Yesterday we had the TMS final video showcase and celebration.  It definitely snuck up on us.  One second it was the beginning of November and time seemed like it was passing at a normal rate.  All of a sudden we blinked and here we are — two days away from leaving Hyderabad, our home of the last six months,  with holiday news from home trickling in as we get closer and closer to the new year.

TMS Final Celebration! from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Reflecting on the last five months is a daunting task.  While we’ve accomplished a lot, Stella and I have discussed the mutual feeling that we could have done so much more.  Such is the nature of most work that comes with a definite end date — you are always left with the nagging reminder of all the ideas that didn’t materialize and realizations that things could have been done better or more efficiently.  With some time to process everything that’s gone on in the last month, I’m sure we all will come to see a clearer picture of our time here, and gain a sense of the impact of this truly unique and incredible experience that has been the last five months.  Right now though,  it just feels like a whirlwind.

That being said, the event itself was a great end-note to our semester.  For the first time we had students from all five TMS schools — Sultan Bazar, MGM, New Nallaguta, Audiah Memorial, and Railway — together in one room to share in the celebration.  We arrived and hour before the ceremony to find the auditorium filled with hyper, buzzing students who had just finished setting up the seating.  They were clearly glowing with excitement to showcase their work, and there was the tangible feeling that they were lingering after they had finished their work so that they could spend every possible moment together as a group before TMS came to an end.   My girls played dress up with me and stuffed me into a very bright, glittery saree to mark the momentous occasion.

The film screening was a huge success.  The students who have participated in the program produced videos on a wide variety of topics, from the future of our environment, to examining identity and gender roles, to the consequences of political agitation.  Not only did students discuss and examine these thought-provoking and important topics, but they had to approach them from unique angles and consider how they could present their views to an audience.  The results were truly inspiring.

We closed the ceremony by presenting each student with a certificate, individual evaluation, class photo, and (most importantly) American Halloween candy.  As Pabhaker closed out the ceremony and invited all the guests to a reception in the computer lab, it was clear that neither students nor teachers were ready to say goodbye.  We lingered awkwardly with the visiting schools, beaming at the students and repeatedly praising their work.  They smiled back almost pityingly, trying to reassure us that it would be ok.  It was clear that neither group wanted to leave.  Once we finally tore ourselves away from the auditorium, it took us nearly another hour to say farewell to the Railway students and the grounds that have come to feel like our second home.   All in all, it was a lovely end to what has been a tremendous experience and learning process for all those involved — both students and teachers alike.

It is absolutely unbelievable but it is somehow true – we have hit the beginning of the end of our stay in Hyderabad. We had our last classes at 4 of our schools yesterday, and we have two more classes at Railway before we are officially done teaching. The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind as we have been working up to our culminating event, the TMS Final Showcase to be held at the Railway Girls High School on Monday, December 5th. The event will feature short presentations by students from each of our 5 schools followed by screenings of their work. And we are also excited to host the founders and leaders of Vinoothna Geetha Media, a local production company, as well as representatives from the America India Foundation, as our Chief Guests for the event. It is the first time TMS has put together a final celebration of this magnitude, and we are thrilled to see how excited the students are for the event! We look forward to reporting back with many photos and videos, taken by the students of course!

Before we completely finished our jobs as teachers here, I did want to share a few thoughts on a topic that has repeatedly come up in our classrooms, our conversations, and our blog posts – language. India has 22 official languages listed its Constitution, and many more dialects. And language, as our students tell us, is a huge representation of identity. The language that each person speaks is a statement of their regional and/or religious and/or ethnic identity. The official language of Andhra Pradesh is Telugu but Muslims in Andhra Pradesh speak mostly Urdu and then ethnic Tulu people in Andhra Pradesh speak Tulu while many highly educated people only speak English with a native fluency. And each state has its own list of distinct languages that match its own unique make up of identities. So naturally, this becomes a problem for education, particularly in big cities where all of these different identity groups with their distinct mother tongues live side by side in the same school districts. Schools must ask, in what language should we teach? The solution in most areas is that government schools teach in different mediums. In Hyderabad, most schools will have each grade split into Telugu Medium, Urdu Medium, and English Medium sections. So then it is the students and families that must ask, in what language should we learn? Many choose English. Families hope that if their kid is studying in English from a young age, they will become fluent. And this is in a sense the most concrete effort they can make towards a bigger future for their kid. For one, English, possibly more than Hindi, is transferrable throughout India and definitely around the world. Knowing English gives students access to the world in a way that most of our students’ parents do not have. Additionally, most schools only teach 11th and 12th grade in English and college is almost exclusively taught in English, so if you hope to study beyond 10th grade, you would be well-advised to start Kindergarten in English.

