The British Library invited me to conduct writing workshops for the fourth and fifth standard students of Gurukul School, and what fun it was! A student of mine introduced me to a lovely activity that I improvised for the fourth standard. I handed out sheets of paper to groups of children, and asked them to write […]
Reading Day
Helen O’ Grady’s Navi Mumbai chapter invited me to be part of its Reading Day celebrations in honour of Dr Kalam’s birthday. What a crazy day I had with enthusiastic children from St. Mary’s School, Koparkhairane, and Gold Crest High, Vashi! The children were full of questions. One commented, “Most authors now don’t really write; they type. […]
Alma Mater
Thoughts come to me in bits and pieces. The house charts are still displayed at the back of the hall. They’ve become bigger and grander, not restricted to single sheets of chart-paper. Also, the availability of print-outs means that girls with neat handwriting don’t make all the charts. There are big boards on the wall, […]
St. Mary’s … St. Mary’s …
When I read the title (and when I was writing it), I could not help singing it. I’ve been writing for ages now. I’ve had about 25 stories for children published. I have a book to my credit. Yet, I can’t deny that I am happy to see an article in the St. Mary’s School magazine! […]
Drama
Children love to act. All of us love to act, or Dumb Charades would not be such a popular game. One thing I stress during all my workshops is the importance of copyright. I insist that children don’t just rip images and articles off the internet, print them and use them. In keeping with that idea, I […]
Little Red Riding Hood
In the first session of a workshop, particularly one with a heavy name like “Language and Literature Workshop”, I like to start on a light note. Humour is a great place to begin, and I turn to an all-time favourite – Roald Dahl. This time, I chose five of my favourite poems – “The Crocodile”, “The Porcupine”, […]
Language and Literature Workshops in Schools
Moving on from reading workshops in libraries to Language and Literature Workshops in schools is a lovely step! Working with 250 children was a whole new experience for me …
Back from Baramati
My lovely workshop at Baramati has come to an end. One child made a card – out of a recycled wedding card. Another child naively told me, “This is Harsh’s gift from class V A.” Children shared what they had learnt. And one girl gave me a letter. Here’s just a little part of a […]
Goodbye Gurukul
I had decided what I would write about today, but was moved to tears more than once by everything students and colleagues from Vishwashanti Gurukul said to me, wrote to me and gave me. One student said, “I used to hate Shakespeare, but you made me fall in love with Macbeth.” Another confessed, “I have […]
Theory of Knowledge – Mathematics
Planning my Theory of Knowledge class on Mathematics as an Area of Knowledge, I realise again what a strange mixture of art and maths I am! How I enjoy mathematics! Yet, I realise how much can be challenged. Is mathematics associated with beauty? What is the focus of mathematics – reliability, validity, certainty or truth? […]
Girlie
When I was five years old, I moved from Vashi to Pune. There, I came across a strange word – ‘girlie’. If you didn’t know a girl’s name (yes, I went to a girls’ school), you would say, “Excuse me, girlie, what is your name?” The word felt awkward in my mouth. Girlie.What would I […]
No School
Winter is here! Cold face, cold hands, cold feet… Ah! It’s lovely! The first morning that fog descended on our school was almost surreal. It was not Pune; it could not be Pune! Cold face and all the rest, sure, I knew all that. But that kind of fog? It was as if we were […]
Examinations again
It’s time for some more of those gems – … he just wants to say that they are too nervous to make good but is describing by writing so many words for it. The poem has very shocking connotative and also short story plot used. The priest was just chilling out. (Commentary on The Eve […]
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club fits so perfectly under the heading ‘unusual’. It’s unusual in every way. The language is unusual. The structure is unusual. The name is unusual. I love the idea of stories of motherhood, and I love stories that do not have a simplistic conclusion. Each story in this collection is […]
Expectations
Theory of Knowledge challenges the way we know, and I wanted to show how we see what we expect to see. Of course, these are old, old ideas, but they were fun anyway! I showed my class this picture: “What does it say?” I asked. “Paris in the spring!” “Are you sure?” I asked several […]
Perspective
In the little primary school in Perani where we worked, money is of course a problem. Going there with students from an international school put things into stark contrast. The base of the four walls of the classroom is painted black. The black area is about three and a half feet high. One of the […]
Painting Gates
Children are morbid. There’s no other word for it sometimes. A little boy, Tamilbaradhi, was watching a student of mine painting a gate. “Don’t touch the gate,” I warned him. He nodded, knowingly, but seemed to expect me to say more. “The beautiful, freshly painted gate will get spoilt,” I clarified. Tamilbaradi frowned. That was […]
Half an Egg
Last week, I was at Pondicherry with 56 students and 4 colleagues. We volunteered to work for Habitat for Humanity, building a road, painting houses and painting gates, among other things. It was an experience of a lifetime. Working with my students at a primary school, we witnessed the mid-day meal. The midday meal proudly […]
After the Story Games
With the One-Word-Story-Game and the One-Phrase-Story-Game, my purpose was to point out how powerless we feel when we can’t control language. I spoke about different aspects of language as power and why we feel more in control when we have a whole phrase to ourselves, rather than a single word. Then, I moved to the […]
Language
Teaching Language as a Way of Knowing, I wanted to introduce to my students what a powerful tool language is. In keeping with that, I also wanted to bring out how powerless you feel when you don’t have control over a language. So I played some stuff that I learned at the Storytelling workshop I attended recently. […]