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

Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 7

Parents of especially girls (as old as 14 years) continue to come to school to drop them off and check if there are other girls around for their company. A mother today came to school and asked why there weren't more female children in the classroom. This continues to be a concern for not only parents but also teachers. The camp was designed for struggling children and, by design, is supposed to have fewer children. I continue to respond with positive and alternative explanations, including “less is better as we can have more engaged activities”, “other children often come late”, “there are enough girls (including me) so there is no need to worry”. Despite these explanations, if parents still hesitate, there is little I can do to alleviate their worries. I do not bother much with these ongoing questions and continue to engage with children (as many there may be) each day. The correlation of quality with quantity is not limited to the number of children alone. This dictum continues to operate in all areas of education, including marks, free material, and hours of school, among others.  

Another aspect of the whole engagement in the school is the teachers and parents. I have purposefully kept myself away from them. One of the reasons for this is the intrusive and judgmental questions I often get asked. In some ways, it is easier to work with children. They do not bother with personal questions as much as adults around them, nor do they insistently obsess over them. As a woman on the autism spectrum, living alone in the school premises who does not wear any obvious markers of being married, engaging in the community also means having to respond to several personal questions, which takes a cognitive toll. Although I have often responded to these questions patiently, it gets tiring to explain oneself again and again. These questions include, “Where is your hometown?” “What job do I do?” “Do you depend on your husband for money?" " Am I married?” “What do I do the whole day?” “Why don't you come and live with us?” “Why are you staying alone?” “Do you have children?” There is also an element of vigilance that I continue to be subjected to. For example, stepping out of the school premises at any hour of the day or evening means being followed by several eyes in the neighbourhood or being asked by the watchman's family where I am going or when I am coming back. Every visit to the shop means responding to the same question from every new member of the shopkeeper’s family. Sometimes it feels like being subjected to a police investigation, and every response is verified several times with multiple sources. I understand that my presence within a community to which I do not belong will invite questions. However, there is also a lack of personal boundaries in the way people communicate and ask very personal questions. For a private person like me, this is especially tiring and harrowing. 

I often relent, especially when engaging one-on-one. Alternatively, I stick to a routine and do not engage with groups of teachers. Not knowing the local language also saves me sometimes, as I can act as if I do not understand their questions. However, I do speak Hindi, which is comprehensible to a large section of the community. Keeping a stern face, ignoring people's gaze, is another strategy. I also often call people I wish to speak to over the phone when I leave the school premises, which helps me avoid conversations with people around. Getting away from the school over the weekend is another coping strategy. Teachers in the school continue to be curious and keep asking participating children about our activities and engagement. I have started to realise that it might be useful to involve the principal and have her formally introduce me to them. This will open a channel and create an ease of communication. As for the community, small doses seem to work better. 

Moving on, activities of the camp for the day included reading stories online on the StoryWeaver website and then creating a shadow puppet performance. Read the details below. Many of the regular children did not show up today; instead, we had two new children in the class. However, the limited number of children was helpful given the limited devices (which included my tablet, laptop and phone), which were shared among three groups of three children each.  

Reading stories on Storyweaver

 Instead of using physical books for reading, I let children explore the Storyweaver website on the shared devices. Children either read stories they were interested in together, watched a video of the story, or a child read it to the rest of their group members. Children explored stories in Telugu, English and Hindi. They spent about 45 mins reading and exploring the website. 

Salim in the centre with two of his friends

from left: Ruhi with two other friends

Shadow Puppets

In the next task, each group was to select a story of their choice and create paper cutouts of the characters in it. I designed this activity so that children immerse themselves in the narrative, and it forces them to engage with it deeply. Salim and his group selected a level 1 book, Hide and Seek by Kanchan Bannerjee and illustrated by Harshvardhan Gantha. Sahil, Karthik and their friend selected The Rat in the Cat by Arundhati Venkatesh and illustrated by Canato Jimo. Ruhi and her group chose, Where is your School? by Sandhya Taksale and illustrated by Sushant Ahire.  

