Roma - a picture tour

After the 2 year stint with teaching was over, I together with 3 of my friends, decided to see the world. We ended up in Rome last Tuesday. Though the intention was not to do any off beaten track, we found ourselves staying at a camping site a little outside the Rome city. The first things which caught my eye was the cotton which was flying around all over the place. But this cotton didn't come from long pods as I have seen back in India, but very small pepper sized pods. One day morning I ventured out while my friends were getting ready to go out. I found myself in the middle of a dream sequence in which light snow kept falling. I closed my eyes, extended my hands on my sides and rotated around a few times.

These are some pictures from my camera during my visit to Rome.

Trevi Fountain

The Spanish Steps

 

Fresco in the Vatican Museum

 

 

The beautifully frescoed ceiling in Vatican

 

Last Supper in Tapestry in Vatican Museum

Creation of man in Sistine Chapel

Colosseum at night

Inside Colosseum

Madonna and the Child

(don't miss the blush saving tapestry which was added much later in the painting)

Drama: Performance-2

On December 16th 2010, my kids performed the drama "Pandurang Pipewala goes to Purandar" after 3months of preparation.

This is a heavily edited, dubbed version of the drama performed on stage.

Since the drama had a lot of dialogues, I arranged for collar mikes for the students (Shyam sponsored). But the whole sound system in the auditorium failed and half the dialogues were not audible to the audience. But that doesn't matter. At the end of the day I am proud of what the kids have achieved. Remember that these kids have started speaking in English just a year back. So managing to learn the dialogues and also deliver them with these expressions, pause and voice levels, is no mean feat.

Read Drama: Performance-1 about the preparations.

Yohan sharing his experience

For the End Of Year showcase I asked my students to share their experience, in training for and performing drama on stage for the Annual Day function. I asked them to prepare for it and come and tell me the next day. Yohan told me that he wanted to do it right away and doesn't need any preparation. He just went in front of the class and spoke, starting from the time when he failed in 4th std last year and I coming to teach them. He went on for 4minutes without stopping even once. At the end of it I just couldn't control my tears and I hugged him.

Next day he wrote and brought me this speech. I am reproducing it with just one change where I have replaced pronouns 'they' and 'them' with 'she' and her, since he has told me that he will never make a mistake in that again.

"Hellow, I am Yohan. I am from Vth, I like my didi very much. My teacher name is Subhadra. If we say teacher to Subhadra didi, she don't like. Because we are talling her didi, When I was in IVth std, I was very veek, now she make me smart. Now I can talk in English and read English. I am so Happy becaus I got very didi. She tot everything very nies. Now she is teaching to V, VI, VI. She is from Banglore. And she is talking in English very nice. Some student make cry to her. Didi brought gifts last year, and brought this year also. Didi was computer ingeneer. Didi tought how to do Drama. And tought Dielock in English.

THAnKYou Didi And all My friends."

I might be able to find a sample of his writing from last year to compare. I am so happy to see that he has improved so much from that time.

Shahid, please come back

When you start teaching a bunch of 5th, 6th and 7th standard students, one thing you wont imagine is that you will be teaching 16 and 17 year olds also. Once you realise that, you still wont imagine how big they are and what they are capable of, because in your eyes they are still kids studying in upper primary school.

Shahid came across as different from the rest of the students in 7th standard. One, he was the one who was struggling the most to speak in English, two, he was the most invested in speaking in English. He would come everyday with new words for which he wanted to know the English word and would write them down and sometimes write the Hindi pronunciation also so that he can go home and practice. When I started my drama classes, in the screening workshop, he acted out the lion's part in the Lion and Mouse story. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, I almost saw the mane of the lion when he did that. I looked forward to him being taking a good role in the drama and thereby improving his English faster. But he had to go away to his village since his father was visiting from abroad and missed out on the opportunity.

He was one of those students whom I got to trust me enough for them to tell and ask me anything, or so I thought. Once he asked me, after I got a little frustrated since he was getting the question tags wrong after I taught him that for the 10th time, "Didi, I listen to a song for 2-3 times and I can remember that and sing that, but you teach me grammar hundreds of times and I still forget". I have my theories on that and we had a discussion over that in our extra class.

