In about another week and a half we will be showing our final projects to students, faculty, and hopefully some parents. We have gotten into such a wonderful routine at both schools that it is so hard to believe that in such a short period of time we will have completed our eight-week course. We are well underway with the filming, capturing, and editing of the final projects at both schools. It has been amazing to watch the students truly take ownership of these projects and take the lead on many of the creative aspects.

As far as I am concerned this is the most fun time because we have essentially switched roles and the students have become the teachers and we have become the students. We have learned about all types of Indian classical dance and about how our students interact with this part of their cultures. In the process of filming we have also learned a few steps and the girls have been teaching each other different dances that they know.

I thought that I knew a good deal about Islam, but the boys have taught us so much about the different ways that they practice their religion and how they incorporate it into their life at school. We have learned about how and when they pray and how they celebrate different holidays. We have gone on adventures to the mosque off of the school campus and met and spoken with many of the people who work there. To get you excited for the final projects to come one of the scripts for the boys project is posted below. It was difficult to come up with one script because all of the boys wrote such good things.

Script for voiceover for Boys final project:

The students at AP Residential Boys School come from all over Andhra Pradesh. Our school is a government school for Muslim students. It is special because in our state less than 10 per cent of people are Muslim. In the Muslim community only five per cent of children study in government schools. Only half of the Muslims our age are in school at all and about 30 per cent end their schooling after tenth class.

It is good to be at a school for all Muslim boys because we are able to pray together every day and celebrate our festivals together.

In our school we wake up in the early morning. After taking our morning meal we all have to pray. We pray five times a day. We have one big hall that is called the masjid or prayer room. Prayers take place in the morning at 5:20, afternoon at 1:30, evening at 5:15, night at 6:55, and later at 9:20. We call prayer namaz. Before doing namaz we have to prepare by washing ourselves. This is called wazu. We wash our faces, hands, legs, and feet. If we do not do wazu we cannot pray. Sometimes when we pray we use tasbee. Tasbee are 100 small beads. We count them one by one and say a small prayer for each bead. This is what we do everyday, but Friday is a special day for Muslims called jumaa. On Friday afternoon we go to the Mosque. The mosque is out of our school campus. After doing wazu at the mosque we sit and the Imam comes and teaches us. Ramzan is the most important festival for Muslims. During Ramzan we fast and do not take food or water from sunrise until sunset.

This school is important to us because it allows us to get a good education and practice our religion. We get to take classes such as Urdu, which are not taught, in other government schools. We also have special time to read the Quran, our holy book, and be taught about what it is says.