So what’s the problem? Well, we have been teaching 8th and 9th grade students, many of whom have supposedly been studying in English medium for many years, and they all hover within a range of non-fluency in English. It leaves us wondering how they learn in their other classes. In my classes at AIF, which I teach in Telugu, I have a mixture of Telugu and English Medium students. I have often noticed a far better command of subject matter and sometimes even a higher level of confidence expressing ideas among the Telugu Medium students. After all, school and learning are tough, so naturally the students who get to go through it in their mother tongue would have a leg up. The English medium students just don’t get it all the time because they don’t understand the language the teacher is speaking. So this means that to some degree, students are having to choose between a better education in a language that limits their opportunities, and a better command of English with a quality of education that limits their opportunities. How frustrating that must be! I absolutely think students should learn English and become good at it. But in the long term, I think it should become possible and mainstream for students to study and become experts in any subject in their local language – if a kid is born in Andhra Pradesh to a family that only speaks Telugu and can’t afford private school, wants to attend school and study really hard and become expert in a subject, start a business in Hyderabad that deals only in this area and become successful, shouldn’t that be a possibility? Shouldn’t they be able to live their lives and be great in Telugu if they want to? After all, they do live in a place where Telugu is the official language, and the only language they ever hear. The British are responsible for many higher education institutions in India, which is partly why there is a widespread tradition of learning in English. But rather than being content with thinking this is appropriate in the modern world, I wonder if regional governments now have a responsibility to make a change?

When I announced the Google field trip to our girls at Railway, they began to scream. Not anything in particular—no particular yelps of excitement—just one extended scream, as if our classroom had suddenly devolved into a Bacchic frenzy. But we didn’t blame them. We’d visited the Google office in Hyderabad once before, and it seemed, in my eyes, to be a veritable playhouse for geniuses—snack bars and pool tables and caroms stations on every floor, laundry services, spa rooms, napping pods, a gourmet cafeteria, and some of the most innovative minds in the modern tech industry. We were pretty excited for the trip ourselves.

Queueing up at Railway for the Google buses.

I asked the girls to write down questions about Google for homework. They came back with “Who invented the internet?” and “Is Google a person or a company?”

“The girls just don’t understand what the internet is,” I complained to Sam. “I mean, not what it is, but what it really is.”

“Well, yeah, but…”  Sam looked at me. “Do you?”

Anyone for whom the loss of internet access would be only slightly less disorienting than watching zombies take over the world, but who cannot construct a coherent sentence explaining what the internet really is, should consult the following Barney-level introduction to the world wide web: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US.

The day began with a long journey from Lallaguda to Hi-Tech City. Google sent three cushy buses to whisk us off. For me that meant gently dozing to the futile honkings of Hyderabad morning traffic and occasionally being awoken by an “Are we there yet?” Sam’s bus experienced three distinct phases: the group-karaoke-and-dance-in-your-seat-to-your-favorite-song phase, the vomit-out-the-window phase, and the final exhaust-yourself-until-you-fall-into-comatose-slumber phase. Srilekha, on the other hand, taught the students on her bus a Telugu song and they sung it all perfectly, memorized, in unison.

Tee hee.

This bus is about to break into song.

The girls were struck with wonder when we arrived. They lingered at the wide-paneled glass windows, the glossy elevators, the hot-and-cold water dispensers. Some were also struck with a case of nerves. “Ma’am, I’m getting afraid,” Navaneetha shivered to me in the elevator, inducing a circle of vigorous nods around her. Fortunately, we immediately split off into small groups for lunch with Google employees, who allayed the girls’ fears with a glorious spread of curries, soups, sambar, dal, exquisite pulihora, lassi, cakes, unlimited kulfis and chocobars—ahem. Right. Blog post.

Waiting in the lobby for Google to name-tag all 60 girls, 6 Railway teachers, 3 TMS fellows, 2 TAs, and Piya. Nice work, Google.

At lunch, the students had the awesome opportunity to chat with employees from the advertising, sales, and engineering departments about how exactly they’d gotten to Google and the kinds of projects they’re working on now. Plus, the girls had the awesome opportunity to brag about their own achievements—Heena’s a superstar runner, Hemalatha’s good at math—and to tell the Googlers about the trials of learning videography and Final Cut Express in TMS class.

Gazing tenderly at lunch.

The chocobar--a national pastime.

We trooped to the meeting room after lunch, half-eaten ice cream bars in hand, for an internet workshop. We began with the heart of Google, its search function, and learned how to upload photos into image search to identify pictures (confession: I didn’t know you could do that). We played with Google Maps, looking up directions to our favorite restaurant on RTC Cross Road and marveling at satellite views of Sam’s house in D.C. and Srilekha’s and my alma mater in New York.

The girls had a chance to pitch some of their tough questions directly to the Googlers—“What is the internet?” and “Who is answering when I ask questions on Google?”—and some less tough but equally vital ones, like “What does the word ‘google’ mean?” (Two graduate students name their company ‘Googol,’ after the really big number; man writes check to company but spells the name ‘Google’; students panic about convincing man to re-write check; students change name of company to ‘Google.’)

Sachin explains how to use Google Maps.

Sunitha filming the internet literacy workshop.

"Just...explain the internet to us real quick, will you?"

The highlights of the afternoon were the interviews. First, Mounika and Harika sat down with Mukesh, a software engineer, who grew up wanting to be a mathematician or a scientist, but was ultimately drawn to computer science for both its intellectual challenge and the fun of being able to see the immediate results of your work.

