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 call a boy I didn't know? Boyie? It was incomprehensible and most confusing.But, aged five, I wanted to fit in. So I started saying 'girlie'. Excuse me, girlie, could I borrow your pencil? Excuse me, girlie, you're sitting in my place. Excuse me, girlie, I put my bag there first. It's my bench.By the time I was twelve, we were laughing at girls who said 'girlie'. "Yuck. Who says 'girlie'?" Giggle, giggle, giggle. "Girlie!" Giggle, giggle, giggle.And now, rummaging through my memory, I wonder, do girls still say 'girlie' when they are five years old and then mock at the word when they are 12? … [Read more...]
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 on a hill-station! We could not see things two feet away from us, let alone the school buildings. Everything was misty; school had disappeared!Standing in queue to punch in, I realised I wasn't the only teacher delighting in the mist. "No school!" cried one of the teachers. "The school has gone on holiday! No school! Let's go home!" … [Read more...]
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 of St. Agnes)The sound is attach as well as detach.They all were behaving very badly everyday and then at night all of them just some their problems and the make each other cry and laugh and when they have to apologize, they are forgiven.The setting of this essay was done to show the enthusiam between the people and it made it too creative and contractive.When Nay Cathy died they did'nt even knew this would happen and they started shouting and without thinking Joseph ran through the wind and storm and fetched the doctor and brought him, by the doctors response they could'nt realise how, when all … [Read more...]
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 the story of a mother and her daughter against a Chinese-American socio-cultural backdrop. Mother and daughter struggle to fit in, while retaining a Chinese identity. Mother and daughter speak a foreign tongue. Mother tries to curl her tongue around ideas that do not have their equivalent in the new language. Daughter tries to achieve, tries to over-achieve, tries to find a place. Mother wants the best for her daughter and tries to find the balance between two nations separated by an ocean.Going back home to China means travelling westwards to reach the east. Of course the novel … [Read more...]
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 students. In a class of over twenty, only one - and eventually one more - disagreed. Then, I asked a student to identify the picture: "Six of hearts!" came a reply. It took just a few seconds for another student to object, but my point of seeing what you expect to see was established! … [Read more...]
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 services students from my school rendered was to paint vertical white lines on the black area of the wall to divide it into sections."We often fall short of notebooks," we were informed. "So, the children have slates to work with at home. Here in school, the black wall becomes their slate."The students measured and painted the white lines. For their work, they were thanked profusely by teachers and students alike. The next day, it was somehow heartwarming to see that the children had already started working on their new-found blackboards.One of my students commented, "In our school, we … [Read more...]
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 not what he expected. "My hand will get stuck to it," he said, eagerly.Fresh oil paint, small child (about three years old) - I agreed. "Yes, your hand will get stuck to it.""And I will never be able to pull it away," continued Tamilbaradi, happily.I paused."And then, my hand will have to be cut off for me to be free!" he pronounced, delighted.This from a three-year old child.Children are morbid. … [Read more...]
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 provides not just rice and a watery dish of pulses, but also an egg.On our first day at the midday meal, we watched a child distributing an egg to each child. There were three eggs short. Six children got only half an egg. No one complained. In fact, two children raised their hand and volunteered to take just half. My eyes moistened. I was with students who threw plates full of food away if they did not like it.The next day, I was at the midday meal once more. And once more there were too few eggs. The boy distributing the eggs counted and gave four children half … [Read more...]
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 third group and whispered to them, "I want you to explain 'triangle' without using the words 'sides' and 'three'."The students thought about it for a while. Finally, they said, "This is a closed figure, closely associated with Bermuda."Of course it was clear enough. The other students got it very easily.I smiled. "Wouldn't it have been easier to draw it?"They hadn't thought of it. And thinking about why they hadn't thought of it perhaps brings us to what Theory of Knowledge tries to do. … [Read more...]
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.The first round was the One-Word-Story-Game. In a group, each participant is allowed to contribute just one word at a time. It's particularly frustrating when you know you can't contribute something meaningful. For instance, suppose you're third in the group. The first person says 'Once'. The second person says 'upon'. How much choice do you have? I wanted students to experience this powerlessness that comes with limited language. So, I made a group of six play it. I asked them to create all of four sentences to make a story. The theme was magic."Creativity ..." "... lived … [Read more...]