Ulterior motives for the class picnic

The best part about the fellowship was that each day spent with the kids was different. Sadly, most of the precious moments spent with the kids, especially with my poor memory, slip out of the mind.  A few lucky ones make it to facebook. This incident happened in my first year of teaching.

This was the end of unit 4 and I was making the English unit assessment. Students get different English papers based on their reading comprehension ability. I wanted to give ‘Anna’s magic coat’ from readinga-z which has stories based on reading levels. (I recommend reading the story). I have always been skeptical about giving stories from readinga-z. I feel that its content is made for white suburban American children. My kids led a very different life. My kids should not be judged on words and concepts they are not going to be a part of their lives. For example, cupcake was an important word in the story. A game called ‘red rover’ was also mentioned at the end of the story. Even I didn’t know what ‘red rover’ was. As much I liked the story, words like these made it difficult for me to give it as an assessment.

I brought my dilemma to then-manager Katelyn and used this example to complain that it was so hard to find texts based on reading levels, text is American and the levels can’t be trusted. Katelyn just told me to make the kids experience the vocabulary.

 "Katelyn Voice" - You have to expand their horizons. If they don’t know what cupcakes are, show them. Hell, have a picnic and eat cupcakes and play red rover.

I was incredulous. Did she expect me to have picnics for each new word that my kids came across? You got be kidding me.

However, that’s exactly what happened. I announced a class picnic in school since it was too much hassle to take them out. I got cupcakes and cookies and Aditya, an American friend (keeping in tune with the inherent purpose), to volunteer. Actually, I had got muffins instead but I told them they were cupcakes (#superteacher award).

Blue tarp was spread on the ground and kids sat in circles while ‘cupcakes’ and other food items were distributed. Then, all of us played Red rover. Other classes saw this and were jealous. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this event.

A few weeks ago, I asked the kids if they remembered the picnic we had the previous year. And yes they did. They also remembered how many cupcakes they got. They had forgotten the name of the game but remembered that it involved breaking lines.

This memorable class picnic happened just because their Bhaiya wanted to give a story to some students, not all, with the word ‘cupcake’ in their English test.

Student Writing: Amrita's lunch with Salman Khan

The first student writing by Muskan was a super hit and received more publicity than the regular posts. 

Last month, the kids were supposed to write on "Lunch with a celebrity." 

First step, learn what a celebrity is. Then think about the celebrity you want to have lunch with.

I was in class when this was being done. The first response I get - Honey Singh. *Bangs head on wall* Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar were the winners by far with Dhoni being popular among the cricket enthusiasts. Anyway, there were some good writing samples. 

Amrita wrote about her lunch with Salman Khan which includes a foreign trip and other nice heroines among other things. Clearly, my realistic geography teaching has been chucked out of the window. I was pretty happy when I started reading it initially. However, I think I have become 60 years old when it comes to my children. For some reason, I got very protective. I was ranting on - "Is this how she really thinks? She is 11 years old! Why is she talking about make-up and boys?" 

That was until Shruti told me to shut up and stop acting like an overprotective father. I will like to point out certain bits that really made me nervous. As last time, I have tried to present the piece in its original form except for some word corrections. Minor grammatical errors have been kept intact.

Lunch with Celebrity

Hey! My name is Amrita Dinesh Singh. Can you guess what a beautiful thing happened on my last birthday? I got best and beautiful surprise on my last birthday. I had lunch with my favourite celebrity. The name of the celebrity is SALMAN KHAN. I was surprised, because he is so handsome, he had 6 packs (nervousness begins) and he jokes more. No one gets chances to have lunch with him.

But, I got chance to have lunch with him in USA. This is my first time to travel in aeroplane. I have to ready to go USA. I was afraid, because I didn't have new dress. All heroines helped me to find a new dress for me  in shop. But I don't like any dress. I was very afraid. And I was afraid that how will I get ready. I had request to the heroines to do my make-up. 

The heroines said that they will do my makeup. Then SALMAN KHAN (always in capital letters) come and give me a box. When I open the box, in the box, there is a new, pretty and beautiful dress. The colour of the dress is pink which is my favourite colour. I went to changing room and changed the dress and wore the new, pretty and beautiful dress. We went in the airport to take the aeroplane. When we got into the aeroplane, I was afraid because first time I'm going to USA. When we went to the USA we went in the biggest hotel of the USA. We ate the lunch and after lunch we traveled in train and saw all the USA. 

