Last week I introduced our new workshop at the Sultan Bazaar Government Girls School and promised to write more soon. Instead, I decided to make a video post this week!

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/17187109]

On Sunday, November 14th, India celebrated Children’s Day with festivities, games and an extra serving of sweets. Like Teacher’s Day at Railway, Children’s Day naturally calls for a “program” (a performance by the students), some speeches, a colorful tent, and lots of candy – all things that our students are crazy about. However, because Children’s Day officially fell on a Sunday this year, the administration at Railway waited until yesterday to hold their celebration. Kara and I were unfortunately unable to attend the program, as we were conducting interviews for a friend in the morning. However, we arrived just in time to see the glittery, sugary aftermath of the Children’s Day hullaballoo.

Knowing that the girls would be very excited about Children’s Day (“m’am! wish me a happen children’s day! shake my hand m’am!”) Kara and I decided to use their energy as a springboard for a related, but much different topic: motherhood. “Children’s Day is all about children,” I told our students, “but we we wouldn’t have any children if we didn’t have mothers!” Building on last week’s lessons about interviewing and journalism, Kara and I thought that motherhood would be a good subject for the girls to think about – something that they could consider both on a personal, and a more general level.

We opened the class with a writing exercise, using this photo, which I took near the APRS boys school in Nalgonda:

The only thing that we told the girls before we began was that this photo was of a mother and child. The students wrote silently in their notebooks for five minutes, and then two volunteers shared their stories. Akshatha’s story was particularly interesting, as she described in it how the young mother was feeling very nervous because her son was going to get a polio vaccination. Akshatha told us that the mother was was afraid that her son would be upset by the polio vaccination. I found this response to be a sign of great progress in Akshatha’s ability to think beyond the confines of an image – she read into the expression on the woman’s face, and then thought creatively about all the things that a mother could be feeling about her teary-eyed son. We will post Akshatha’s full response soon!

After we got the ball rolling with our mother-related writing warm up, Kara and I screened a short film that we’d found on India Unheard, a website devoted to sharing videos made by people from around India. The mini-report is called “Motherhood: Who is Deciding?” and was produced by a woman named Aleya, from Meghalaya. The girls seemed very surprised by some of the interviews in the video, particularly the initial one with a young woman who has given birth to 10 children, 3 of whom have died . The girls were also good about giving small critiques of the film regarding interview style, questions that weren’t asked, etc. and they were eager to do some question asking of their own. The girls’ discussion of the film naturally came to focus around questions they had about how old a girl/woman should be when she marries, whether or not a girl should get an education before she has children, and how it is important to make sure that you can support all of the children you have.

Which brought us to the culminating activity of the day: a mock press conference on “Motherhood” and other related subjects such as marriage and education. Over the course of the past week, we’ve really been focusing on the importance of questions like “how,” and “why” in our interviewing tool bag. The girls seem to have caught the “Why?” fever as a result, and it is incredibly exciting to see them pushing both their peers, and their teachers, for more detailed answers. Last week, during an interview exercise, one of the girls asked Neha “why are you in class?” to which Neha responded, “to teach you.” The girls all simultaneously shouted, “Why?” to which Neha replied, “because I love you!” It was a beautiful moment, and I think that it really helped drive home the idea that  questions like “why?” are a means of getting at important, deeper answers. It is especially encouraging for Kara and I to see the girls asking questions so freely, and building up such energy while doing so, knowing how far they’ve come from our first class. Timid, quiet observers no more! We have some active, curious, and engaged young women in our classroom now.

You too can see the power of this evolution in the video below. Filmed by Ramya Krishna (with some guidance from Neha,) our press conference on Motherhood was held to give the girls a chance to practice both asking and answering some harder questions. With only a little prompting from their teachers at the start, they proved themselves to be excellent journalists (and, in the case of Sandhya at the end, excellent debaters too!) By the end of our time in class that energy in the room was palpable, and the girls begged us to continue the discussion for “just five minutes longer, m’am!” While I was sad to cut things short, I was thrilled with the girls’ level of engagement and enthusiasm.

[vimeo 16995279]

Feel free to leave feedback about the press conference for the girls, or for us, in the comments section! We will be continuing our discussion about Motherhood in upcoming classes, and I can’t wait to share more of the girls’ thoughts and digital documentation with you!

Public speaking is not a skill that comes naturally to me. Therefore, as a teacher I put a lot of work into lesson planning and feeling prepared to explain concepts and instructions. Plans always change, though (especially in India!) and it’s exciting when I’m able to navigate the unexpected to achieve a productive, engaging class.

