Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 14

In the session today, we had Dr Jeenath Rahaman from Azim Premji University, Bhopal, conduct various mathematics-based activities with children. While asking for responses, she also asked them to think through the mental process of arriving at it.
       As an observer in the class, I was intrigued by the depth of interaction between her and the children. Asking children to think about their responses meant that even if they copied others’ responses, they had to explain their answers. This made them pause and reflect. In addition, through Tangram she got them to think about different kinds of shapes, angles, proportionality and make fun objects from it. 

This is a combined post which included Dr. Jeenath and my reflections of the day.

Jeenath’s Reflections

As students were still entering the class, as a warm-up activity, I began by asking them some multiplication facts to check if they could multiply single-digit numbers like 7 and 8. A student responded immediately, 56. I realised maybe I should move to a double-digit number, and this time I specified which students should be responding. However, I noticed the student who was asked to respond was struggling to do the multiplication and almost gave up, when another student gave the correct answer. When I asked him to come to the blackboard and show his method, he was actually doing the column method mentally, e.g., if the number was 24✕7, the student computed the unit digit to be 8 as 4✕7 is 28 and further did 7✕2 and added the 2 to it, so got 168 in the process. It was basically following the procedural algorithm. I was expecting there could be some alternative method. So, I tried some other number this time, like 37✕4 and asked students to just raise their hands and not give away the answer. This time I asked a new student to respond, and he said 148. When I asked him to explain his process on the board, he said he broke 37 into 30 and 7 and then 30✕4, which is 120 and 7✕4 is 28, so the total came out to be 148. I really appreciated his method and said this is a very efficient method of grouping and regrouping numbers to do it easily. Next, I asked what 34✕5 would be, and although students could give the correct answer using the previous method, I also suggested there’s one more efficient method. If you half the number and multiply it by 10, because 5 is half of 10. I showed the entire operation on board and later also tried 2-3 more such multiplication facts, but students seemed not very confident with this method. So I left it, saying maybe this method will be clear with more exercise.

Grouping and regrouping numbers

 Now that all the students had come to the class, I thought of doing the Tangram activity with the students. We first started by distributing the sheets to each student and made them sit in pairs so that students could support each other. Students were instructed to make Tangram pieces, and while making each piece, there was a discussion about different geometrical shapes. After students made all seven Tangram pieces, students were asked to rearrange them to get a square, a rectangle and a triangle. While they were able to get a square, they took a long time to get the rectangle and couldn’t figure out the arrangement for the triangle, but once they were shown the triangle arrangement, they were really amused and excited. Once this part was done we moved to measurements where students suggested the cost of the small square piece as a cake piece to be Rs.10 and then predicted the cost of the big square made out of the seven pieces to Rs. 70, 80, 100, but finally they calculated it to be Rs. 80. They tried with some more variations for the cost of the small square as Rs 30, Rs 150 and could compute the total cost to be Rs. 240 and Rs. 1200 respectively. We also tried this with potatoes costing Rs 20/Kg and buying 5 Kg, 10Kg etc for students to identify the multiplicative relation between units and the quantity. The session concouded.

Sahil is helping other children with Tangram activity

Dr. Jeenath is helping children cut pieces of paper

                                            

A rectangle from the tangram pieces of paper

                                                        

Engagement with Children: Other Observations

Throughout the activities, however, one interpersonal issue that continued to emerge was Sahil’s inability to restrain his responses, disrupt the process with his constant comments, overconfidence and lack of support for his peers. Mathematics is one of his favourite subjects, which he takes pride in. However, when he was asked to explain his mathematical thinking for his response, he often responded with complicated operations, which did not show any mathematical thought but rather memorisation of algebraic formulae. When Jeenath asked other students for responses on a similar task, who often had simpler strategies, and appreciated them, he often got uncomfortable, acted out and demanded that his method or response be recognised and accepted. I often spoke up and asked him to stop disturbing the class. At some point, he made fun of Dr Jeenath's pronunciation of a word, and I lost my cool. I asked him to behave and concentrate on learning from her rather than mocking her. Jeenath was a lot more patient with him
    We continued to face disruption from him throughout the session. Repeated reminders, requests and stern enforcement of rules fell on deaf ears. In the end, I had to ask him to leave the classroom and take a walk, cool himself and then come back. It always makes me uncomfortable when I do that to him. However, sometimes he leaves no choice.
    Dr Jeenath continued to engage him after the class and discussed other queries. She continued to question and challenge his mathematical knowledge. As a child, he found it difficult to acknowledge his own limitations. Nevertheless, one hopes that the interaction makes him, as well as us, question his behaviour and find alternative ways to deal with the situation without putting a stop to learning. 
    Given that children were used to playing various physical games during the camp, they continued to ask for them throughout the session. The math-based engagement in itself did not seem like a game enough for them. This makes me wonder if, if children were engaged in similar educational activities, their perceptions might change. Also, I continued to think about all the games children played by themselves, which were social in nature, required physical interaction and relationships. The ones that we engaged them in were cognitively demanding and required intellectual competition. 

    Overall, given that Dr Jeenath involved all children in the classroom to speak and participate, it was amazing to see how everyone was able to contribute and share their mathematical thoughts. For me, it displayed how each one of us is capable of some form of mathematical operations, since we all use it in our day-to-day life.

