At APRS, students started PowerPoint projects on the following topics: traffic, mosquitoes, water, and religion. Because we are only at APRS twice a week, it didn’t make sense to do individual projects, since they would require much more time considering the limited number of cameras we have. We asked students to research these topics and create a draft layout of a PowerPoint presentation, including both photographs and text. From the work that the students produced, I got the sense that these topics were a bit tiresome for them. They know that traffic can be deadly and that mosquitoes can spread diseases. It felt a mistake to have assigned those topics to begin with. In response, we changed our direction for the students at Railway this week, asking them to choose one individual (either a role model, family member, or friend) to interview and then highlight in a digital story. As this project progresses, it will be interesting to note the differences between the stories created at the two schools.

As we started work on group and individual digital story projects, Danny and I had many discussions about the topics that we want our students to focus on. We must strike a balance between allowing the students creative freedom, while also giving them enough direction so that they can produce high quality work. As former students of International Relations and Development Studies, we both get excited when talking about issues affecting communities and development projects that seek to address them. We want to instill our own passion for social justice in the students that we teach, but we’ve been marinating on some words that Mr. Prabhakar, one of the teachers at the Railway School, shared with us the other day. He asked “Why can’t we focus on something happy? Why does it always have to be something related to a problem in the students’ communities?” It wasn’t an extraordinarily profound sentiment, but it brings to mind some other thoughts that I’ve been having lately. Although these community issues are only a part of our curriculum, another focus being that of individual stories, I feel strange broaching such topics as pollution, traffic, and health in the classroom. While we feel that we are bringing awareness to under-discussed topics, it seems that students are well aware of these issues and the disproportionate impact they have on their day-to-day lives. When students ask “Do you have mosquitoes in America?” or “Do you have a washing machine in your apartment in Abids?”, it is only because they understand these differences between our lives. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of initiating conversation on these topics; however, I feel uncomfortable giving weight to them. Allowing students the opportunity to share both personal and community stories has tremendous potential for empowerment. How do we ensure though that we are emphasizing dynamic stories that students will feel happy sharing?