When Ilana and I began teaching at APRS in August we had a roster of 15 boys. That number dropped to around 9 after Ramzan, so we admitted a few more students and, over the course of three overnight stays in Nalgonda, we proceeded rapidly with the new crew. Two weeks ago all of the post-Ramzan absentees re-appeared at school, and the size of our class began to swell toward 25. A very rowdy 25. After one rough class with regard to attention spans and technical difficulties, Ilana and I decided to switch tacks. We planned to pause on tech skills the next day by introducing our photo writing exercises and possibly some interviewing skills.

When we arrived and the usual pre-class crowd of boys began to cluster around Ilana at the computer, I watched Kaisar saunter coolly into the room sporting movie-star sunglasses. A light bulb flashed on in my mind. Kaisar’s apparel presented a perfect access point for introducing interviewing: a mock press conference with a Tollywood celebrity!

After a few successful rounds of photo writing (we’ll share examples another day!) we asked the boys what they knew about interviews. I wrote the words, “who, what, where, when, why, how” on the board and asked for examples of questions beginning with those words. Then we explained the way press conferences work, set the stage for Kaisar’s appearance, and took action. Kaisar maneuvered the spotlight like a pro, puffing his chest up and adopting the persona of his favorite actor, “Prabhas.”

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/16998958]

Seeing all of the boys focused on the same activity and jumping up to participate made me feel successful not only at charting unplanned classroom waters, but also in my overall purpose for teaching. I work with youth with the goal of stimulating critical thinking. Breaking that down into less adult-ish language: I want to help kids ask questions—about themselves, about others, and about the world. The press conference with Prabhas felt like our students’ first recognition of the excitement and power of asking questions. To double the excitement, we’ve also broken ground on asking questions with the Railway girls, which Ilana will tell you about in another post very shortly!

Can you see a resemblance?

On Friday Ilana and I held the first session in a new workshop at the Sultan Bazaar Government Girls’ High School. The exciting aspect of this pilot workshop, which is in partnership with the American India Foundation, is that four teachers are participating in addition to twelve students. During eight sessions we will teach them the camera, video, and editing skills necessary to create a multimedia project that enhances a subject from the government curricula.

In our first session, after introducing ourselves and watching a few scientific and cultural slideshows, the students and teachers shared what topics they are learning/teaching in current or upcoming classes. We broke them into three groups to brainstorm what sorts of photos and videos they might be able to take for multimedia projects on the subjects of geometry (with a focus on triangles), natural resources, and the importance of plant life. We asked the groups to do further development of these ideas before the next session Check back after Saturday to see what they come up with!

Rangoli that Kara and I helped to make, along with beautiful little Diwali diya (lamps).

Last evening, Kara and I put on our most colorful clothing, purchased a box of sweets at the corner bakery, and hopped in an auto for a five minute ride to our friend Chandrakala’s apartment building. The sun hadn’t yet set, but like us, Hyderabad was decked out in festive wear and preparing for a loud, exciting evening. Diwali lanterns were hanging, firecrackers exploding, and families were adding the finishing touches to beautiful rangoli (hindi; “kolam”, tamil) designs outside their front doors. Women were placing Diwali diyas (tiny clay lamps filled with oil and lit with cotton wicks) amongst the swirling patterns of rice flour, and small girls in long skirts and boys with hair freshly washed clutched their mother’s hands as they rushed about gathering last minute items for the night’s celebrations.

Kara and I (right and left, respectively) dressed for Diwali celebrations.

Diwali sweets

I feel so lucky to have been able to celebrate the holiday with Chandrakala and her family – they were incredibly welcoming and made us feel perfectly at home (sometimes I forget how what it’s like to not feel as foreign as I usually do). Kara and I both greatly enjoyed the chance to ask a million questions, eat wonderful home-cooked curry and biriyani (a mother’s touch always adds a bit of priceless spice), and relax with Chandrakala and a small group of her friends who all hailed from outside India (Malaysia, Spain, England, and the US to be precise). We spent much of the night setting off patakhe (firecrackers!) on the roof of Chandrakala’s apartment building – which is to say, Kara was brave and lit a few herself, while I enjoyed gazing across the rooftops watching all the other families around the city doing the same.

Patakhe explosion!

a little light grafitti with sparklers

Despite the fact that Diwali is now officially over, everyone seems to have hordes of extra firecrackers to set off. The sun has once again retired for the night and it already sounds a bit like a war zone outside as a hundred different variants of kaleidoscopic explosions light up the sky. I used to think that the fourth of July was a spectacle, but I can assure you that that it’s merely a flickering match in comparison to the roaring, dancing, flashing chaos that is Diwali. Knowing that President Obama and the First Lady are currently in Mumbai I can only imagine what they think of things! Diwali is certainly a great introduction to the colorful, noisy beauty of India.