He brought his girl friends' snap and showed that to me. A kid who can hardly speak grammatically correct English, he called her his soul mate. He never stopped surprising me. But somehow he kept making me believe that he trusted me enough to tell me anything.

In the English test for subject-verb agreement, I gave the sentence "This dog _______ everyday" with the verb 'run' to fill in the blanks. I was shocked to see the 'f' word at the place of runs in his paper. I decided to talk to him the next day during extra class. The next day I gave them the Math test and he came and asked me whether I can excuse him from the test that day as he was having a bad headache. I told him to write as much as he can and he could lie down after that and I will give the paper again to him the next day to finish. That day I left early from school as my laryngitis was bad and I lost my voice. I couldn't talk to him. The next day I took an off as I was sick still.

The day after, I reached school and the first thing I hear is that, Shahid has run away from home. He left school the day he had the headache, went home, packed his bag and just left. His classmates didn't have much idea as to what has happened. But they told me that he was talking about his grandparents, with whom he was staying, harassing him and also that he was talking about poison. I scolded myself for not talking to him the previous day, instead of asking to write the test. Though when think now I know that it would not have changed anything. Still, since I got the feeling that something was not right that day, I berated myself for not taking any action.

I didn't know what to do. I called up his uncle's number everyday, but that mobile was always not reachable. I checked everyday with his classmates to see if he has contacted one of them. After a week Angad told me that Shahid has reached one of his uncle's house somewhere in MP. I felt so relieved I hugged Angad for telling me that.

I had trusted his street smart ways, but still believed even a well built 16year old like him would not be safe out there in streets of this bad world. He is one of my show case results of what some dedicated hard work from the teacher and student, can do. But it looks like he is not going to come back. At least from what the other kids have heard from him, he is joining some school where ever he is currently.

Thank you Shahid, for not taking the wrong decision (it gives a chill up my spine when I think about the options you have thought about) and taking care of yourself and making yourself reach your uncle's place safely.

On second thoughts, I still want you to come back. I have another 6 weeks for us to work together.

Shahid, please come back.

A cup of ginger tea

An old man in his late 60's walked very slowly on a walker wearing an yellow and white striped sweater. He walked painfully slowly, moving inch by inch, while his wife walked a few feet ahead and waited for him. From the third floor balcony where I am watching, I cannot see whether her face reflects frustration or compassion. But from her body language though it looked more like frustration. (Why did that make me feel sad?) A man in a tight bright pink t-shirt stood at the gate watching the frustrated truck drivers taking U-turns as the main road is blocked ahead. As if bored, he turned and walked back inside the gate. Bright pink shirt, big boobs, he could have passed off as a woman except for his very hirsute face. Two youngsters wished the slowly progressing old couple and took their scooter and started to the gate. The much decorated red Maruti 800 drives in and just in the front of the car, the scooter takes a sharp right turn making the car brake very hard. (What was that for?) The designer car passes below my balcony revealing yet another sticker on the top which reads "Racing" which covers the whole top of the car. (He must be expecting a lot of people to watch his car from above!!!) Booming sound above, I look up, tell Jet Airways and turn my attention back to the ground. A girl whom I pass by almost every day at the stairs in the morning walks in adjusting her duppatta, which doesn't need any more adjusting. She walks all the way near the wall and walks by the wall. She almost looks like she wants to blend into the wall and walk invisibly. A red Chevrolet Beat with KA 01 registration drives out. (Fellow Bangalorean!:) A girl comes riding in a scooter and leaves 2 very oily brown paper packets at the security desk and drives in. (Samosas for the security guards? That's cool!) An army jeep drives in, not a usual sight, every one stop to gawk at them. The old couple has started their journey back. The old man trips and looses his balance and in split second there are 3 people supporting him avoiding a fall. (Where did they all appear from?) The old woman walks back to him and starts walking with him, even touching his hand a couple of times. (That somehow makes me a feel better.) The phone rings and with my cup of ginger tea finished, I run back inside for my 10minutes of evening chat.

