Children's Exhibition: Day 16

The idea for the exhibition had emerged over the weeks through interactions with the children, parents, and teachers at school. One of the important aims was for children who are generally considered "weak" or "struggling" in relation to the school's academic standards (as measured by examination performance) to occupy a central space and express themselves. In addition, to show the importance of "play" as an important element in learning and not just a pastime or hobby. Lastly, to build trust in the community for our work and gain legitimacy so that we can get more children to participate next year in a similar literacy-based summer camp and continue this work next year too. 

        In preparation for the exhibition, throughout the last week of the camp, I continued to, with the help of some children, organise children's artifacts, descriptions on the chart paper into sections and help them understand the importance of each activity and practice the narration. For the language-based activities, I got each child to practice narration for two or three activities and explain it to the attendees. Some children, like Salim, Shweta, and Mohammed, felt confident to narrate and speak in public. While Khwaja continued to be worried and felt scared. However, I continued to get him to practice and motivate him. 

        With the support of the school staff, we reorganised the benches in three classrooms for the exhibition and created three corners. This included a book exhibition - books we got from Eklavya Bhopal; Children's Art - language-based activities; and a classroom for Math Activities. See images below

Book Exhibition: Eklavya, Bhopal

Nihala, A PhD student at SR University, Warangal and Sahil managed the sale of books

Eklavya, Bhopal, sent us 45 book titles in English and Hindi, ranging from science, social sciences, stories, and math, among others. 

We were very grateful to receive books from Eklavya, Bhopal, on a variety of topics. We wanted to make different kinds of books available for children who generally do not have access to them. The school also does not have a library. Although the principal had earlier promised to buy several books to start a school library, they were unable to do so this time. One of the main issues for this was additional pressure to retain students and increase enrollment. This concern continued to occupy the school staff. 

    The books that were sold the most included science titles and activity-based books. A few Hindi books were also sold. While we only managed to sell a small amount of books, we were happy to bring alternative books to children. A few teachers from the school also bought a few titles. Each child who participated in the summer camp was also given one book of their choice from the exhibition.

      

Children's Art: Language-based corner

This corner of the exhibition showcased children's engagement over the three weeks in language and narration-based activities. Given the focus on reading and writing that is mainly geared towards examination, one of the biggest challenges working with children was to help them develop self-expression. This involved two hurdles. One, that children often did not like to speak because, as observed during the doctoral study, carried out in the same school, only teachers spoke in the school while children listened. Children only spoke when they were asked to and only to respond to the teacher, with the expectation of monosyllable responses. In addition, teachers expected a response in the particular language of the school. For many children, especially from minority groups, this created a mismatch between the language of the school (English) and home (Dakhini). To break away from this pattern, we engaged in activities where children reflected on objects, themes around them and wrote about them, often in languages of their choice. If children wanted to write in English, they took support from their peers to do so. 

    In the exhibition, we organised each of such activity in into a section. Each child then narrated their engagement to adults who visited their corner in the exhibition. While children had engaged in these activities in various languages, they were easily able to switch between English and Dakhini and some others in Telugu. The most reassuring part of the whole exhibit was the principal of the school who recognised Salim's presentation skills and even mentioned that, "he used to be so quiet and look at him now". See images from the exhibition below.

Salim: Narrating children's writing of their surroundings and favourite objects

Teachers engaging in drawing and painting

A painting corner was also created for teachers to draw their favourite object. The idea was to get them to engage in a self-expression activity and feel the joy of it. However, many teachers, as can be seen in the above photo, searched for images online and copied them. Since they had already begun drawing and painting, I did not interrupt them. However, I could see a similar need to be perfect and draw the most beautiful thing rather than engage in self-expression. I saw a similar pattern among children when I asked them to draw something that gives them joy, and all they wanted were rules and scales to have the perfect lines and perfect boxes. 

Local Corporator who visited the exhibition and engaged in painting

Even in the case of the local guest, invited by the school, when we asked him to draw anything that he liked, he googled an image of a car and drew from it. Children surrounded him and were curious to see what he made.

Narration of activities children do outside the school

Shweta: Narrating the interviews that children conducted in school and wrote about them

Brainstorming activities on words, like anger and happiness

Khwaja, who was extremely scared, explained the brainstorming word, "courage", to teachers in the school. Figuratively, the explanation of "courage", also meant him, his own courage in the face of fear.

