Ruminations

Where the past few weeks have been filled with setbacks and disappointments, overwhelming deadlines and way too many exasperated moments than I’d normally like to deal with, they have also been filled with a number of smiles, relief and contentment.

The former was  mostly because of a breed I’m unfortunately a part of as well – the adults. The latter was primarily because of a few children and animals I’ve come to know in the past few years.

Since the past couple of weeks, I’ve been witness to incidents that made me acutely aware of the sensitivity gene, that probably goes missing around the time people grow up.

One of the incidents is one which I’d like to unload here:

Chetna was a student in my class last year. I use the past tense because she hadn’t  attended a single day of school since session began in June. It wasn’t a surprise to me because I had been aware of the reason – a very simple one actually – by way of meiosis and other related biological process she has been destined to be taken care of by a pair of insensitive adults. (More insensitive than you or I, hopefully). The father has been stopping her from attending school till the mother moves out of the house. The mother has surrendered responsibility of her two daughters saying it will make the father more indifferent than before. The two girls, as a result, are mere pawns in this game of power between the two.

After waiting for her to come to school and postponing my plans of visiting her house for the nth time, I finally visited her house yesterday. I was greeted by a bunch of women standing at the door. Fearing the worst, I asked what had happend. “Chetna gayi”, (Chetna’s gone) her mother said.

Her father had gone off with the two girls (9 year old Chetna and 4 year old Dharna) just 30 minutes back, saying he was going to get them admitted to a hostel in Kolhapur. On calling the father, I heard his smarmy voice assure me that he was going to come back for the leave certificates to the school. He wasn’t willing to divulge the name of this supposed hostel. Of course, there was no train to Kolhapur at 3 in the afternoon either.

Came back home feeling defeated and tired. Called a helpline who asked me to await their call (which didn’t come). Called up the woman and asked her to lodge a complaint with the police but she didn’t fear much for the children as it turned out.

So Chetna came back this morning after being shuffled around like a football. Thankfully alive and well but also ready for another round of to-and-fro between her parent’s messed up relationship.

I will call the child service agency again and arrange for a consultation but the experience has been more unnerving than I expected. As her teacher, there is only so much that I can do.

Even though I’m sad that it happened, it has helped me get my priorities back in focus, which had been side-tracked by some bureaucratic hassles and insensitive adults in my work place.

What saw me through the past few weeks? – My students; who in their emotionally perceptive way sensed my troubles, cleaned the class, arranged my desk and even decorated the class with last year’s Christmas decorations from the cupboard.

After watching a documentary on Summerhill, A.S. Neill’s words keep echoing in my head:

‎”No one is wise enough or good enough to mould the character of any child. What is wrong with our sick, neurotic world is that we have been moulded, and an adult generation that has seen two great wars and seems about to launch a third should not be trusted to mould the character of a rat” — A.S. Neill

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July 30, 2011

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Decentralizing Grade 4

I teach a group of 67 students ranging in ages from 8-11. This is my second year with them, as they’ve moved on from Grade 3 to Grade 4. Having such a large number of students to pay attention to, isn’t something that comes easy, especially when your aim is to deliver quality education to each and every child with a limited amount of resources.

An article I read recently gave words to an insight my co-teacher and I had intuitively possessed when we divided the class in smaller homogeneous groups of 6-7 students each last year. The insight was quite simple really. It isn’t natural for human beings to work in large groups. You get the clue when you look at animals in the wild. Certain animals like wildebeests are more comfortable in groups as large as a herd of more than a 100, while a pack of lion will never be more than 10. We can see the same pattern when we look at our cave-dwelling ancestors who hunted and fended for themselves in small groups of 8-10.

Of course, we all see the example work for us whenever we have worked in smaller collaborative groups in our college and jobs. Why not start it at the school level then?

In our first year, with most students struggling to develop the skills they lacked, working in homogeneous groups made more sense. But the groups were still very centralized with all the rules and functioning happening at command central – the teacher’s dais.

In the second year, however, with a lot of students having discovered their specific levels comfort, we decided to push them out of their respective comfort zone and cliques and mixed the groups up such that each group had someone with a knack for numbers, language, interpersonal skills or even organizational skills.  And, we decided to decentralize our operations. This included things ranging from rules and consequences to daily mundane tasks such as attendance and homework checking.

We introduced daily and weekly individual and group trackers that helped us, the teachers, keep track of the students and their behavioral and academic progress. Here’s a sample of the trackers.