Having been in the role of “student” for so much of my life, it’s still bizarre to refer to myself as a teacher. Even stranger to close my eyes at night and hear echoes of the name “ma’am” calling out to me. When Ilana and I asked the boys at APRS to type captions for their slideshow photos last week I read the following gem over one of their shoulders:

"The Kara madam is sitting in front of the tree."

In addition to laughing this caption made me feel like some sort of unique species, like the Wendy bird in Peter Pan.

One of my favorite parts of every lesson at Railway comes at the beginning of class, when Kara and I ask our respective groups of girls to take out their notebooks, uncap their pens, look to the computer screen and…write! For about 12 minutes at the start of every class, we lead our students in a free writing exercise in which they contemplate a photograph and reflect in their notebooks on what they see in the image, and on what they don’t see in the image. We encourage the girls to tell a small story – to give the people and location in the photo names, to write about what is going on, to describe what led to the moment of the photo and what will happen after it. Kara and I then ask for volunteers to read their mini photo stories aloud, and we discuss them as a class. One key element of the exercise is that we don’t reveal to the girls what, where, or whom the picture is “really” of until the end of our discussion, so that they cannot avoid using their imagination. This activity is really valuable for a number of reasons:

1. It contributes to the strong and consistent structure we seek to achieve in our lesson plans. The girls walk into class each day knowing what we will be doing first, and in this way can (hopefully) prepare themselves to focus on and embrace the activity.
2. It consistently pushes each girl (emphasis on the individual) to critically examine an image and think about the ways that they interact with it. Without the influence of their peers (they all write silently in their notebooks during the activity) they can take small creative leaps and risks, breaking with the usual system of “yes” and “no” and “right” and “wrong” answers that they’ve been accustomed to in the classroom.
3. When the girls listen to the stories written by their peers, they have the opportunity to see how different interpretations of one photo can arise from a small group of observers. This helps them to engage with images in a more forgiving way, if you will – they begin to contemplate the multiplicity of possibilities that exist within a single captured moment.
4. The  daily entries in the girls’ notebooks allow Kara and I to track the progress of each individual student. Because our classes each have 15 girls, and we only have an hour and twenty minutes per class, it can be difficult to pay balanced attention to the successes and struggles of each of the students. By reviewing the girls’ daily writing exercises, we can more clearly determine which new ideas they’re successfully internalizing and incorporating in their work, as well as which concepts they still don’t understand well enough to use.

It has been so wonderful to see the girls growing through their writing, and especially to see tangible evidence of increasing confidence in their own imaginations and ideas. When we began the writing exercises, most of the students were very shy and focused on describing only specific elements of the pictures presented to them (ie “there is a park, the trees are green, the boy wears a blue shirt, the boy wears black sneakers”). However, in the few classes leading up to the break for quarterly exams, our girls really set their imaginations free. They have begun to spin stories about the lives of the people featured in the photos, becoming quick authorities on the moods, actions, preferences, and histories of the characters they’re creating. The best way for me to truly communicate to you how exciting this is, is to let you read and feel for yourself:

Free Writes by Nasreen

Our first free write photo:

A boy was play ball with her friend and his friend is balling and he was batting he is in a circket stadium. He was wearing red and black dress her socs was blue in color. Her friend was wearing blue dress. It was a big stadium. The boy was shooting the ball. There is tiny grass. The bat was red and brown in eolow and ball was white in colour. Thir was net and iron rod it was a shiny day. There are green trees and a house were they take rest after playing.

Writing exercise from the last class before our break:

Hai this is Nasreen The lady was a farmer she had worked in feild and she was tied and wanted to go to house in house her children were also hungry their is no food in her house so the lady was telling the owner of the field that she want to go to house and cook food for their she got 1000 Rs for his work and he wants to cook some special today for their children. She went to house and ask their children what do you want to eat today the children said we want to eat Biriyani But the lady did not know how to cook biriyani she odered from the hotel and eat and sleep.

Nasreen and the rest of the girls know how happy Kara and I are with their progress – encouragement means so much to them, and supporting their creative efforts is so rewarding for me as a teacher. Kara and I will continue to keep you updated on the progress of our free writes, so you can look forward to more great stories from the students! If you enjoyed Nasreen’s writing, or want to give her and the girls some words of encouragement, please leave comments on this blog post! Kara and I will be sure to transmit them to the girls.