Drama: Performance -1

When Yohan couldn't remember his dialogue and he turned back to look at me with a lot of mixed emotions in his eyes, I wanted to wrap him in my arms and protect him against all the evil in the world, including going on stage and facing an audience. But I gave him the 3 seconds he needed for remembering the dialogue and he turned back, faced the audience which was now getting a little impatient and confidently mouthed "I am always lagging behind, now I have lost my friends too. I am so unlucky" and started sobbing. Then I mouthed "oh my baby" and almost sobbed my self. By not helping him at that moment and letting him know that he can take care of himself, I moved him in his confidence level one notch up.

It is not an exaggeration when I say I can see a difference between the students who have participated in the drama and the ones who have not. I wanted all my students to participate, but since I was not ready to do the practice during school timing, only half of my students could.

Learning of the 4 or 5 dialogues which they needed to deliver in the drama with the correct pronunciation and expressions and listening to 20 others doing the same have had a bigger effect on the kids than I have expected. We went through many phases. First they struggled with the dialogues as they couldn't read them fluently and took some time. Once they read, it took them some time to memorise. The hardest was after they memorised their dialogues. They just wanted to tell the dialogue and finish it off, so 4-5 words will be compressed into one word and you just can't understand what they tell. After a few weeks I thought it would be impossible to make them slow down and tell the words separately and with the right stress and tone on the right words. "Are you in a hurry to go somewhere, honey?" was my constant dialogue. It took a lot of patience from me and them and a lot of practice to get to a level at which any one could understand what they spoke.

Through these phases my kids were evolving. Their reading fluency, comprehension, confidence, concentration and speaking improved. One day while practising, Yohan shouted "didi, they are trying to cheat Pandu" and when I looked at him with an approving smile, he beamed.

After the performance on stage was over, I lamented about the flop show since most of the mikes were not working properly, Shyam asked me what my intention was for doing the drama. Was that for the performance on stage or was that intended to improve the skills of my students. Also I got a message from Rebecca telling she was impressed with their stage presence and I must be proud of my kids.

So I achieved what I set out for. My kids improved their skills manifold, beyond how much I have imagined and planned for. It was indeed hard work for me and for them for whole 4 months. At the end of it, I am proud of my kids and proud of the fact that I leave them with something they might not have experienced, if not for TFI and me in their classrooms.

Imagine Child

Last year when I started doing Writer's Workshop with my kids, I dedicated one whole period for imagining things each week. So we went inside a giant mango, getting bathed in mango juice, smelling the sweet fragrance and finally hitting a wall when we reached the pip. Then we went up a bubble from the bank of the river running behind our school, went up and looked down at the buses and cars plying on the bridge nearby. We went into a dark forest and saw all the animals around and felt a little scared and excited. We did many more, week after week. After we imagined all these things, we spent time talking about it and then wrote.

This year I have only 70minutes each day with them, so we have not done any imagining. But I found the result of all the work we have done last year, this year in the stories they have written.

They were given the picture of an upturned wattle basket to write about. These were the ideas they came up with.

1. Three hen babies (babay) were separated from their mother. They end up in a jungle somehow. They all are very worried about how to get back to their mother. At the end the mother hen comes searching for them and then they are reunited and they live happily ever after.

2. The cat was in the hat and was very sad because of that. A boy was passing by and cat in the hat asks for help and the boy rescues the cat.

3. The hen laid an egg and it hatched (broke and a baby hen came out). Then a big hen came and took the baby away. The mother hen went and fought with the big hen and got the baby back and lived happily for many days.

4. The basket was filled with fruits. A dog came and pushed down the basket and all the fruits fell on the floor. At the end the dog said sorry and helped put all the fruits back.

5. The basket was left on the road with 2 cats inside and a dog found them and started chasing them. Then a man came and took the cats to the police station where the policeman told the man that he can take one cat and the policeman will take the other. Both the cats then lived happily in their new homes.

6. One day a basket fell down from the sky with a cat. The girl took the cat and became friends and fed it with milk everyday. Then one day the cat went away and she felt very sad and her mother came and hugged her.

7. The rat was under the basket because it was afraid that someone will kill her. But then the basket had an automatic door and the cat came in through that and chased her still.

8. The basket was left on the road and the boy asked everyone whether it is theirs. Then he took that to the police station and the police gave him a medal (middle). When father and mother saw the medal they were very happy.

I feel that the mystic nature of the picture has made the kids imagine beyond the obvious. Taking a clue from it, I am going to make them write more and more on pictures where there is no obvious story.