Afternoon Session with Teachers

The session with teachers began around 2 pm. Teachers had been canvassing through the community for admissions on one of the hottest days, which left them tired. Nevertheless, teachers of all subjects and grades sat in the classroom, listening and occasionally participating. 

Jeenath's Reflections 

The presence of the majority of teachers at the beginning of the session, 21, gave a positive impression as a facilitator. I begin with the Nim game, dividing all the teachers into two groups. As the teachers were sitting in two rows in pairs in the classroom. For convenience, we decided to make the groups based on how they were sitting, so each row represented one group. The left row mainly had all the female teachers, and the right row had all the male teachers, but two to three female teachers were sitting at the back of the right row. After making the two groups, I explained the game. 

    Each group can select 1 or 2 as a number, and they have to keep adding either 1 or 2 to the number that the other group suggested, and the one who reaches 10 first wins the game. In the first round, we played the game. The first number was suggested by the left row of teachers as 2, the second group on the right added 1 to it to get 3, then the one on the left added 2 to it to get 5. Then the group on the right added 2 after some thoughts to get 7, and then the group on the left realised they would lose the game whether they add 1 or 2 to 7, so they added 1 and then the next group won. I highlighted that reaching 7 is the winning trick here, but I also wanted them to think about whether the game is dependent on who starts the game first. So this time I asked the right group to suggest the first number, and this time again the right group managed to reach 7, and the left group again lost the game. There was visible excitement after winning or losing the game between the teachers. I was trying to get their attention to the winning strategy and to think of what numbers give an advantage in this game. I asked them to think about reaching 7, what should be the previous number, they said 5 or 6, then asked them to think what number would lead to 5 or 6, for which, after some thinking, they said 4. I also pushed them to think of the numbers before 4 to win, and whether it has advantages or disadvantages for the player who starts the game. 

    The teachers were not responding, nor were they discussing this among themselves. So I asked if the first player says 1, what should the next player be saying? For this, again, there was no response, so I told them they can either make it 2 or 3 and not 4, so the second player may lose in this case. If the first player says 2, then the second player can win by making it 4. I was also writing them on the board, but I saw
less engagement while discussing this. Secondly, I said we can make different variations of this game, we can decide the final number to be 15 instead of 10 and play the game one more time. Interestingly, this time, once the right group reached 10, a teacher from the left group first said 11 by adding 1, but then another teacher said no, we should make it 12 by adding 2 and got visibly excited as they already predicted that they would win the game this time. 

    There was resistance from one male teacher, they said 11 first, but I intervened that they said 12 finally, so now you can add to 12, one of the female teacher on the right row also got amused that no matter what
she adds, their group is going to lose, but she still excitedly added 1 and said the total to be 13, but then the left group called out 15 by adding 2 to 13 and won the game. This was an interesting turn, as the left group won the game for the first time after the right group won it twice. I also encouraged them to think about how the winning strategy changed when the final winning number was changed from 10 to 15. I also highlighted how 12 was the winning point for the left group and encouraged them to think about the number previous to 12 that may be advantageous; it was definitely not 10 this time. Teachers said it will be 9, and then 6, and then 3. I ended the discussion by sharing that there are more variations possible to this game by changing the options from 1 or 2 to 1, 2 or 3 to 1 to 10 and also by changing the final number from 10 to 15 to 100. 

    For the next task of the workshop, we discussed and noted down some mathematics topics on the blackboard and asked teachers to sit in groups of 4-5 to work around making a small teaching unit or lesson plan by choosing one topic from the board or any other mathematical topic of their choice. Few teachers seemed reluctant, but after giving them some prompt questions, they started writing them on the chart paper. They were given around 20-30 mins to work on it. Teachers' groups took up topics like fractions, Geometry, and measurement. A few teachers were also moving out in between the sessions. When teachers were asked to present their unit, they were very reluctant to come and present. Then a male teacher came in front of the class and agreed to present his lesson on fractions. Using that as a cue, we discussed some interesting things about fractions. After that, a female math teacher presented her lesson on Shapes, 2D and 3D shapes. We discussed around making the definition of 2D and 3D shapes, which is both mathematically correct and appropriate for students to access. After this, there were two groups left, but none of the members came forward to present; in fact, on insistence, they gave their chart to the female math teacher to present. The female math teacher read out the lesson for measurement, and while doing that, she herself added examples for each measurement unit. For the last lesson on Triangles, which the female math teacher was asked to read, was basically definitions for types of triangles based on sides and angles. Assuming this is very factual and lacks any imagination, I asked her to stop and again asked the group if they had thought of any activity around it, for which the teacher couldn’t say much, and she said the male teacher in the group made the lesson, and he can only explain this well. There were still some 15 mins left to end the session, and the teacher suggested that instead of starting a new session, let's have the session the next day. So at the end, we had a general discussion about what grade and subject the teachers were teaching, and we noticed that, except for one female math teacher, most tried to dissociate with math, as they were either teaching primary grades or teaching subjects like Hindi, GK, Telugu, etc.