We also had two performances by children. First of which was a play by three children on the harms of deforestation. Children had created this story themselves, including direction and performance. Children performed this story in Dakhini and Hindi. The second was a shadow puppet story narration by Shweta. She had taken the story from the Storyweaver website and had created shadow puppets from it. She narrated the story in English. Two other children helped her to hold the puppets, and I held the light from my phone for the shadows. While we invited all teachers to the performances, only a few attended. After each performance, I also gave the audience a context of the activity and how it was not about memorisation of the story but children's interpretation of the story and public skills. 

        One of the most striking things that stood out for me was that teachers appreciated the efforts of children; however, they continued to correct their spellings in the poster or asked them to speak only in English. One of them even reprimanded a child, "This is an English medium school! Speak in English". This made me think that next year, along with children, I should also have a teacher-based activity where I could get them to reflect on self-expression and the benefits of multilingualism in the classroom. Perhaps this will help to create a more open atmosphere for multiple languages in the school and for children to use different languages in the school premises. 

Math Activities: Jeenath's Reflections

The day started with putting up posters, labels, and directions as preparation for the exhibition, along with putting up the materials for display. We took three classrooms, one was devoted to the display and demonstration of the artifacts that the students created under Ekta’s guidance over the summer camp, the second one was for the educational book sale, and the third one was for the math activities. 

        My focus was on making the math corner ready in the third classroom. We (I and Ekta) first rearranged the desks in the classrooms to create enough space in the centre for doing the Turtle LOGO activity. Once that was done, I first started by writing “Mathematics Activity” on the blackboard to set the stage. 

By this time, students had also arrived. I made thin rectangular folds on the chart paper to cut long strips to paste on the floor to make the axes for the Turtle LOGO activity. Two students (Mohammed and another boy) helped me by getting small pieces of the transparent cello tape to paste the strips to make the axes on the floor of the classroom. The idea of pasting paper axes came from yesterday’s session, when we did the same activity by marking the axes with white chalk, which was getting erased easily every time students were stepping on it. And the task requires the player to move along and around the axes. 

Once that was done, after some time, I thought it wouldn’t mean anything without supporting instructions or an example task to try. Thus, I wrote the commands of forward, right turn, and left turn on the board and also wrote an example set of commands, e.g. fd 3 rt 90 fd2 rt 45 fd 1. I also asked the two boys who helped me to take charge of this activity and explain it to visitors. 

    Next, I started spreading the three tangram sets that we prepared last night by pasting the paper tangram pieces on cardboard. Meanwhile, more students, including young ones, were moving around. I asked them if they could make the motimala, and the students got interested. So I gave a pair of two different coloured beads (1 golden and 1 white) to each of a pair of boys. I clearly explained that they have to put 10 beads of each colour alternatively to make 100. As they were making the motimala, I started pasting the pictures of different tangram pieces arrangements that Ekta got printed the day before on the desks as possible tasks for visitors to try. 

Students managed to create two motimalas which I kept on two separate desks, so that two groups can explore them simultaneously. I also thought of making the labels for the Tangram and the motimala with clearly stated some tasks for visitors. For Tangram the tasks mentioned were “use all the seven pieces to make geometric shapes” and for the motimala, the task given was “show different numbers e.g. 13, 17, 25, … on the motimala”
        As the program started, initially, female teachers went to the room where Ekta was, and I saw they were drawing different pictures on a white sheet of paper very meticulously. I could see they were enjoying that exercise. Then Ekta assured me that once the teachers were done, she would send them to the class where we had put up the math activities. Meanwhile, I was explaining to whosoever was visiting the math corner the different math activities. But I noticed when I was asking them to do the math activity, they were avoiding it. After some time, all the female teachers also came to the classroom where math activities were held, and they were exploring. I noticed as I entered the class, teachers started avoiding me slightly. I tried to assign the teachers some tasks, like making squares or other geometric shapes out of the tangram pieces. Slowly, the female teachers started leaving the classroom. I thought maybe I shouldn’t have given too difficult tasks to teachers, as all the female teachers who came to the class slowly started leaving the classroom, and I couldn’t keep them engaged. So, I thought of not asking questions that seem too mathematical or difficult to attain. 