      This task was a little difficult for the children. They initially began to create exact scenes from the books they had read. However, I had to tell them that they could use one cutout for several characters in the story or even change the story to their liking. As children began to create paper cutouts, I noticed that the task was tiring them out. Sahil began to move around the class, disrupting others or his own group. While the other two groups continued to make their characters, Sahil and the group found it difficult to concentrate. At some point, I had to ask him to leave the class to take a round or two and come back. I have noticed that it is especially difficult for him to engage in a slow activity that requires concentration and working together as a team. Perhaps these are skills that are not usually encouraged in his school (he studies in a different school), where individual performance is often highlighted over group-based work. Nevertheless, after much frustration, I used a gentler technique with Sahil and appealed to his rational side with a heart-to-heart conversation. This softened him up a little, and he was more willing to work with his team. 

After the children finished making cutouts of characters from their respective stories from the StoryWeaver website, I asked them to put together a narrative with the story, character cutouts, and use a torch to create shadows. Ruhi and her group began to memorise the online story for the performance. I had to repeatedly suggest to them that they could change the narrative to their liking, as the audience would not be aware of the exact story. I have noticed over the last few days that some children find it difficult to take creative leaps and are always worried about making mistakes. As I had noticed in my doctoral study, children are often trained to achieve the perfect score or the "correct" (as defined by the teacher) response. In such a scenario, especially children who perform well in traditional classrooms (like Sahil and Ruhi) find it difficult to experiment with a form or be creative in their responses. On the other hand, Salim, who was traditionally considered "weak" in school work, easily translated across languages and undertook creative leaps in our activities. Nevertheless, children in all groups enjoyed bringing together the story characters through shadow puppets. This seemed to finally intrigue them, and each group took turns rehearsing their stories.

from left: Sahil and Karthik with a peer 

Salim in the center with two of new children

Ruhi in the centre with two other children

In the final performance, children gathered on one side of the table, and each group performed its stories using shadow puppets. See a few photos of the show below. While the groups usually imitated the languages and lines from the online storybooks, Salim, with the help of his two teammates, translated the story into English. While all children engaged in multiple translations of the story from English to Telugu or Hindi, children, especially from minority backgrounds, often performed multiple translations. For example, Salim, who often used Dakhini and Arabic words to express himself, translated his words into Hindi to communicate with me. In the case of the online story that was in English, he tried to make sense of it in his own idiolect (Dakhini and Arabic) and then narrated it in Hindi for the audience.

Ruhi performing with her group.

Salim performing with his group

After each performance, the other groups shared feedback and aspects of the narration, shadow puppetry or teamwork that they could improve. I continued to encourage children to practice and try performing the stories for the exhibition (at the end of the camp) if they so wished. However, in the feedback, Sahil mentioned that it was a very time-consuming activity. The others, however, did not speak much about it. It is possible that the activity was perhaps too demanding on the children.

    We finally played a few games that Sahil taught the group, like Dinner Time, as well as repeated some old games to end the day on a high note. Before leaving, I got children to keep the shadow boxes and the character cutouts in my room at the school, to avoid any damage. Overall, the activity led to a lot of garbage in the classroom. Often, children do not pick up any garbage on their own in the classroom and rely on school cleaning staff to do the job. However, I, along with the children, continue to pick up the garbage after every craft activity to develop a habit of cleaning.

Note: All names are pseudonyms.

Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 6

I took the weekend off from the summer camp. Daily planning and documenting activities takes its toll. The break helped me reflect and plan for the next week. Two major reflections from the last week included: 1. Children at home spend a couple of hours a day online scrolling through videos, playing games or just browsing the internet on smartphones. The three weeks of the camp can be used to introduce children to some educational websites that they can continue to use even after the camp. Focus on developing a habit to use the Internet also for knowledge-based activities. 2. Although children initially did pick up the books from the reading corner, to sustain their interest, it is crucial to create a link between the books and other activities in the camp for a more immersive engagement. 

In the coming week, then, the plan is to connect reading, writing and speaking activities with each other, at the same time, have enough fun-based activities that help break the monotony and get children to move around. 

Manga - what's in a name?

Even before I entered the classroom, two children were already there. I noticed they come early to interact with the smart TV in the classroom. As usual, I spread the books on the table and waited for others to arrive. In between this, Fazil, a ward of the school administrative staff, had his book of drawings with him. I asked him if he wanted to display them on the 23rd of this month for the children’s exhibition. He nodded. Fazil did not speak much. I often found it difficult to communicate with him. Although he did speak Hindi, he was very shy. With his permission, I began to skim through his drawing book, which included several different drawings of trees, including a collage. In this book was also a manga-style character drawing. When I probed further, he said the “manga” was the name of the boy he had drawn. It was clear that he did not know much about the Japanese comic form. He said he had copied the sketch from a book that had labelled it Manga. I quickly opened the Wikipedia page about Manga comics on my tablet and showed him different forms of manga or other characters from the same genre. I left him with the tablet as he read the Wikipedia page, looking at Google images before other children came.