Junaid standing next to the group trackers

A closer look at the group trackers

The Spiderman group. They have the maximum number of green cards.

It sounded very counter intuitive, however, to force all the groups to follow the one single list of rules that the entire class had to follow.

Even though we all function under the common societal laws, we have our own rules, mores and culture in the smaller unit of a family or even our friend circle for that matter.

So, as we developed systems to track the class as the larger group, we also involved the students in the process of brainstorming and designing the trackers. This was meant to encourage them to think of their smaller peer group as a micro-group within the larger 67-student class. They were encouraged to come up with their own rules, consequences and values, just like their larger group (the class). They were also given the freedom to come up with stress-busting fun activities within their own group that they felt would help them bond better as a community.

My fears of them copying the class rules blindly were proven baseless when they came up with some remarkably mature and original rules.

We also encouraged the group leaders to start a positive reinforcement culture. This morning, Gousia, the current group leader of “Spiderman” came to me with her own positive consequences strategy for Homework completion, that has been working very well for her group (They have the maximum number of green cards with all the group members completing their homework, even the ones who are unable to attend school any particular day.) It is the responsibility of the particular group member who lives near the absent student’s house to go and tell him about the work done in school and help with the homework.

On the other hand, groups were also encouraged to explore their own negative consequences with the guidelines against physical punishment made clear. So, today I found Sana, a group member who had been regularly slacking off on her homework, sent out of the group and not allowed in till she completed her homework.

One of the biggest benefits of decentralization is empowerment.

The ongoing progress the students are making is making me more and more certain of the advantages of introducing a decentralized system for large classes.

A large class with a stick or a wooden-ruler wielding teacher is something that is always going to be a reality that our education system needs to address.

What’s better than a nation where the students are as much the owners of their own education as their teacher, who doesn’t need a stick to preside over them?

We are a democracy, not a totalitarian state, aren’t we?

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July 8, 2011

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My Class

There haven’t been a lot of pictures over the past few months. Some of that has been because I have been busy but mostly because I was waiting to obtain a camera, which I finally got. Thanks to my mum.

A few glimpses of my class.

Everyone busy circling adjectives on their worksheet

Charts from a wonderful book called Situational Grammar from my childhood. Excellent for ESL learning.

Pune, Maharashtra, India, The World

Since the past 4 months, I and my principal have written at least 4 requisitions to the PMC for desks so that my 66 students may find a place to sit. But as is the case with most bureaucratic kingdoms, the actual desks will probably reach once these children have moved on to another class next year.

The walls have the paint peeling off but we can’t paint them because the government might object so we’re doing the next best thing. Trying to cover as much space as we can with pictures and charts.

Over the next few months, I will try making this class a nicer place to look at and of course study in. My goal is to post another picture in two months and find that my class looks more beautiful and my children happier and more comfortable.

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geography, pune, shantabai ladkat, teach for india

September 20, 2010

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… R.I.P.

I have always wondered what made it easy for some people to turn a blind eye to somethings. This morning something happened that made me realize that wondering what it took was probably turning me into those people.

As I rode on my way to the school at around 6:45 a.m. this morning, I was running a little late and was wondering whether I should’ve taken my raincoat along, how will I teach this lesson; you know, the usual million things that run through my head. I passed a dog who had been hit by some car. There were a few other dogs on the side of the road. He was trying to get up, yelping in pain. He wasn’t dead yet. And I remember speeding past, like the other dozens who were doing the same, thinking I’d get late, it’s not my problem, and the other gazillion reasons people might give themselves (or not). I couldn’t manage that for long. I turned back a minute later and returned to the spot. The dog was now breathing her last. It was a bitch. She wasn’t making any attempt to get up. And I thought, well, if I would’ve acted on my first instinct a minute back. I might’ve helped the dog to the side of the road. She may have survived, but didn’t. So I just stayed there, put my hand on her chest and watched her die, while cars and bikes sped past. Not one person stopped, till an old man on a bicycle stopped and told me she was dead and I should leave.

Now, maybe it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. Maybe seeing kids at traffic signals selling those fancy balloons shouldn’t bother me, but it does.  And that is that.

I don’t know what I want to say through this post really. Please be kind, maybe? Please be a tad more sensitive to suffering and get prepared to be depressed? Yeah.

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August 4, 2010

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Shantabai Ladkat Fortnightly

Well, technically, it has been a fortnight and 4 days. The 4 days have been spent stuck at home owing to the Palki festivities during which Shantabai Ladkat PMC school provides accommodation to the pilgrims for 5 days.