Engagement with Children: Other Observations

I (Ekta) personally was upset with the fact that not many teachers responded to Jeenath's interesting activities and repeated requests for presentations. However, Jeenath also mentioned her experience with other teachers in alternative contexts who sometimes did not even care and were often absent from school. In comparison to that, the teachers' participation here, as limited as it was, was vastly positive, despite many being from non mathematics background. Perhaps one needs to consider the subject matter, the administrative demands on teachers (they were canvassing for admissions throughout the day), and the support system around them, which created the atmosphere for their relaxed learning and engagement.
    Throughout the session, teachers (male teachers) went in and out of the classroom. Since many of them were not from mathematics, they also felt that they did not need to contribute or participate. In fact, when Jeenath asked teachers to present, the female teachers gave their activity sheets to the Math teachers and asked her to present on their behalf. The female teachers lacked much confidence compared to their male counterparts.
    Many of them used their phones to look for activities. I was not sure if this would be productive and meaningful. However, Jeenath pointed out that it is hard for teachers to think of activities; the activities on the phone can be an additional resource. However, she insisted that they contextualise it to children’s lives with examples and things that children find around. This helped, as teachers in their presentation used local foods or products as exemplars.

    Teachers in the school did not have much teacher professional development. Overall, I felt that even if they did not participate in the activities, they continued to be intellectually challenged with Jeenath's deep and pointed questions that they really appreciated. Teachers are hardly challenged on subject matter and are almost an authority in their field; however, having a subject matter expert engage with them has a tremendous effect and the quality of discussion as an observer was very revealing.  

(A joint post by Ekta Singla & Dr. Jeenath Rahaman)

 Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 13

Colours and painting evoke a sense of joy and freedom. Until today, I had not engaged children in such an activity. I have always imagined painting to be a free-style process that does not require much accuracy of form or size. However, when I engaged children in painting today, I realised their idea of painting or drawing was vastly different from my own.

Painting for Joy?

I was short of painting brushes for all participating children. Since Sahil was older and often came in early, I requested him to get about 10 paintbrushes from across the street. Over the last few days, I felt like Sahil had started to warm up. We often had conversations after the regular sessions about something random. This included him asking questions about my life or vice versa. This helped both of us develop an ease around each other. However, I also had to be careful to protect my privacy as he would often get carried away. For example, he began to hover over my head as I typed a personal message on my phone.
    In any case, to my surprise, the paint brushes were easily available in the nearby grocery shops, and thanks to Sahil were enough for everyone. Slowly, children began to come in, settling down on benches; as I distributed sheets of paper, pencils, paint and brushes among them. Children continued to ask for things, and I had to continue to remind them to be patient. As hard as it was, the repeated reminder throughout the day had started sinking in, and they were beginning to get used to calm and patience.
    The painting prompt for children was: Draw anything that brought you joy or made you feel happy. As it turned out, the openness of the statement confused them, and children continued to ask for clarifications or specific objects or things they could draw. Another peculiar issue that came to the fore was the use of a scale or eraser. Children absolutely wanted to draw borders around their drawings and could not get themselves to draw without them. Some who wanted to draw the Indian flag or buildings with lines, they continued to demand a ruler to have exact lines on their drawings. In case of mistakes, they could not get themselves to be ok with it. Since I did not have any, I continued to suggest that they draw without it or that it was ok to make mistakes. We could always colour over them. However, this was unacceptable to them.
    I thought perhaps if I drew and painted with them with similar constraints, it might make them feel better. So I did. I am not sure if this helped them in any way, but a few children began to settle in and draw or paint. Some used the paintbrush as a ruler. Others intermittently continued to come to ask for erasers or rulers.
    At some point, I suggested to them that the activity is about making mistakes or free-style painting so that their hand could flow like the water on paper. It was supposed to broaden their ideas of painting or help them feel the joy of free-style painting.
    Things children drew included standard objects like a flag, a mountain, and a triangular house. However, some did paint things that they liked. Like a chess board, or a football ground, a badminton court, devices like a phone, a TV, a watch, a pen or a book. The entire painting session lasted for about two hours. See the children’s drawing below.

 

Brainstorming Weird/Crazy

In the activity conducted on the previous day, "What my teachers, parents and friends think of me”, Sahil, in his reflections, had written feeling weird or that others found him weird. I remember as a kid feeling that way and perhaps this is something every young adult feels growing up. I wanted to address this idea and perhaps just let him know that it was ok to feel that. So I arranged a short activity around it and provided some reading material. This included an example of Einstein and his quirky habits. I wanted to let the children know that even a person as intelligent as he, was weird, and so it hardly mattered in the larger scheme of things.

Like our previous brainstorming word activities, I gathered children around and asked them what they thought being weird was or who decides what or who is weird. If they ever felt that way, and why so?

Children’s responses include, from being “mental”, “stupid”, “someone who did things differently” or that people around them, like “parents”, “teachers” or “adults” decided what was weird. Someone even said that it was about manners or a person’s behaviour. See children’s responses in the image below.

To make them comfortable, I said that I felt weird growing up and that it is not something that lasted all the time. That people in different cultures or countries had different habits, and so it was possible to live differently with different behaviours that are different from those of people around them.

I got children to read the piece on Einstein and the older children to translate or summarise it for younger children. There was a general silence among the children, with a few talking about what they had read. I am not sure the impact this had on the children; however, I only hoped that Sahil felt a little less out of place after it.

                             


Games and Reflection

We ended the day with a few games and recounted all the things that the children did for the day. I reminded them again about the visiting guest for the next two days, and with the hope that they will join us soon.

 Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 12

The morning began with Salim and his brother coming in early and helping me organise and re-paste children’s artifacts on the school wall for the exhibition on 23rd May. Sahil came in early today with his eyes all swollen up. He had not slept the whole night and had been crying. I had never seen him so vulnerable, and it was rather sad to see him that way. I asked him, and he mentioned he had pain in his eyes and could not sleep the whole night. Despite this, his father had gotten him to school. I had a feeling that there was more to it, which he did not want to share at this point. So, I let him be and told him that he could go home anytime. However, his mother was also working, so he could not be left at home alone. Through the day, however, he seemed to be feeling better and slowly began engaging in the activities.

Making the Poster on Canva

The day began with us discussing the poster details, and some children creating the poster on Canva.com. This was also a way to get them to engage more meaningfully online and develop new skills. While I wanted all children to create different digital artifacts throughout the camp, the limited computer devices, with internet, meant not everyone could develop these skills. When children had to share devices, they often lost interest. Some often drift away and engage themselves in other activities.
    For the ones who did engage, these included two groups: Salim and Shweta, Sahil and Karthik. We first began by discussing what a poster is. Various kinds of details that it should contain, and the way these should be positioned on the poster. See the image below.

Next, each group began designing the poster of their choice with their partner. I had to continue to assist children in the use of elements on the website, navigating their position and size on the poster. The most challenging of these was the text box, which appeared rather small on the poster and required continuous resizing. As tiring and long as this exercise was (for about an hour), the two groups of children continued to persist with some assistance and finally designed the following two posters. Sahil and Kathik were unable to finish the poster making on time. We eventually decided to select Salim and Shweta’s posters for circulation. Later, I edited the poster a little bit for spelling and resized a few details. Their credits were also added.

Sahil and Karthi's poster, created on Canva

                                           

Salim and Shweta's poster, created on Canva. Also the final poster circulated among the community for the upcoming exhibition. 

                                         

Uno Card Game: Mistaken case of gambling

Some of the girls had brought the Uno card game to class. The girls and five other boys, who did not have devices to work on, began to play the card game together. Since I had not separately planned anything for them, I let them be, and this also gave me the time to assist the other two groups working on the poster. However, about a few minutes into the game, a man, while talking on his phone, entered the classroom and began raising his voice and asking children if they were being taught to gamble. I immediately went up to him and confronted him. He was very rude and demanded clarification. I first asked him who he was. It turned out he was a parent of a 6-year-old in the class, participating in the Uno card game. The parent had come to school to pay his ward's fee and noticed children playing the card game. I was furious and lost my cool. The fact that he thought the school or any adult in school would teach children to gamble made me mad. I scolded him and first asked him to leave the classroom. I then told him that he needs to leave immediately and let me continue the work. Immediately after, Salim’s father came to class for a similar clarification from his two sons. The news had travelled within minutes.
    The principal in our previous private conversation had alluded to stereotypes as well as baseless notions that the community members often hold. Because of this, she had said that the school had to be very careful with the ideas children were introduced to or the resources they were given access to. As had happened in the past, like in my case, similar incidents had taken place in the past as well. The incident in my case was very small, but I can imagine how things could have gone out of hand.
    When I returned to the playing children, they were shaken, and the two girls were gathering the cards to keep them back in their bags. Clearly, they were scared. I asked them if that was the case. They nodded and said they were scared to play. I then reminded them that they were doing nothing wrong, as well as the fact that, if they had done nothing wrong, they should not be scared to speak and be courageous. (a topic we had taken up in our activities). Salim's brother then described a similar incident with his father and said he had spoken up while his brother had kept quiet. The children played a few rounds of the game, but then asked me to engage them in a different activity.
    This incident also brought to the fore the strict divisions around what “play” means for people and communities. Adults' notions around play and the values associated with it can have a strict moral code. For someone who is trying to disrupt these divisions and find spaces of literacy within them, the incidents reminded me to also be sensitive to communities’ strong moral notions around certain forms of activities and the very aggressive and violent reactions they can evoke. That, in turn, can disrupt a long process of trust building and pull children back from research engagement.
    Discussing this incident with Rakesh, he advised me to inform the principal about it, in case it's brought up again by a parent. The principal, who was more experienced than I in dealing with similar incidents, was very sympathetic and rather appalled that they might consider Uno cards as gambling cards. She also said that she will make sure no parents are allowed near classrooms during teaching hours. I was very grateful for her support and truly appreciated her understanding.

Name, place, Animal, Things

While the two groups continued to make their poster, I engaged the other eight children in a game of Name, Place, Animal, Thing. I divided them into two groups of four and gave each group a paper. Next, I gave them a letter, and each group had to finish filling in the aforementioned details on the paper. I was not sure if they would like the game; however, the children took to it instantly. Competing with each other, discussing with their respective groups about places or animals. After each letter, I checked each group’s answers and appreciated their efforts. Children relished in competing within groups and continued to time each other's responses. In some cases, children did not know an animal for a letter or a city. However, in some cases, I was surprised by the information they had and its source. For example, a boy who was 8 wrote the name of the city Chandigarh as a response to the letter “C”. When I probed him further, he said that his father was in the transport business and that they had recently ordered a car from that city. In fact, the number plate of the car still had CH on it.
    Once the children finished making the poster, Salim and Shweta also joined the other groups to continue the game. Salim, in response to the letter “P”, wrote Pakistan as a place. This led to a series of comments by children.