As usual, children came in at different hours; either they slept late because of a family wedding or a family member was feeling unwell. They joined in the activities as and when they came. This included the origami fish-making activity or creating a description of things they do after school. As usual, boys outnumber girls in the camp. This continues to align with my doctoral study, where girls face increasing restrictions to movement, especially after they have attained puberty. School staff, including aayas (women cleaners/helpers) continue to check or monitor girls in the camp if they are the only girls in the classroom, making them conscious of their environment. 

After school activities 

I had watched boys play outside their houses in the neighbourhood. In order to understand their after-school activities, I designed a writing/drawing session where they had to tell us what kind of activities children engaged in after school. Given the vast scope of the question, children found it difficult to narrow down to two or three ideas. Some started by saying “nothing”. I then asked them the following questions.

What kind of things do you do outside the school? What activities do you do outside of school? Do you watch T.V? What do you read? What is reading? Is it limited to books? Do you read anything while walking on the road?

This helped children to think further, and they began to draw and write on the piece of chart paper I shared with them. I was surprised to learn about several activities that Salim engaged in, including a computer lab that he and his brother went to. This belonged to their father’s friend, and the two children (including Salman, Salim's younger brother) learned typing, as well as browsing on it. Fazil wrote about the Quran and the way Arabic letters are different from those of other languages around us. Children also mentioned playing board games like chess or outdoor games like badminton, cricket or volleyball. All of which are common games that people in Telangana often play. In fact, several coaching institutes across Warangal teach children chess. A current Indian chess grandmaster in the world Indian chess team is also from Warangal. TV and watching reels on the smartphone were other common activities across different children. When probed further, children mentioned watching funny videos, cooking reels or playing games. See children’s drawings and text in the images below. 

Fazil's description

Salim's description

Salim's brother, Salman's description

Karthik's drawing

A girl child's artifact

Another gender based difference that came through in the activities of girls and boys is the kind of activities they engaged in. A girl's description of after-school activities is either with family members or confined to the closed space of the house, while boys continued to mention indoor and outdoor activities with peers of their age in their descriptions. Another example of vigilance and restriction on the movement of girls. 

A boy's description

Fazil's younger brother's drawing

While I was helping children put up their artifacts on the wall for presentation, Salim took a sketch pen and began adding to the poster on courage - a brainstorming activity we undertook last week. He added his older brother's name to it. This helped to understand the value of having artifacts created during the camp, available to children around them on the walls, so they can continue to engage with them even later. Throughout the description-based activity, Salim continued to ask Khwaja, who was sitting next to him or me, for spellings for his description. In spite of the time it took him to write, he continued to engage and write, highlighting the importance of giving children time to think and engage in writing-based activities. Children finally made presentations about their artifacts which, as usual, required getting others to listen or present for their peers. I continued to ask them further questions about their description, to develop a conversation between the presenting and listening children.

Charades 

Looking for more and more reading and talking-related activities with children. In this context, charades proved to be very useful. I made chits with names of various professions that a child acted out, and others guessed. Initially, some children were hesitant, but as the enthusiasm grew and children became interested, it not only led to excited engagement but also to conversations. Children enthusiastically spoke about the actions each individual in the profession performed, the tools they used, and the clarification of names. For example, while guessing the job of a person who photocopies printed material, most children responded to the Xerox person. When I mentioned that it is the name of the company, many children, including Sahil, insisted that they call it the Xerox shop. The photocopier was new to them. Similarly, garbage collectors were GWMC (Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation) workers, and children did not know sanitation workers or garbage collectors. Shops selling meat are common in the area; however, children often refer to them as “meat cutters”. The word butcher was new to them. 

Simon Says and Reflection

We ended the day by playing a game of Simon says, while several different children played the role of Simon and shouted out commands that others followed. Reflections have become important to remind children of the things they have learned. Children still find it difficult to share anything related to things they did not like when asked. However, continue to share suggestions for activities. Sahil even offered to conduct a few activities the next day and shared ideas for a few games.