About Shantabai Ladkat:

The school building is approximately 50 years old, with a very young (8 year old) English Medium section, where I teach. Eight years also happens to be the average age of the 67 children I teach in the third grade. Yes. 67. Oh well.

About the Class:

The class, to my pleasant surprise, has an equal distribution of boys and girls. The oldest boy, nearly 11, is the gentle Kedar. Once my co-teacher joins in another 3 weeks, the children will be split in 2 groups and I will have to part with some people I have come to know (By their name. It’s not that tough, I realized) , respect and become so very attached to, in such a short time.

There’s Gousia, who insists on acting like my mother by offering me her tiffin every afternoon, “Eat didi. Why no bringing tiffin?” and “So heavy bag. Tum school mein rakho, lock mein.”

Then there’s Rohit, who insists that I am “English” since I have declined to answer their queries about my religion, telling them that I celebrate every festival. Of course, Gousia thinks I am like Salman Khan owing to the fact that I celebrate all festivals and pick heavy things (like my bag) so easily.

There is the tiny Ismail, the tiny, quiet child, who is a frequent target of bullying but still maintains 100% attendance, the Calvin of the class, Lokesh; Rajeshree, the incredibly brilliant talkathon champion, with a penchant for word puzzles. I could go on and on.

My newfound discovery of my interest in people (Adults excluded) continues to pleasantly surprise me.

Now that my camera has arrived with the rest of my things from Lucknow, the first thing I do this Saturday is take pics and post something about each one of them before I am no longer the class-teacher of the 67 amazing children I love so much.

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July 7, 2010

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Of realisations and news bytes

1. I am going to miss my summer school kids terribly.

2. I have not felt this way in such a long long time. Or maybe, I have never really felt like this ever. It feels good.

3. I have been placed in a school in Nana Peth, Pune, which is in the Old City. It’s a municipal school. I will be teaching 70 (Yes, seven-zero) students in the 2nd Grade.  That’s the maximum number of students in any school in Pune given to any TFI fellow this year. I will have a co-teacher who will arrive a month late and my manager says that he has ‘faith’ in me. As I type this, I have a nervous giggle stuck in my throat.

4. I have spent the past 5 hours procuring materials for and making phonic alphabet stencils for the art class in class tomorrow but the thought of the 70 new faces I’ll meet on the 14th is enough to rob me of my sleep. The mind’s spinning yarns already.

5. I should sleep.

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May 27, 2010

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Since I’m too preoccupied to actually ‘write’

Summer School:

• On 20th of May, I spent close to 3 hours with Asavaree, getting her to talk and find out why she didn’t want to come to the summer school. Ended up watching way too many Bal Hanuman cartoons on my laptop with her. She stopped coming to school from the 21st.
• Will get my placement school tomorrow. Word has it that it will be a school in Old City, Pune.
• Have begun to realize how much I’m going to miss these children when I leave them in a week and a half.
• On Friday, we do a whole hour of art!

Training Institute:

• Attended a screening of Kabir and the Rangeen Kurta, an Akanksha Musical during one of the sessions. (The story of the making of the musical and the people behind it. And above all, the incredibly depressing story of Latif, the boy who played the lead, and his untimely demise.)
• Coloured and painted and drew till our clothes were covered in colors, in the “bringing art to your class’ workshop.
• Looking forward to the “bringing drama to your class” workshop tomorrow.

Weekend:

• Discovered the board game, Scotland Yard.
• Played UNO.

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May 26, 2010

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7-year-old Asavaree and Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) (Part II)

I don’t know how many people have heard of KIPP. I know I hadn’t till I joined TFI.

From their website -

“KIPP is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. There are currently 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving more than 21,000 students.”

Why I talk about KIPP is because reading about KIPP, I found a lot of interesting and varied opinions on the project. Some think the program to be too harsh. Students end up studying way harder than their peers from better communities to get up to par. They are not left with a lot of time to “enjoy being a child” so to speak.

But then I think of children like Asavaree, who are smart enough to go through classes in schools like the one she’s in, at the minimum possible level. Children who are slowly being conditioned to accept less than the best, live with less than the best.

