were the parents of a couple of girls who were made to miss school for 10 days because they started on their menstrual cycle. One mother told me that she had fever (she probably phrased it that way because of my gender – god forbid males should know about menstruation!). Only later did we discover that the girls were ostracized in their own homes. They were kept on a cot in the corner and surrounded by curtains. They ate out of separate plates and couldn't be touched by anyone for a week until some religious ceremony was held. Is this what one would do to a scared, uninformed 11-12 year old who is experiencing something completely natural similar to half of the world? I wanted to storm into the house, defy their conventions and comfort the (possibly) scared little girl. (Fortunately) my co-teachers restrained me. I had a talk with them when they returned. One of them was pretty mature about it and understood the ignorance. For all our teachings, I hope we can ensure that the following generations don't suffer this.

Experiments with Education: History I didn't know - 1

In 5th grade, we decided that we cannot compromise on students' content knowledge anymore. Irrespective of their language skills, there are things that they need to know about the world and their past. Keeping this in mind, I have been focussed on teaching Science and Social Studies extensively this year. History was never my favourite subject in school and I feel that a huge part of the reason was how it was taught. Pretty much the same for Geography.

Currently, my focus in class is on building student interest. Make these subjects come alive. To quote Antoine de Saint-Expury:
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
Instead of memorizing dates and thinking of history as a fact-book, my aim is to give them stories that they remember and put events into perspective. So, there has been a lot of reading about colonialism and their arrival in India. I have come across many things that I wish I had been told about when I was reading history.

1. Most of these so-called explorers and discoverers were savages. Vasco De Gama was a brute. All this time, I had grown up with a perspective of him being a gentle scientist like creature who liked ships and sea. As wikipedia points out -
   "On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama started capturing any Arab vessel he came across in Indian waters, most notoriously the Miri, a pilgrim ship from Mecca, whose passengers he had massacred in open water. He then appeared before Calicut... He also captured several rice vessels and barbarously cut off the crew's hands, ears and noses, dispatching them with an insulting note to the Zamorin."
   
2. There was a great Maratha admiral called Kanhoji Angre. He fought off the Portuguese, Dutch and the British all his life and being undefeated till his death. A true rockstar! He is also referenced in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Wikipedia quotes: 
1. "On 4 November 1712, his navy even succeeded in capturing the armed yacht Algerine of the British President of Mumbai, William Aislabie, killing the chief of their factory and making his wife a prisoner. The yacht and the lady were released on 13 February 1713 for a ransom of 30,000 Rupees."
2. Laugh aloud moment - "...on 26 December 1715, Boone made several attempts to capture Angre. But instead in 1718 Angre captured three ships belonging to the British leaving them to claim that Kanhoji Angre was a pirate."
3. Awesomeness!  "1721 - British and Portuguese jointly attack Alibagh, but are defeated."
3. History is full of fascinating stories and the legendary pirate Henry Every is linked with Aurangzeb in India. He made the richest heist to be made in the history of piracy when he captured the Ganj-i-Sawai of Aurangzeb's fleet. To appease the Mughal emperor, East India Company and the British kingdom was forced to conduct the first known worldwide manhunt happened for Every. More details on that story here.

So far, the stories have generated interest. I have trouble finishing my lessons because of the barrage of questions. I have to keep reminding myself that being asked questions incessantly is a good sign. Teaching history is turning out to be a fascinating learning experience for me. 

Experiments with education: Open Period Excitement

I have just started my second year of teaching. As any teacher will tell you, one year experience is nothing to brag about. Anything we do in the classroom (even if tried and tested by others) is always an experiment because the students and their mood is always different. This series is probably going to have short posts on what we are doing in our class and school. The first one is about our open periods.

Starting this year, we have kept a few periods for other things apart from teaching regular content. One such period is the 'Open Period' which happens once a week. Even I am not quite sure of the definition but I envision it as a period where we learn about things we are interested in (basically something more than the textbooks about fascinating things). So we take a poll and come up with a topic and then, we learn about it the next week. The kids have taken a liking to this period faster than I thought and there's a buzz in the air when I walk in to the class. I think the related colour printout on the wall has something to do with it. :-D

One of these weeks, the topic was 'Why do people hunt tigers?' 

I was very impressed that kids asked me this question. It went in with our theme of "ANIMALS" for this unit. I am really proud of the handout that I made for this period (*Pats self*). I was able to integrate the Science and the Geography  topics that we had been studying in the week. Five senses in science and National Parks and wildlife in Geography. NCERT and google were the main resources used. 

Images of the handout are below. Feedback and suggestions are most welcome.  

The colour printout depicting the magnificent Royal Bengal Tiger along with the hunting and poaching

  Talking about the senses of the Tiger + A colouring sheet (yay!). Sometimes I feel that the only thing they take away from the lesson is the drawing sheet. Sigh! On the other side, there's information and relation with geography.