Teachers engaging in the Math activities

Visitors interacting with Jeenath

        When a parent or teacher came, I asked to make some of the tangram arrangements from the printed sheet having different designs out of the Tangram pieces, e.g. rabbit, cat, house, etc. After which, I noticed visitors started trying them. At one point, Sahil’s father and Sahil also came together, along with a few other independent visitors, and I asked two of the students to demonstrate the Turtle LOGO activity. After which, to make it more engaging. I stood at the centre (origin or intersection) of the axes and asked the
visitors to frame the command lines using the commands forward (fd), right-turn (rt), left-turn (lt), so that I move in a way that makes a square. It was interesting that few people could guess, it should be fd2 rt90 fd2 rt90 fd2 rt90 fd2, where 2 in fd2 stands for distance unit and 90 stands for degrees. Then, the next task I asked everyone to construct the triangle. I asked everyone to carefully respond. None of the visitors was responding initially. So, I asked one of the students, Mohammed, to try; he, after some thought, said rt45 fd3 rt90 fd3 rt90. However, at this moment, I asked him whether it is actually 90? I turned only 90 degrees and showed that if I turn 90 degrees degrees we won’t be able to close the shape or complete the triangle. At this point, after some thought, he said, another 45 degrees, and Sahil also called our 135 degrees turn, which is basically adding 90 and 45 degrees. Then, finally, to close the shape, initially he said fd3, but then
later corrected it to say fd6. To not interrupt the thinking process of the student earlier, I didn’t intervene when the students called the diagonal unit as 1; however, once the whole discussion got over, I introduced that in cases when the fd movement is happening along the diagonal units, we can call it du to refer to diagonal units, e.g. fd3du.

Children continued to form groups between the exhibition to chat among themselves. They had to be reminded again and again to be around the exhibits

        The motimala was also given to some visitors, and they were asked to show different numbers. Very young children were also able to show numbers on the motimala after the instruction. However, for operations, instead of making use of the motimala, they were mentally adding two numbers mentally using procedure and then trying to show the resulting number on the motimala. Thus, the idea of using groups of ten on the motimala was not used to its full potential. Considering visitors were also visiting for a very brief time, I couldn’t establish the potential of motimala to its full extent.
        Finally, we all went to the other classroom to attend the play, light and story show demonstrated by the students.

Reflections

After the exhibition ended at 12 pm, Jeenath, Nihala, and I were sitting together when we brought up Sahil's disruptive behaviour throughout the camp. In order to avoid a similar disruption, I had assigned him the book sale classroom to aid Nihala. However, she mentioned that he continued to move around and disturb her. Since Nihala has a background in Clinical Psychology, she mentioned that Sahil may have ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). She tried strategies like assigning him a task and asking him to stick to it. Nevertheless, Sahil continued to move from one room to the other, mocking other children, disrupting the math activity when Mohammed and Jeenath were participating. We continued to debate the interrelatedness of the clinical and the social privilege that Sahil enjoyed, which led to the disruption. Sahil was the child of a teacher at school. In addition, he continued to feel he was superior to all the children in the camp. In addition, he had a continuous need to prove his superiority. An amalgamation of this was a disruptive nature that often led to putting others down.

        In addition, when we asked children to choose a book that they would like to borrow, many children went to Sahil for advice. So, he had clearly established a sense of superiority among his peers. However, he often suggested books that interested him. Children, after a moment of reflection, came back again to change their choice. However, this time, we refused any exchange and told them that they should make their own choice and not depend on others. Since many of these children had never bought a book of their own, they relied on a familiar peer for advice. However, in this case, this only made Sahil more arrogant. 

        Children also had to be reminded to be around the exhibits that were assigned to them, rather than form groups and be away. This meant that we had to find a way to create a sense of responsibility and ownership for the exhibition among children.

          At the end of the exhibition, the school principal also shared that, had she known the extent of the activities we were planning to put up, she could have invited other teachers from other schools to be part of it. We realised that perhaps next time, we should share the details with the principal for a larger audience and participation. 

        Speaking to some of the parents, teachers and principal, there was a sense of understanding that they valued the work Jeenath and I had done in the school. This also helped to establish trust, which perhaps will help us do a longer and deeper engagement next year with more children. 

        In case of Math activities, which many teachers continued to shy away from, as they did not think it was their subject, I continue to feel we need to create multidisciplinary activities with teachers that help establish a sense of curiosity that goes beyond a subject and helps them develop a sense of learning and wonder about the world around. Jeenath was also able to create this very well with some of the activities. Perhaps we need to rebrand it and package it into a multidisciplinary engagement that involves various disciplines. At the end of which, we can have a debrief session, and we can link aspects of the activities with different subjects. But to avoid an initial mental block, we do not give it a particular subject name for a wider engagement.   

            In the end, the next few hours went into packing the remaining books, our own material, with the help of school staff, as we were travelling back the next day. We spent the afternoon talking about the next year's exhibition with the principal and administrative staff over some tasty chicken biryani. A perfectly delicious way to end our engagement at school.

(This is a joint post by Ekta Singla & Dr Jeenath Rahaman)