When they go out into the world and sit for competitions, the only chance they have is probably through reservations. (Which is a topic I’d rather not talk about, because it’s been flogged to death and is definitely not a solution according to me) Going by what I see around me, I estimate a maximum of 10% of my class to be able to take advantage of the reservation policy. What about the rest? I’d hate to see Asavari married off at 20 or even earlier. I’d like her to write. I’d love her to become a writer. But for that, she needs to know what she’s capable of. She needs to be given a reason about why she should be doing it and most importantly, what happens if she doesn’t. I understand that 7 years will probably be considered too young an age by some, but it really isn’t. Underestimating children is akin to setting them up for failure.

So, we need to work hard. Very hard. I know that words mean next to nothing. The task is in the verb – Do. If you don’t, there are certain consequences to that as well but it is in realizing those consequences that we fall behind.

In closing I’d like to narrate an anecdote Shaheen told us in a session a few days back. Just like the motto of Teach For India is – “Be The Change”, the motto for KIPP is “Work Hard. Be Nice.”

A representative from KIPP visited an Akanksha school some time ago (Akanksha is the organization TFI is associated with in India.). He saw “Be The Change” written on each child’s T-shirt, just like they had “Work hard. Be nice.” written on each child’s t-shirt. He asked Shaheen, why was that. She told him that that was the motto they wanted to live by. So he asked her a very interesting question, which was, “What happens if they don’t be the change?” The answer was, very simply, nothing happens. There’s nothing one can do if they aren’t willing to “be the change.”

The representative was asked what happened if some child did not work hard and/or was not nice. The man answered, “Well, it’s simple really. We ask them to go to the washroom and wear their t-shirt inside out.”

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May 19, 2010

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7-year-old Asavaree and Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) (Part I)

This post is meant to talk about two things, KIPP and Asavaree, a girl I have come to know over the past two weeks. I will start with Asavaree first.

7-year-old Asavaree is a student among the 42 students in my Grade 2 remedial Summer School program. She is supposed to go in the third grade this year. I sat with her through a major part of the day and tried keeping her occupied with colours and pieces of paper, while the rest of the class did Maths problems and learned Phonics and English. She wanted to draw a peacock so I drew one for her, which she proceeded to reject. So I asked her how she knows that the peacock I drew is wrong, and without batting an eyelid she told me that it was because she had a peacock at home, along with a dog and a cat. I decided to push this further and asked her what were their names. “The peacock is Peac… oh… Pinky”, she said. I smiled and asked her what the dog was called. “The dog is Puppy”. And the cat? “Kitty”. I was beginning to enjoy this. So I asked her how she managed to find a peacock in the middle of the city. She told me, in broken but understandable English, that her father got it for her. “I love animals”, she said. Which animal did she like best, I asked her. “Cats”. I was beginning to enjoy this conversation. Mostly because I now knew for sure that Asavaree is a very bright child. (Any child of 7 who can lie that well and make excuses is definitely not dumb, just a very good story-teller.) But more importantly because I saw myself in her.

Asavaree has been complaining of stomach aches regularly since the past week. They usually start from the line at the assembly and end with her crying to me or one of my colleagues about calling her mother and getting her home. During the day, she sits at the back of the class with me or my co-teacher and keeps checking the time with us every 10 minutes (literally). Curiously, her stomach ache disappears if she’s happy getting attention from us or waiting for the 10 minutes to end before she gets to go home. To say that it’s distracting, wouldn’t exactly be right. It’s often very irritating and takes one away from the rest of the class.

So, today we called up Asavaree’s mother. She told us that Asavaree would often make these excuses. She didn’t like going to her regular school, and this was Summer School.

I was notorious as a child for getting out of going to school. I hated my teachers. I was bullied because I used to stammer and was painfully shy and I just didn’t fit in. I know that I wasn’t doing the right thing and that I wasn’t being weak, but for a 7-year-old self-actualization isn’t really top priority. However, what I do know is that I was terrific at making up excuses to get out of school. I had a talent. (Or developed it rather). Thankfully, I was in an expensive school where teachers weren’t exactly apathetic about a child’s progress and did teach, whatever they taught, well. In addtion, I had a mother who was well-educated herself and could help me make up for missing classes. So, I stood first in second.

But I look at Asavaree and I realize how the system has failed her. If her teachers had been as good as mine or even cared a bit more, she wouldn’t have been going to third grade without having any idea of the concept of place values. She’s not up to the grade 2 standard in English either but because of her imagination and cleverness, she does manage to do better in English than at Maths.