A child: Pakistan murda baad. (The child is from the minority community)

(Death to Pakistan)

Salim: Murdabad kaiye ko. Hum ko yaha say nikal deyenge to hum kaha jaayenge?

(Why so? If they kick us out of here, where will we go?)

Ekta: Kisi bhi desh ko murdad kyu karna hai, vaha par bhi toh log rehte hai. Salim, tum ko koi kyu nekalega? Aisa kise bola?

(Why do we need to wish death to any country? There are people like us who live there. Salim, what did you mean?)

Salim: (does not respond)


(Salim’s father was a religious head in the community, and clearly, there was a lot more that he had heard around him and absorbed. However, I did not want to push him further and make it an interview. I did make a mental note of it, in case I wanted to know more about his thoughts on the matter.


Games and Reflection


We ended the day with a few of the children’s favourite games like Simon Says and Pick up the handkerchief from the circle. In the latter, children were divided into groups, and children on each side were given the same number. When a number is called, children with the same number on either side come in the middle, and each tries to pick up the handkerchief before the other and runs back to their team before they are caught.
    Before going, I shared the agenda for the next day with the children and requested them to start preparing for the exhibition. Shweta, who takes her role as the director seriously, has often come up to me at the end of the day to discuss the details of the story and characters with me. Today she promised to finalise the story and characters by the next day to take the play forward.
    I have been sceptical of the exhibition and have continued to question myself about its benefits to the children. I also wonder if it might add undue pressure on them. One of the main reasons I am keen on the exhibition is to showcase to parents and teachers the way play and collaborative activities, where children have freedom to talk and discuss, can be very productive and help children’s expression. As I have noticed, teachers and parents around children continue to hold very rigid ideas about their capacities, what they think is learning or play. However, I continue to question if a mere exhibition will change any of it and if the process of putting it together itself is rather tedious.

Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 11

The number of children has been slowly going down, with many often choosing to play in the neighbourhood (often seen when I go out) rather than coming to school. Others, as I got to know from participating children, have to travel to their relatives' houses. I have also realised that it is not always possible to strike a chord with all children. In addition, a two-week camp is more sustainable from the perspective of attention, energy and preparation. In addition, after every weekend, the number of children usually goes down. It is also perhaps necessary to have more facilitators who can engage children better than just me trying to engage them over the three weeks. These are all learnings that can perhaps be implemented next year, if such a camp is organised again.

20 Questions

We began the day with a game of 20 questions.  In this game, a child thought of an object or person and others then asked 20 yes or no questions to the child, to guess the thing. Children often did not even say the whole question and used words or objects around them to make them sound like questions. I had to get them to ask the entire question or suggest ways they could ask about a larger category before they got to specifics. They were just eager to get the answer. I realised that children had to be shown how to play the game, never having played it, to make them think. This is also because children were not used to educational games, and often only engaged in physical outdoor games. After about 10 rounds, the children seemed exhausted and wanted to move on.

Make objects with your body

This is the game I played a long time back myself, and I wanted to try it out with the children. Given the mixed group ages of children, it worked very well for everyone to get involved. Children were divided into two groups, and this created a sense of competition. Sahil was usually quick in his thinking and was able to get the children organised much faster than the other group. This created a sense of disappointment in the other group. The other group began to watch the winning group organise themselves under Sahil, because of which they often lost crucial time. I had to remind them to concentrate on their own work before they observed the other group. This helped them get back to their own group, but the losses weighed heavily on the group, and they continued to feel disappointed.
    Some of the objects used as prompts included an aeroplane, a car, a cycle, a balloon, a cloud, a tree, and a stick. The object they found the hardest was the square. Children could not get all the sides equal, and this often led to a number of different trials.

What my parents, teacher, and friend think about me

I have been meaning to get children’s perceptions of adults around them. This led me to create a meme-inspired activity where children had to write what teachers, parents, their friends and themselves think about them. However, getting into this activity was challenging. Children found it difficult to pen down the thoughts of adults around them. They often also copied the same sentences in all boxes just to complete the task. It made me realise that an activity of this kind was probably too difficult, especially for the younger children. Some children, to my surprise, like Sahil, detailed personal and reflective writing. However, he did not want me to share it with anyone and wanted to keep it private. The writing alluded to him feeling “weird”, which others have also called him. He also mentioned not understanding himself often. A common theme that many children wrote, including Sahil, was the expectations of parents and teachers to be a successful person and score well in exams.
    Some mentioned being hit by teachers or expecting them to behave, and improve their writing. Others mentioned that they were generally considered good by adults around them, but were sometimes naughty. Children’s responses to themselves were also similar and reflected what adults thought of them. Children often wrote elaborate responses in parents’ and friends’ columns, and even named their friends.

Conversation about beating

In several conversations, children continued to talk about being hit or beaten up either by parents or teachers. I wanted to ask them what they felt about it. Hence, I engaged children in the conversation. Some of the girls initially mentioned that, because they did something wrong, it is ok to be hit. I then probed them further. See the conversation ahead.

Ekta: So does that mean from tomorrow I should hit you if you do anything wrong?
Girls: No ma’am. (smiles and laughs)
Ekta: But that’s what it means. I think you'll like it.
Girls: No ma’am.
Ekta: So then, is there an alternative? If you do not understand or listen to adults like teachers and parents, what should they do, if not hit you?
(Silence)

Salim: explain again and again.
See the children’s responses, which they wrote on the board.