Note: All names are pseudonyms

Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 5

I had planned a variety of activities for the day, including a story about the Chipko Movement and brainstorming about the word confidence. However, most of our day went into making the mask. Children had expressed interest in craft-related activities in our earlier feedback sessions. The informal nature of the space and calling it a summer camp also means that children expect to participate in activities associated with this space, which are different from their regular school activities. A child who lives in the neighbourhood of some of the children attending the camp, but attends a different school, came with her parent to join the summer camp. The principal, initially hesitant, asked me if she could join the camp. I was very happy that the camp could allow children from other schools as well to join in. This means that the summer camp can become a space where children from all over the neighbourhood can come together to engage in literacy and other activities. I am hopeful that this will also give me the trust of the community and continue this informal engagement next year as well. 

Reading Corner

About four children were already in the classroom before 9 am when I entered the class. They were talking to each other. With their help, I displayed the books around the reading corner and asked them to use this time to read. Quite a few of the children picked up the books; however, many others did not want to read. Some of them just look at the pictures but do not read much of the text. I saw two girls reading the book together. I do not want to introduce new books while children have not read any new ones. Perhaps in the coming weeks, I need to introduce more reading-related activities and link them to our literacy-related activities (If you have any suggestions for such activities, do write them in the comments). I remember on day 3 when children made a map of their surroundings, I also read Sameer Ka Ghar (Tulika Books) book to them. The book is was intriguing to children, as it has the movie Inception (Christopher Nolan) like narrative. The book starts with Sameer’s house, its location in a neighbourhood, then moves to the city (all the while showcasing Sameer’s house and its changing scale in relation to the geography), location of Sameer’s house in Maharashtra, then the country India, continent of Asia, the world, on planet Earth, the Solar system and finally the galaxy. Although the book is designed for young readers, it was very interesting for children in the camp as well, who fall between the ages of 10 and 14 years. Given the difference in reading levels and limited general knowledge among these children, the short sentences and their visuals played an important role in revealing concepts of the state, continent, solar system, and galaxy. In addition, the changing size of Sameer’s house helped children understand the physical size of the concepts, as they continued to look for Sameer’s house in each visual. See some examples of visuals from the book below. 

Images from Sameer Ka Ghar (Tulika books)

Children continued to skim, read or talk to other children for the first 30 mins of the day. In the meantime, I asked Salim, who had his head on the table, to help me cut the chart paper into different sizes for our lion mask-making activity. 

Lion Mask Making

I had planned the activity to last 1 hour; however, most of our day was spent making this mask. This was mainly because of the limited number of scissors, which had to be shared among children. This was also a learning for me to have more material for children to avoid the wastage of time. While I showed children each step and helped others with each step of the mask, children like Sahil and a few other children finished their tasks and began playing or engaging in other activities at the back of the classroom. They began to push or nudge each other. I continued to remind them to help their peers, but also realised that this is not something they were used to. Especially Sahil. When I asked children to pick up any garbage they had produced from the mask-making activity, Sahil often hesitated and did not like to engage in things that required him to help or support anyone else. However, I want to continue to push him to do so. 

Children with their lion masks

Given the limited number of scissors, each step of the mask-making took time. Children also lost patience or found it difficult to make cuts, especially around the eyes of the mask. In some cases, children ran around or threw scissors at each other for the purpose of sharing. I had to pay attention to make sure no one was hurt in the process and often raised my voice to share these concerns. 

Once we finished making the masks, I gathered the children for a group photo, which produced some excitement. It was also exciting for me to see them with their finished masks. 

Planning of Short Story Performance 

Next, I got the previous day’s groups together to continue to plan their performances for the 23rd May exhibition. The group with Salim, Karthik, Shweta, Ruhi and other children immediately began to plan their scripts. They used their previous day’s notes to work further. The other group that included Sahil, Khwaja and other children continued to stay away, with Sahil showing no interest in the activity. They began planning Pokémon cards and other games. I asked them to stop this activity and plan the task they were assigned. However, instead, Sahil sat around and passed snarky comments on other children’s actions or efforts. I am constantly torn between letting him continue in the activity and asking him to leave the classroom. As he continues to disrupt and distract other children. Finally, I mentioned that if they did not make any effort to create a performance, only group 1 would perform on the final day. This rattled Sahil, and he said he would wait for Khwaja to come back and plan this with him. In the meantime, I group 1 to use children from group 2 and continue planning the performance. I also appointed Ruhi and Shweta as directors of the activity. I was going to support them, but they were now responsible for putting the act together. 

