Change is never easy. You fight to hold on. You fight to let go. ~ The Wonder Years
A month has passed since I graduated from my two year fellowship with Teach For India. It’s been a relaxing time after two action-packed years of hard-work, toil, and persistence. It suddenly hit me today that I’m completely out of the lives of the children who were essentially the center of my world for the past two years. Of all the decisions I’ve made till date, I’m most glad for having made this one. It’s an experience I’ll cherish forever and look back on with love and fondness.
As a way to mark the end of two years, I created a video for my students capturing each one of them, along with some of the quirky and fun moments that we had together. They were really excited to watch it! One of my students, Mahesh, refused to go along with the others for the video screening. When I questioned him about it, he answered in impeccable English, ” I know everyone will start crying when you go, I don’t want to cry, so I’m not going to watch any video.” I felt a strange mix of shock and sadness and just let him stay in class. The video screening was followed by felicitating each student with an end of year certificate, a goodie bag, and a personalized letter. After giving each one a hug, I parted with them. Contrary to Mahesh’s prophesy, only a few students cried. The ones who did, urged me to stay on and teach them for another year. One of the good things about kids is that they accept change a lot more easily than adults do. I’m sure mine will too.
Books to the ceiling, books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them!
How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them – Andrew Lobel
The joy of reading is possibly one of the simplest yet greatest joys of life! Having taught for nearly a year and a half in a low income school in Mumbai, I’m well acquainted with the process of storytelling to young students with varying academic needs. When I first heard about the Pratham Book’s initiative to conduct storytelling sessions across the country, on the occasion of International Literacy Day, I found the idea very novel and appealing. What Pratham was looking for was a dedicated team of champions, with commitment and a deep love for children and books, to scale and execute the idea. Once I wrote to Pratham about my interest in being a champion, the team was extremely supportive and promptly dispatched a Pratham Flex Banner and a set of relevant books with simple and engaging stories.
On September 8, 2012, I read the book Susheel’s kolams to my students. The story had beautiful illustrations and a very relatable Indian context. As I teach a primary grade, my students have very low attention spans ranging anywhere from 3 – 7 minutes. I started out by getting them all excited about the story and pulling them all in front of the class, closer to me, for better management and to be able to show them the illustrations. I introduced some key vocabulary words and explained the meaning of words such as kolam, pongal etc. to them. As I read the story to my students, they were completely captivated by the illustrations and words, and stopped me every now and then to share text-to-self connections.
After finishing the story, I asked if anyone wanted to share their connections in writing and gave post-it notes to the ones eager to share. I then gave all the students A4 size sheets and crayons, modeled drawing a kolam on the board by joining dots, and then asked them to get creative and draw away!
As the students started to draw, I happily went about clicking them at work. Some got really creative; a few simply copied my design, while still others doodled away sweet nothings. The early finishers asked me for the book and sat reading in a group, devouring the pages. The event was a huge success as was evident from the gleam in the children’s eyes and their beautiful art work. I hope to continue being a Pratham book’s champion and to spread the joy of reading!
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Pratham Books was set up in 2004, as part of the Read India movement, a nation-wide campaign to promote reading among children. Pratham Books is a not-for-profit organization that publishes affordable and quality books for children in multiple Indian languages. Their mission is to see “a book in every child’s hand” and democratize the joy of reading. To find out more about Pratham Books’ Champions, please click here.
The first time I heard Oh! the places you’ll go was at the Teach for India induction in July 2011 by our CEO, Shaheen Mistri. I absolutely loved the poem for its wisdom,rhyme scheme, and imaginative art work. It has a simple yet profound message about celebrating one’s potential to realize the wildest of dreams while being fully aware of the pitfalls and bumps along the journey of life.
September 14th, 2012 was a day that saw my students going off to a great place! My entire class got an opportunity to go on a day long trip to the UBS facility in Bandra west, Mumbai. UBS is a global bank that combines its wealth management, investment banking, and asset management business to deliver superior financial solutions to its clients. UBS is a CSR partner for Teach for India and is sponsoring me along with another Teach for India fellow for the financial year 2012-13. The field trip for a Teach for India classroom was a wonderful initiative by UBS to expose the children to a world beyond their homes and communities, and to aid their holistic development. For me, it was an opportunity to showcase the impact I’ve made on the students over the past one and a half year, and to inspire a sense of wonder, adventure, and possibility among my students about the power of their dreams.
All of my 37 super awesome, hyper-active, and adorably affectionate, 8-year olds were wildly excited when I first told them about the trip. However, there were pains and hurdles I had to overcome in order to make the trip happen. I teach in a low income private school run by a board of six trustees. Barring a single trustee, the others were completely against any such trip sighting a bias for certain classrooms and suggesting that the only way it would be possible was if the entire school was invited. I politely explained to them that it was logistically impossible to arrange such a trip and had multiple meetings with them to explain that there were a lot of upcoming initiatives for the entire school wherein all classrooms would have an opportunity to participate, but to no avail. I felt frustrated, stressed, and helpless in being unable to alter their decision and had to finally seek counsel and help from the Teach for India development team. With their intervention and help, the trustees finally gave in and allowed the field trip for my class.
As I mentioned earlier, the students were ecstatic and their excitement only spiked exponentially as the day approached. On the day of the trip, we hopped onto a bus and arrived at the Maker Maxity premises of UBS Bank in Bandra Kurla complex to be greeted by beaming UBS employees at the entrance. From then on, the kids had a rollicking time! They were completely awed by a certain fly bus on the walk to the UBS office, the office building, and even the bathrooms. They loved the air-conditioning at first but started feeling cold soon enough. As they all sat huddled around tables in the cafeteria, there was utter pandemonium due to a mix of shock, awe, and excitement. I had to intervene in order to make the class quiet. The children interacted with many of the UBS volunteers while eating food and making Diwali cards. It was a proud moment for me when Anusha Bhagat, Chief operating officer at UBS’s India office, told me how confidently my students spoke to her in English. She pointed out that some students even stopped her from speaking in Hindi clearly asserting that it is a class rule to speak in English. My heart simply welled up with happiness and pride.
The kids had a short tour of the UBS premises followed by a screening of the movie Madagascar in the conference room. What particularly caught the kids’ fancy were the swivel chairs and the catchy song “Hill Hill ke nacho nacho” from the movie. After the movie, the children ate cake and finally said their goodbyes to the UBS team. It was a power-packed day for all involved!
The next day, I asked my students to share their experience in writing and here’s what some had to say:
Below is a slideshow of the time spent at UBS:
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I’m really grateful and appreciative of UBS Bank for inviting my class and to Teach for India for providing me with the opportunity to expose my students to such an amazing platform.
Finally, I’d like to end this post by sharing the song that is the new rage in my classroom. The song’s appeal surpasses age and gender and it just makes one want to sing along and groove to its beats! Hill hill ke nacho nacho, hill hill ke nacho!! 🙂
The Wise Nut 