He urged the students never to be disheartened by one’s background or by others who seem better educated, because there will always be those who know more. “Whatever is past is past, but always try to do better,” he insisted, encouraging the girls to give themselves as much exposure to new ideas as possible and to constantly aim for one step higher.

The students asked Mukesh whether he believed the same opportunities were available to girls and boys in modern India, and although he was optimistic, he acknowledged the social factors contributing to a continuing gender gap. “In my village,” he said, “some parents feel that if girls are educated too much, it will be very difficult for marriage, because you won’t find an equal match…it is totally wrong.”

Mukesh also addressed the focus on test scores and academic rankings in the Indian education system, arguing that test scores often have little to do with how well one understands the essential concepts of a subject. “Now, I interview a lot [for Google]. I also see what their J.E. [junior engineering] ranking is. It doesn’t mean anything. If their J.E. ranking is top, I still reject, because they are not able to answer my questions. Fine, you got marks, or some ranking. But at the end of the day, what matters is—do you know your stuff?” He urges his own younger brothers never “to go mad for marks. If you aim for it, fine. But understand your subject. If you understand, then I am proud. If you just mark it and pass, I don’t care.”

He left the girls with an important message: “It’s about confidence. There are two things required. You should know your stuff. As a student, you should have knowledge about your subject. And you should be confident. It’s easy to say. It’s tough, I know that. But I can tell you—be confident. You are as good as anybody else.”

Mounika, Mukesh, and Harika.

 Ramya and Sai Durga interviewed Suryanarayana, an online sales and operations senior manager, who offered a different take on the necessary steps for achievement. “There is absolutely no substitute for hard work,” Suri emphasized. “My professor told me that life has three parts for success. One part is luck. Two parts is your intelligence. And four parts is hard work.”

Suri wasn’t merely repeating a formula. He’d learned the hard way. He recounted his years in high school, when he’d do just enough work to pass his courses. “I could do more, but I didn’t…I wanted to go and watch all the movies, do all the nights out with my friends, do whatever…roam around. But when I went to IIM [Indian Institute of Management], it was a different world altogether.”

After his initial shock of nearly failing in his first semester at IIM, he imposed on himself a rigid regime. He woke up at six a.m. every morning and studied for his required subjects before and after class, following this schedule “religiously” for six months until he rose to the top. “In a set of brilliant people—people who are more capable than you—doing just the bare minimum and then trying to get away doesn’t work, especially if you have the potential to do more. So just put some discipline into it.”

Mukesh advised the girls to aim high and be confident; Suri added another essential element to the mix—an inner fire and drive to push forward. “Everybody comes from a lot of constraints. It’s up to your passion—what do you want to do? Some of you want to become painters, artists, you want to go act in movies, or you want direct movies, or you want to do business, or run a shop—you can do all of that. But I’m just thinking that you should want it badly enough. Do you want to do something badly enough?”

Suri also asked the girls not to remain complacent with the institutions regarded highly in India, like Google, but always to keep thinking about ways to improve the system and change the status quo. Rather than solely aiming for top positions currently available in a career path, this generation of students “should actually think about creating something better than what is there now,” he said, spotlighting those values of creativity and innovation that we’ve placed so much emphasis on in the TMS curriculum but are neglected in the pedagogy of many Indian government schools.

Suryanarayana, Sai Durga, and Ramya.

Neha filming the interviews.

Because the students are completing their final fimmaking unit, we thought it’d be fitting to end the day with an introduction to the magical functions of video on the internet. We started a group video chat on Google+ Hangouts with some of the Googlers we’d met throughout the day, and taught the girls how to create Gmail accounts to access these features. Krishna showed the girls how to get to YouTube, where they can search for video explanations of difficult concepts for school, or listen to their ever-present Bollywood favorites (currently “Chammak Challo” and “Sheila Ki Jawaani,” in case you’re curious), or—!—upload their own videos from TMS class.

Railway-Google field trip 2011!

Hey Thanks, Google! from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Here come the long awaited photo stories from the boys of Nallagutta!

Most newcomers to Hyderabad would agree that one of the most daunting things about the city is its traffic. In fact, even locals, who have become thoroughly accustomed to the chaotic streets, agree that it is one of the things the city really needs to improve. In this photo story, the boys show us some of the perils of traffic in Hyderabad and express their hope for change.

Traffic Hazards from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Chewing tobacco has historically been a favorite among substances used by men, and even women, in India. As our boys slowly transition into men, they have increasingly begun to see their friends pick up this habit. And many of them have already felt the pressure to pick it up themselves. But the students of Nallagutta show us why using this form of tobacco, known here as Gutkhas, is an absolute no-no for them.

Say No To Gutkhas from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

And here are new versions of the photo stories produced by the students of Audiah Memorial.

Discovering the Troubles of Telangana Bandhs

Discovering the Troubles of Telangana Bandhs from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

City vs. Village

City vs. Village from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

The Bonal Festival

The Bonal Festival from The Modern Story on Vimeo.