Fire in the Mountain Run Run Run

The running game has become the go-to game for children to relieve boredom and reset themselves. However, it is also where I get to see children’s peer relations. Since the game requires children to form groups, only children who are able to create a sense of camaraderie between peers get to find the game. Nevertheless, given the hesitation between girls and boys towards physical touch of any kind and a smaller number of girls compared to boys, they are often left out sooner in the game than most boys. The game, however, continues to be popular with repeated requests from children to play it a number of times. 

Conclusion

To keep the spirits high, we sang “We Will Rock You” by Queen and then reflected on our week’s activities. Remembering all things children learnt, origami animals they made, quiz and computer-related activities they engaged in. I also informed the children about a few activities we may engage in next week. 

Note: All names are pseudonyms

Literacy-based Summer Camp: Day 4

Now that children had experienced a few days of activities at the camp, there was a sense of routine for them as well as me. I had created a rough plan for each day of the week before I came to Warangal. However, I ended up modifying much of it, given the different ages of children, their irregular presence, and their late arrival. Also, I had to carefully plan activities that were sensitive to the children's language diversity, including movement (as they did not like to be stationary for long), as well as the new information they could learn in the camp. My interaction with children revealed that, except for one or two children, most children did not have much general knowledge about their surroundings, world, including geography. To address this gap, I introduced books and wanted to engage children in information-seeking activities over the internet. 

Children began their day by creating an origami frog. In order to teach the children, it has become a ritual of sorts to spend time each evening learning paper-based animals from YouTube. The other day, Sahil asked me how I learned these origami animals. When I shared that I usually learned them from YouTube, he said he found it hard to learn from YouTube. I even mentioned that he could pause the video, which makes it easier to understand the paper folds and repeat them.  However, his question and the difficulty of learning from the said source also made me realise that learning from a source is also about training oneself in a certain kind of pedagogy. In a class on multimodal analysis, which I undertook with master's students at the Tata Institute of Social Science in March, this is exactly the problem that two students encountered. When I asked them to analyse the modes in a painting video on YouTube that had no words, one of the students found it difficult to analyse and speak about the pedagogy of the video. One of the reasons for this difficulty was that our idea of learning is heavily based on a spoken language pedagogy. However, we often forget the things we learn through observation, moving through the world and engaging with things around us. 

Quiz

I had planned a map-based quiz competition for children. This was based on the computer-based group activity they undertook in the class the previous day. i.e. search for countries and information related to them on globetrottinkids.com. I had also asked them to use the time at home to read more about it on their devices. I divided the children into groups of two for the following rounds. 

1. This is the capital of which country (seven such questions from South America)

Children were unable to respond to most questions. This included Sahil (child of a teacher in school and went to a different school), who was usually better informed than most children. However, this also became a learning opportunity. Each question became a way for children to learn about countries as well. Next, children were expected to name five countries from a continent. For group 1, I gave them Europe. For group 2, it was Asia. Children found even this question difficult. Nevertheless, they were able to make a few points in this round. I was surprised that Karthik, who was usually quiet, was able to get a few countries right in this. When I probed further, it was his love for sports that helped him. He followed teams of certain countries for certain sports, which gave him some insights into countries and their locations.

Next, the children were to respond to any five countries that speak French for group 1 and Arabic for group 2. Given that a large number of children in the classroom were from a minority background (Muslim), it was easier for children to come up with Arabic-speaking countries than French-speaking countries. I also learnt that a country like Palestine was referred to as falestine by children in their local language. They said that's what they called it.  Khwaja, in between the quiz, also asked me to share information on other countries that speak Arabic. 

In the end, Sahil’s group won by ½ a point more than the other group. He was very irritated and slammed a book on the floor. I have a feeling that this may be because he thought he knew more than most children in the classroom. However, in this particular activity, he was similar to most of the children around him. This realisation perhaps broke his illusion, which left him uncomfortable. 

Favourite Actors

In my doctoral study, I had noticed that children spent a lot of time watching movies. Imitating dialogues, songs and scenes. I wanted to use this interest for literacy-related activities with the current children as well. For this purpose, I divided the children into groups and asked each group to write their favourite actors. This led to animated conversations between children. Children who did not speak at all began to open up and express themselves. I next asked them to perform a scene or song from any of the movies they liked, and the other group had to guess the actor or the movie it was from. Children were shy and hesitated, but began to discuss options in their groups. Many of the performances were from Telugu movies; however, a few Hindi movies, including Dhurander’s dialogue, were also heard. 