Plan your play

The rest of the time was used for children to plan their plays for 23rd May or discuss the activities they wish to perform. Only a few children seem to be more eager about the exhibition and take time to plan. I have to continue to nudge and make them understand the gravity of the task. Sometimes it feels like, maybe I should abandon the idea of the exhibition, if children are not themselves interested. But perhaps the next few days will decide.

Games and Reflection

As usual, we ended the day with games like Simon Says and Make Objects with your Body. Khwaja also informed me that he had a family commitment and could not make it the next day.


Conversation with teachers in the afternoon

I had kept away from teachers for all this time. Given the initial personal questions I was asked by some of them, I was not sure if I wanted to be subjected to that. My marital status seems to be of major concern to everyone here, and the fact that I can leave my spouse and do this work seems very surprising. Hence, I have been asked several times about my spouse and the work he does. It seems that they are eager to establish his existence rather than speak to me about the work in the school.
    In this background, I had kept away from talking to teachers. However, I also realised that it was not sustainable and had to engage with them if I was to expect any systemic change in the daily schedule of children’s teaching and learning. In addition, we have also organised a two-day workshop on Maths for teachers with Dr Jeenath from Azim Premji University, Bhopal. Having no interaction with them, I was worried that because of my inaction, they may not engage with her.
    To start a conversation, I requested the principal to gather the teachers and formally introduce us. The principal was very kind and arranged a meeting between the teachers and me after lunch. Eklavya, Bhopal, upon request, has sent numerous books for sale and showcase on 23rd May, the day of the children’s exhibition. I circulated some of the books among teachers in our meeting and requested them to either purchase or request the school to buy them.
    After about 15 minutes, I introduced myself and the work I have been doing in the school for the last 3 years, including the summer camp. I mentioned that they may have seen me around, and I wanted to introduce myself formally so that we can talk to each other about the work. After I opened the floor for questions and comments, I was met with dead silence. After a while, a teacher at the last bench mentioned that I was hardly audible. I repeated myself again, and he, a science teacher, struck up a conversation with me about the book on biology. He was interested in it and asked me about other books on the topic. In that moment, I realised my own folly, of generalising two bad conversations with two teachers to all of them. A cognitive bias of sorts.  Another one asked how they were supposed to do any experiments, mentioned in the books, in the school, when the school does not have any science equipment. I had slowly come to realise the minimum resources in the school, and this included a lack of a science lab. Another one mentioned the strict schedule included canvassing that teachers had to do, which left them little time for experiments. They also mentioned that focusing on examinations made it difficult to try activities. However, when I asked him if they were forced to also follow a certain pedagogy in the classroom and if they had any freedom towards it. He agreed that teachers had pedagogical freedom. These are challenges that I have often heard from teachers in all kinds of schools. As real and frustrating as they are, it is also true that teachers often underestimate the power/freedom they have inside the classroom. I continued to engage him on this very point and suggested a 15-minute activity-based pedagogy in a week. When he mentioned that it was not doable in a class of 40, I suggested that he use children as teachers who taught other children and make it more conversational rather than purely teacher-centric. I also suggested that it will reduce the burden on teachers. He did not have a further response and appeared more thoughtful. Then after a while, he said, these are things I wish to learn and even pursue a PhD. I happily shared my own institute's details and encouraged him to do so. 
    Teachers, while they are made to feel like any regular employee in the school, because of the number of tasks bestowed on them, teaching and the classroom often occupy a secondary focus. Women teachers hardly spoke and were more interested in examining the books. One woman teacher asked me about the exhibition, the day they could buy the books and the Math workshop. However, they did not engage in any systemic-level conversation like the male teachers. This may also be due to a lack of trust, as someone who had only taken the initiative to speak to them now, after being at the school for days.
    I was also surprised by the strict division of space between male and female teachers as they sat for the meeting. When I suggested to a female teacher (more in number than men) that they could sit on the other side of the divided bench, where the male faculty were seated, one of them voiced loudly that that was for male teachers. This same division continues to be exercised among children as well.

 Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 10

Salim and his friend came early to author their stories on the Storyweaver website. They had written their story two days back. However, because of limited devices children had to take turns to author them online. As Salim began to author his story, one letter at a time, I continued to help him translate his story from Dakhini to English. At some point I asked them, why not write it in Dakhini? Salim’s friend made a face with a tssk sound (colloquial way of saying no). This led to the following conversation

Ekta (me): But why?

Salim’s friend: Acha nahin lagta. (It does not look nice)

E: Par tumko acha lagta hai na. Tum toh bolte ho. Samajh may aana chahiye (But you understand. You speak it (the language). It should be comprehensible).

Salim’s friend: (still making a face and now looking at Salim)

Salim: Nahin, teacher. (Smiles at his friend) (Teacher no)

E: aasan hoga likhna. Tum khud lik sakte ho. (It will be easier to write. You can write on your own)

Salim (to his friend): Hindi (referring to Dakhini) may lekhte hai. (Let’s write in Hindi (i.e. Dakhini))

We begin writing the story in Dakhini.

Salim’s friend (to me): Teacher, aap muslim ho? (Teacher are you Muslim?)

