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.   

 Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 8

Like most days, the number, age and returning children varied. Today, most children

came around 9.10 am.

There were at least four girls today, more than on any other day. The number of boys,

however, was far less. Salim, Khwaja, Karthik, Ruhi, and Sahil are children who are

over 13 years old and are fairly regular. Today, however, Sahil was missing. 

Creating Stories

In order to create a link between yesterday’s engagement to save time,

and have children build on the previous day. Towards this endeavour, since children

were now familiar with the Storyweaver website, I got them to create stories of their

own on the website. The website offers a very convenient layout to create stories.

Children can select an image from the available repository for each slide and then

add text to it. After they finish doing it for one slide, they can easily press the arrow

for the next slide, which allows them to do the same task for another slide.

The website automatically stacks the individual slides together. This helps create a

flow of the story easily. Children who were familiar with the website and

the style of stories, I asked them to create their own stories in their notebooks,

and then we could create them on the website. I was not sure how interested they

would be in this activity. However, to my surprise, many of them began writing and

creating stories of their own.

    Children like Salim, however, continued to ask for spellings, translation of words,

and sentences from Dakhini and Arabic to Hindi and then English. Even if I suggested

that they could write in any language, children insisted on writing in English. I think

this may be because of my own language limitations and the children’s intention to

share their stories with me.

    The following are the stories children created on the Storyweaver website. I only

provided technical assistance for the website and a few grammatical corrections.

In some cases, I let children mix languages and scripts and did not correct their

language so that it reflects children’s own idiolect and expression. Some children

wrote together, like Ruhi and Sara. Others, like Khwaja and Momin, wrote

individual stories. Find children’s stories in the images below.

Khwaja, 14-years, story: I will go to the moon. 

Momin, 10 years, story: Hide and seek

Momin supplemented some of his sentences in the Dakhini language. I added a translation. 

Some of the stories, like Momin's, resembled stories already available on the website. Momin added different objects, language and names of his friends to create his own version of the story. 

Ruhi and Sara, 14 years, story: My Family

Ruhi and Sara worked together to create the above story, which was completely original. The story highlights how Akshara helped her family out by saving money in hard times. In the neighbourhood, stories of hardship among families are very common, and the story reflects that reality. I helped type the last few slides of the story on the website to save time. 

Shweta and Sarika, 10 and 12 years old, wrote the following story:

This incomplete story resembled an available story on the website. The two girls took their time to author the story on the website, selecting images and slowly writing the text. Given the limited time, they could not finish it. They also mentioned that they will create a new story at home and bring it. The girls, like many other children, wanted to create a perfect story. 

    Salim also wrote a story inspired by the one he had heard from his father, who was a religious head at the local mosque. However, he promised to come early the next day to finish writing it on the website. Unfortunately, the limited number of devices meant that children had to wait before their stories could be digitised. Often, the waiting meant that children got bored, and I had to continue to think on my feet to keep them engaged. I used this time to teach them origami animals, asked others to play the games I had earlier taught them in the next classroom or others like Karthik, who chose to read books I had brought into the classroom. Nevertheless, the diversity of children and limited resources meant additional pressures to keep children engaged and plan for simultaneous activities.

We ended the day with a few games, and I promised to print the stories, children had created for them to share with their families. 

Note: All names are pseudonyms