I then moved the activity further for children to start thinking of a short film or drama in their respective groups that they can come up with to perform at our exhibition. Although initially, children felt lost, they began to think of stories they already knew. Salim, who often looks disinterested, came up to me and narrated a story from the Quran. When I encouraged him to use it and think of it from a performative angle, he began to retell the story to his group members. I noticed that girls and boys often hesitated to work together. In fact, the other day, the father of a girl came to class and insisted that she be made to sit away from all boys. However, when I sternly told the parent that I would manage the class and that he should not order the children around, he felt embarrassed and left. 

Khwaja, to my surprise, wrote a completely new story. This is the same child whose mother is an administrative staff member in school, and had mentioned to me that her son was slow. Sometimes, I feel that if we could show empathy and care towards children, give them time to figure things out for themselves, we would find solutions to many of the literacy-related problems we associate with children. The issue is also that we expect children who come from completely different backgrounds to all learn in the same way. 

In between all this, Sahil continued to move around the class, requesting access to his laptop that his father held in the other classroom. When I refused, he insisted that he could not think of any story, and the use of a laptop would only make it better for the group. I think Sahil’s demand also made me realise that purposeful use of a computer can also be detrimental to learning.  I continued to push him to talk to Khwaja, his group member and help him with his story. My effort continues to be to get him to support other children and get him to collaborate.

 

Sunshine in my Pocket and Birthday

We ended the day with Justin Timberlake's song, Can’t Stop the Feeling. This song was slightly longer than the other songs that children have learned in the camp. However, children did enjoy the beats. They were also given the printed lyrics of the song to sing along. 

In the end, we celebrated the day by cutting my birthday cake. Rakesh (my spouse), to my surprise, had sent one to the school’s address. Children were very surprised that I had not mentioned it earlier. I guess birthdays are very special for children. I remember feeling that way as a child. Nevertheless, I did not want to make a big deal about it and distract them. I was very content that I got to share the cake with them and receive their heartfelt wishes (including that of family, friends and a teacher who called and wished). 

Principal and availability of Computers 

Working in the current context, I have noticed that children’s general knowledge about the world is extremely limited. This is an insight that came through in the doctoral study as well. One of the reasons for this is that children often spend much of their time at home, in their neighbourhood, did not have access to uninterrupted internet. When they did have access, they did not have people around them from whom they could learn the fruitful or informative use. It also made me realise how our people in our environment impact our habits and influence our engagement with the world. The use of the internet for information seeking and knowledge gathering can also be seen as a kind of social capital that many of these people did not have. 

The result is that it led to a vicious cycle. The lack of virtual devices and resources meant children did not have fruitful examples in their environment to use the Internet for productive purposes. Thus, children used the internet to watch Instagram reels, watch YouTube videos or play games. While children from all backgrounds and classes engage in these activities. However, in the case of children at the margins, their use gets exaggerated, given children’s limited access to the internet and devices. Thus, parents and teachers of children at the margins refuse to give them devices, since children only use them for their entertainment. I have become more and more aware of the circularity of this argument. 

After the camp, I met the principal and continued to share my concern with her. The principal, who, despite her fear of the Internet in the hands of “these” children, is an individual who listens and continues to engage with me. I pushed the point that I shared my laptop and tablet with children for a reading of the world map the other day, and they enjoyed it very much. Also, they were very careful with the devices. I also said that these children do not have access to these devices in their homes, so they can only rely on the school to provide computer-based skills. If the school is also unable to provide so, then it will be very difficult for them to acquire these necessary skills, including creating an email, when they move into the world of work. I noticed that she resonated with me, and after many days, I saw the logic behind it. She said that she will try to get access to the computers. The management, according to her, was on a cost-cutting spree, recently having fired a senior-level employee, so she did not want to ruffle any feathers. 

This conversation highlighted the politics of resources and their limitedness that are often created for children at the margins. For the management of these schools, the low-fee private schools, like the Victory High School, continue to be a money-making scheme with limited investment to make any improvement in the quality of education or skills. The principal, even with her good intentions, has limited resources at her disposal, much of which is used to run the day-to-day functioning of the school. 

Note: All names are pseudonyms