E: Nahin, par may north India say who, toh mujhe Hindi aati hai. (No, but I am from North India, so I know Hindi)

Salim’s friend: Smiles and they continue to type

Salim: Teacher aap type kardo, jaldi ho jayega. (Teacher you type it, it will be faster)

I continued to type as Salim now voiced his story out loud, without any hesitation. However, we could not finish it in time and decided to continue it after the end of the day.
    I continue to have hope with Salim. I remember the day Salim’s father came and told me in front of Salim, that he did not know how to read or write. And only if I could teach him to. I often wonder, if only we dissociate reading and writing from the language of the school, we will know that all children have things to speak and write. The disconnect between the language of the home and the school often leaves children in a limbo. Even in the case of Salim, he had a lot to speak and write, but the language of the school stopped him. Once we created a possibility for him to write Dakhini in the Roman script, he began to write things on his own. See the activity on the interview, where he interviewed his father and wrote it entirely in Dakhini.


Picktionary

As children entered the class while I was still working with Salim and his friend, they began to pick up books from the reading corner or sat and spoke to their friends.
    We began the day with Picktionary, where children had to draw a scene, and others had to guess. Today, Sahil was also present in class, and as usual, he began to disrupt and cause commotion. While playing with two younger children, they got hurt and blamed him for it. I had to raise my voice and ask him to be careful. Children who are older, like Khwaja, like Sahil’s company and came to his support when I scolded him. It is, nevertheless, difficult to manage the mixed groups and competing interests in the same classroom where one wants order to get some productive work done as well as have children enact their agency. To do this safely also means that as an adult, one has to create boundaries, rules, and enact consequences when those rules are broken. For Sahil, this often meant making him sit in a corner while others participated or asking him to take a round outside the class to cool down.
    In this activity, children began drawing sports-related scenes, which were easier to guess. I had to guide children to think of other scenarios they were familiar with but would be challenging to guess. Salim drew a game of hide and seek, another child drew a scene of a stone falling from the top of a mountain and falling on someone’s car, and Sahil drew a scene of a computer repair shop.

Interview an adult around you

I had asked the children the previous day to interview one adult in their lives as homework; however, many of them had forgotten to do so. I wrote the set of questions on the blackboard and asked children to interview adults around them in the school. For children who lived close by, they could also go home and interview their parents or neighbours. Many girls chose to interview people in the school, while boys took their bicycles and went home or around the neighbourhood. Girls reported being scolded by parents if they ventured out without permission. Another sign of how girls from an early age are taught to be careful of their movement.

Interview questions for children

 
    Through this activity, I wanted children to engage in reading and writing. Many children came back with one-word responses. For those who had interviewed adults in the school, I asked them to go back and probe people around them. I asked them to imagine themselves as journalists who need to find ways to get responses from their respondents, even if they might not want to speak to them. Children went back and added to their initial responses.
    The activity required children to move, remember, and ask questions. While some were intimidated by it, I continued to push them to try it and ask as many questions as possible. Once children came back, having interviewed an adult, I asked them to pen their interview on a sheet of chart paper. Most children wrote the interview in English; however, Salim wrote the interview entirely in Dakhini. Children asked their peers or me for spellings or clarifications. Some of the people that children interviewed included the watchman of the school, the cleaners, teachers, older children in the school, like the principal’s daughter, the shopkeeper in the neighbourhood and parents. Children’s charts with their interviews were pasted on the wall for everyone to see and read.

                                                

Salim's interview with his father, which he wrote entirely in Dakhini without any help

Some children also got the adults to write for them

Child who interviewed his mother

Khwaja's interview with his mother, who was a school staff

Games

By the end of the previous activity, which lasted up to an hour, I was quite spent and did not have the energy to start anything new. I let some regular children teach new children some origami animals. While the others decided to play some games like Fire in the Mountain and Simon Says, Dinner time.
    Before leaving, I asked children to be regular the next week so that we could start preparing for the exhibition, as well as told them about Jeenath Rehman from Azim Premji University, who is coming to engage children in mathematics-related activities in the coming week.


Salim’s story in Dakhini

I ended the camp early by 11.30 am so that I could help complete Salim’s story online. We selected images and text. I typed while he narrated the story. In some cases, he used words that I was completely unfamiliar with. In such instances, he used gestures or detailed descriptions to explain the words. Following is the story about a farmer that Salim composed in Dakhini.

In olden days, one man went into the jungle for a stroll

After walking a while he stopped somewhere

He heard a voice from a cloud that said, "Find a way to get water to a farmer's land".

Three or four clouds began to pour on a barren land

That water began to flow in the form of canals

That man began to walk behind the water

He stopped at a place

He saw that with a plow a farmer was digging for water

He asked the farmer what kind of good work do you do? The farmer said, "I usually do not tell this to anyone; however, since you asked, I am telling you this, that when this crop is ripe, I do four parts of it".

First we eat, second part we give to Masjid or Madarsas, third part we distribute among the poor and the fourth part we sow for the next crop.

Salim's story was reminiscent of the stories he often heard from his father, who worked as a teacher in the local Madarsa or stories he heard around him at his home. 

 Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 9 

I brought printed copies of children’s stories that they had created on the Storyweaver website the previous day. Children were really happy to see the copies of their stories. Khwaja and Momin showed it to their friends and also took them home at the end of the day. It was really delightful to see them take pride in their creations.
    Shweta and Sarika came early to the camp to author their stories on the website. They had a completely new story, which was written with the help of their older sister. It had no spelling mistakes, unlike the previous day. When authoring the story on the website, the girls came to me to ask for spellings that they could not read from their own stories. This confirmed the fact that it was not written by them. However, this is the story they wanted to author as it was perfect according to the girls. The idea of personal expression and expressing things in your own words continues to be a task. Children often want things to be perfect as per the standards they are used to in school, with little emphasis on their own thoughts finding expression. Children often take immense efforts to avoid any mistakes or want the task to meet a school-like standard. The following is the story that the two girls authored on the website. I assisted them with typing and selecting images for the story.

Scavenger Hunt

We began the day with the scavenger hunt. I have organised this activity the previous day as well, which requires a lot of preparation, including creating the riddles as well as hiding candies around the school space associated with a clue. Children really enjoyed this activity and continued to ask for it every other day. One of the reasons they loved this task, as I came to understand, is the candies that they procured.  While the motivation for me is for children to engage with the language of the riddle, children often run around the whole school to find the candies. This sometimes creates issues as they find a candy associated with another clue. This was a learning experience for me and meant that next time I needed to design riddles that were a little more challenging and place candies in places that were not easy to find. See some of the riddles used for the game.

I do not need batteries, and yet I light up your world. A: Window	I am alive and unmoving.  A: Plant
I am kind and quiet. I do my job without any noise. Without me, this place may be dirty A: Broom	I keep you fresh on hot days A: Water cooler

For some of the riddles, I then asked children to first guess the answer and then look for it. This alleviated some of the issues. It was also easier to manage the activity today without Sahil, who otherwise disrupts the class and tries to find answers to all the riddles by himself. I have come to realise more and more that for a camp like this, which caters to children from minority backgrounds and requires a slow and immersive engagement, one needs to keep high-achieving children from the classroom away to stop unnecessary comparisons and high-achieving children overshadowing their peers.


Plan your play

For the children's exhibition on 23rd May, children needed time to plan their performances. While they were given the freedom to perform any play, the two groups of children continued to create a similar play on the prevention of tree felling and the harms of deforestation. Also, children’s idea of a play is probably based on their earlier school performances which requires them to memorise each line and speak in a certain way. In the process of practising and creating the play, I appointed an older child as a director whom the other children had to see as the leader of the group. In addition, I continued to make suggestions on the alternate languages they could use in the play, including Dakhini, Telugu and English. In the process, children continued to engage in writing, discussing and thinking about characters and space, props, among others. Nevertheless, the script of both plays decided by the children was on the same topic of deforestation. I suggested to the children that they need to think of alternative scripts that make the teachers and parents who come to watch their play think. I hope to create an activity next week that helps children move away from a regular style and script of a play to something that expresses their own life and world. 


Describe the Object

In the next few activities, I wanted children to speak and think about language structures. Hence, I used a game where children had to describe an object without naming it while others had to guess. Children initially found this task difficult. I had to ask them questions about its weight, texture, size, etc. After one or two children, they got the hang of it and became excited to participate. The moment of reveal of the object became the highlight of the game. While children often tried to describe the object in English, they also began to use words from Telugu and Dakhini.

    In the two weeks, while earlier, children only sat on benches and spoke with crossed hands, and their bodies often tensed around me. Children had begun to feel at ease in the class, sometimes sitting at the table or going out of the class to drink water on their own. However, I noticed that children often went to drink water together in groups with their friends, when they played with water or used this as a chance to chat with their friends undisturbed.

Scrambled Sentences

A game of scrambled sentences involved several words that children had to put together to form a coherent sentence. This was a group activity which many children found difficult. This may also be because I gave them a complex English sentence with a main and several subordinate clauses. The differing reading levels of children and language comprehension came through in this activity. Children as old as 14 or 13 years were unable to finish the task and required several clues. However, Sarika and Shweta, 10 and 12 years old, despite their age, were able to finish the task sooner than others.

The activity, however, forced all children to think about the structure of sentences. Since this was a group activity, which required them to speak to their peers and discuss. In addition, many wrote down the words in a book and engaged in sentence construction and deconstruction. I will perhaps use this activity again next week.


Brainstorming Happy

We had ended the previous day with Pharrell Williams’s song, “I am Happy”. As homework, I had asked children to think of things in their lives that make them happy. We used this time to get children to write their thoughts on the chart paper. Some children were enthusiastic about it, while others were not so much. Often, too many thinking activities one after another, tire children up. Seeing the frustration in many, I kept the activity short and motivated them to finish the task so we could move to something else.

 

As a response, children often wrote about games, play, friends, winning, their favourite object, which made them happy. See the image above for children's penned responses. 

Games

We ended the day with a few games, like Fire in the Mountain and Simon Says, which the children seem to enjoy and keep asking for multiple rounds of. Some of the younger children also said that they play these games in the evening, in their neighbourhood.

 
    Before leaving for the day, Salim promised to come early the next day to finish his story. He seems very motivated to finish his story and see it in print, like the rest of the children. It is really heartening to see him speak and express himself without any fear. This is the case with Khwaja, too.

Note: All names are pseudonyms. Photographs of children's artifacts and the processes were taken with each child's permission.