After we saw all the USA we came back to India. When we came back to India, then he take me to his studio. When we went there, then I saw that it was so dark. (I am almost sweating now and wondering what next). When I put one step in, then suddenly the lights switch on and I saw a big chocolate cake (Hallelujah! There are lights and there's a cake). Then suddenly all the heroes and heroines came and wish me 'Happy Birthday.' Then I saw that they had called my family (Everything's safe now that they are here). Then I cut the cake and give to everyone. And played games and dance on my favourite song. It was more fun and we enjoy it a lot. 

Everyone gave me gifts. And they also give me their autograph. And they take some photos with me. I was feeling so happy.

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Looking at it objectively, it is a really good writing piece. I might be overprotective or crazy and that's probably the last thing I and people who know me would have expected but they are my kids.

Anyway, I can't find Swati's space adventure with Akshay Kumar. It'll be up if I do.

Student Writing: Muskan on 'our' library

I have had the joy of reading some of the best writing samples recently and I have wanted to put them up for a while. This is the hopefully the first of many in the student writing series. I have tried to present the piece in its original form except for some word corrections. There are some minor grammatical errors which I have kept intact. I have added some pictures as well.

A few weeks ago, Shruti (of the guest-author-of-the-previous-post fame) told a few students to write about the library. Muskan's piece, especially the opening sentence, blew me away. Its simplicity and expressiveness was completely unexpected. Here's Muskan in her own words talking about 'our' library.

Our Library

Our beautiful, little library with a small door painted in red colour above Mahalaxmi Dairy, is every child's dream come true. And it is located in Kamraj Nagar. 

Prachur Goel and Anish Nair, our Bhaiyas, started the library in September 2012. First, Bhaiya gave every student library pass. Our library is small but it is filled with books. Every book were keep in order wise on the shelf. 

Because in our library there are many shelves and one balcony. Library starts at 2 o'clock till 5 o'clock. And I had notice mostly girls come in the library to study. And generally girls and boys were interesting in puzzles. And I had also notice every time on Prachur Bhaiya's mouth there is motto for books. And the motto is

"Keep as it is."

Prachur Bhaiya and Anish Bhaiya and both Didis (Neha and Shruti) are in the library with many new Didis and Bhaiyas come from international countries to see our library and join us in studying. Every day we do something new in the library like brief description, talking about new arrivals etc. In library, my most favourite book is "The Banana Robber and other stories" written by Enid Blyton. 

But I dejected...

Her writing ends abruptly with "But I dejected..." On asking her about it, she replies that she intended to write about her Bhaiyas (which means us - Anish and I) leaving and leaving her dejected. She had left it for later but now wasn't interested enough to complete it. It's brilliant nevertheless. 

Upcoming: Amrita talks about her lunch with Salman Khan (my misgivings included).

If you would like to provide more books for Muskan and others to read, check out my wishlist.

Readers visit a book store

For the first time ever, the blog has a guest post written by my co-teacher Shruti. I think that it's a beautiful write-up and a pleasant change. She is much more succinct and paints a vivid picture of the wonderful experience. Pictures are courtesy Anish who has been handling the camera for the past few months. Here is Shruti in her own words -

Off late, I have increased the number of read-alouds in class. More often than not, the meticulously picked out book from the library, intended to be a novelty for the kids from my side is intercepted by Soumya, who enthusiastically whispers the next events in the story to her neighbour as I read in class. I give her a silent disapproving look, afraid that she might ruin the story for her friend.  I am greeted by her smiling face in the recess, to be told that she has read ‘this’ book too. She even offers to pick out the book for the next read-aloud.

Soumya is one of the nine kids we took to The Comet Media Foundation at Fort on 8th February to celebrate our dedicated, passionate readers. As a bonus, they were asked to pick out a book for their library to be added as their selection. We spent a considerable time chalking out the list; elated about the fact that we had so many avid readers, disheartened that we could only take a few.

