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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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! […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]