Everytime she gets teary-eyed in the middle of the class because she wants to go home, I feel immense anger. Not at her, but at what has made her fear knowledge so much. Her mother wants her to take these classes and get her up to par but there’s only so much she can do. The rest depends on the teachers, which is the challenge we face in the coming two weeks. The only thing I’ve been thinking about since afternoon is how to get her to like the class.

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May 19, 2010

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Have *ganas*, will succeed

One of my favourite moments during the training sessions happened when we were told that we were to watch a movie. It was the third day of week 2 at the institute and we had all gotten a three-day taste of what teaching children was really like. A lot of people were unmotivated. I, for one, was exhausted teaching children and attending 6 hour-long sessions immediately after that. Missing five days in the first week meant a lot of things to cover up. I hadn’t had the time to eat properly, leave alone read or watch anything relaxing.

So, when we were told that the 2 hours post lunch were to be spent watching a movie, I thanked the FSM and prepared to give myself a break.

When our trainer asked if we had heard of Jaime Escalante, a couple of people murmured yes. I, on the other hand, had never heard the name before. I was to find out soon. We were told we’d be watching a film called Stand and deliver.

It was based on the life of a teacher in L.A., Jaime Escalante, who gave up his job as a computer engineer to teach students at Garfield High School in East L.A. He went thinking he was to teach computers but ended up being appointed as a Maths teacher. Simply because the school had no working computers! He started out with a class which was not even comfortable with algebra but through his indomitable spirit and remarkable brilliance, succeeded in designing a teaching plan which ended up with all the children in his class taking the Advanced Placement calculus exam at the end of the year and each and every one of the kids passing with flying colours. This exam was considered tough enough to not be cleared even by the teachers in that school, and he was told as much. But teach, he did.

The film might have been a bit over dramatized. As I later read online even Escalante called it “90% truth, 10% drama.

Keeping that aside, I remember to have kept wishing throughout the movie for a maths teacher like him. It also reminded me to get done with my last year’s goal of learning Calculus as soon as possible.

The movie essentially spoke to me of just two things:

- Have the “ganas“, which in Spanish, loosely means “the desire” or “the willingness”.

- Always raise the bar higher than what you think you can achieve. (Or in this case, what Escalante wanted his students to achieve).

Jaime Escalante: [to his students] … There will be no free rides, no excuses. You already have two strikes against you: your name and your complexion. Because of those two strikes, there are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do. *Math* is the great equalizer… When you go for a job, the person giving you that job will not want to hear your problems; ergo, neither do I. You’re going to work harder here than you’ve ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is *ganas.* *Desire.*
[Passing one boy, he ruffles up the student's hair]
Jaime Escalante:  And maybe a haircut.
[Everyone laughs]
Jaime Escalante: If you don’t have the *ganas,* I will give it to you because I’m an expert.

A little bit about Jaime Escalante from Teach for America’s “Teaching as Leadership” text which was handed out to us after the movie. It made a more practical sense to us as would-be teachers, but I think at its core, it’s something that can be applied to any one in any situation.

Jaime Escalante was a teacher in East Lost Angeles who succeeded in coaching his students to take the Advanced Placement Calculus exam in record numbers and whose story is in the movie Stand and Deliver.

1. He was on a mission to provide his students with the skills needed to succeed in higher education and in life. His students would need to master 6 school years of math in 3 calendar years. He set an ambitious goal: to pass the AP Calculus exam.

2. Escalante then motivated his students to work hard to reach that goal and enlisted the support of his students’ families in that effort. He communicated his message of hard work and the potential for their success regularly, built student confidence, ensured they understood one concept before moving on to another, built a powerful team spirit and worked with their families to reinforce his efforts.

3. Escalante was an obsessive planner. Using his big goals as a horizon, he planned out his entire year of instruction. He explains, “I prepare each quiz, homework assignment and practice session before the school year even begins, so I save time during the year.”

4. Like any great coach, Escalante executed his plans effectively.

5. Through all his hard work, he was disciplined about his own development as a teacher and rigorous in his reflection on his teaching. He says, “I test everything that comes to me before using it.”

6. Escalante was relentless about reaching his goal. He required students to work before school, during lunch, after school, on weekends and during the summer. When he found his textbooks lacking, he convinced the school to buy new ones. He got grants to supplement the resources the school gave him. When he discovered that inadequate nutrition was holding back some of his students, he raised funds to supplement their lunch money.

That, more or less, was Jaime Escalante, the man who had the “Ganas“.

PS: Edward James Olmos as Escalante is amazing.

Teach for India, Uncategorized

May 16, 2010

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