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.