The afternoon heat that day did not deter the girls, Gayatri, Ragini, Rashmita, Yamuna, Nameera, Saira and Soumya from dressing up in their finest salwar-suits. The boys, Ravi and Karan wouldn’t be bothered with clothes and were the first ones to arrive, tugging at Anish’s shirt urging us to leave.

It was a comfortable train ride, with conversations having questions like “Didi, will it be a big bookstore?”, “Will we be allowed to talk there?” or the one which was asked every five minutes - “How much more time Didi?”

A brief walk to Hutatma Chawk got us to a building, with The People’s Bookstore on the ground floor. The watchman directed us to the second floor. A narrow but creatively decorated passage led us to a tiny room with bookshelves stacked on all sides with books and games. The place housed a range of books by Tullikha, Pratham, Tara and a plethora of simplistic but interesting toys. Within five minutes, each kid had found a book they liked and had started reading them. Karan was especially fascinated with the wooden caterpillar and suggested we get that for our library.

Karan with a toy

Yamuna playing with the blocks

Ragini is focusing on her puzzle after reading through a few books

By the end of thirty minutes, Anish found himself humming a Malayalam song from a multi-lingual book (which was picked up by Nameera later) and I was busy building the ‘perfect’ house with Rashmita out of colourful wooden blocks. Two hours later, all the kids had selected books for the library, all without any say from our side. Rashmita hoped that all the students liked the book she picked up. Gayatri was confused between two books that she claimed she loved equally. She made up her mind after a twenty-minute long contemplation.

A lovely picture of Gayatri and Shruti sharing a laugh

Rashmita in full concentration

Ravi, our Science enthusiast, was a bit disappointed about the place not having too many science books. But as we stood to get our books billed, he noticed a stack of thin, light-coloured books. They were by Arvind Gupta and contained beautiful science experiments. Ravi’s face lit up when we told him he could pick up two. We ended the day with lovely ginger biscuits and bun-maska at German Bakery.

It's now Ravi's turn to play with the blocks

The library now has these books with the kids’ names on them. Every time those books are picked up, it is a reminder to us about how far we’ve come; from making do with all the books that were donated to us, to having our kids pick out new books by themselves for ‘their’ library.

Soumya is pretty happy here

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.

Library - Wish I could enter

The library has been functioning for many months now so a library post has long been overdue. The library today looks very different from when it started operating.  New games, books, shelves and whiteboards have made their way into the library thanks to a lot of support of will-wisher. The books have been reclassified a few times and the shelves have labels. We have even been mentioned in the Mid-day!

For me, this post is a trip down memory lane, recounting my experiences when the library started. I have written about how the place was found and how it was built. As you can see, it's a small space and we teach 115 students in 5th grade alone. We also know how expensive the books are and how chaotic an overwhelming number of students can get. We wanted to ease our students into the system and at the same time, build this desire and interest for the library. 

We decided to go with a limited access system. Students need entry passes to access it and entry passes were given two times a week to 8-9 new students. Once you got a pass, you wrote your name on it to personalize it. It was a great interest building tool. Some of our most notorious students turned into little angels just to get that pass. Behaviour on the day of the announcement was fantastic.
Chandan was an extremely violent and angry kid. His desire for the pass exceeded his desire to fight and it led to a serious decrease in his aggressiveness. It took a few weeks and after 3-4 weeks, he really thought that he was going to get that pass.
Shubham had become one of the cheekiest, troublesome students in class. Despite his potential, his failure to work was troubling us. Finally, the desire to get the pass got to him and he behaved extremely well for a week.

Announcing the recipients of the pass was probably the most dramatic thing we did in class (That was before the Classroom elections). It was a time of euphoria for some and for some extreme disappointment. Chandan broke down in tears when his hopes were dashed and his name was not announced. Shubham was heartbroken and he, of all people, was silently crying after school. He felt so cheated that he denied that he wanted to come to the library at all. On the other hand, Albaz jumped up with joy when his name was announced.

Everyday, there was a long line outside the gate when we went to open the library at 2pm. We had trouble keeping the kids out. The staircase in the picture was full of children who were denied access to the library initially. They were requested, scolded and threatened to go back. These were the same students who practically had no books at home and would reluctantly read anything in class. We had succeeded in our mission to get them interested to come to a place full of books and read. They just wouldn't leave.

See more pictures here.
You can help kids read more by ordering books here on flipkart.