Having been in the role of “student” for so much of my life, it’s still bizarre to refer to myself as a teacher. Even stranger to close my eyes at night and hear echoes of the name “ma’am” calling out to me. When Ilana and I asked the boys at APRS to type captions for their slideshow photos last week I read the following gem over one of their shoulders:

"The Kara madam is sitting in front of the tree."

In addition to laughing this caption made me feel like some sort of unique species, like the Wendy bird in Peter Pan.

One of my favorite parts of every lesson at Railway comes at the beginning of class, when Kara and I ask our respective groups of girls to take out their notebooks, uncap their pens, look to the computer screen and…write! For about 12 minutes at the start of every class, we lead our students in a free writing exercise in which they contemplate a photograph and reflect in their notebooks on what they see in the image, and on what they don’t see in the image. We encourage the girls to tell a small story – to give the people and location in the photo names, to write about what is going on, to describe what led to the moment of the photo and what will happen after it. Kara and I then ask for volunteers to read their mini photo stories aloud, and we discuss them as a class. One key element of the exercise is that we don’t reveal to the girls what, where, or whom the picture is “really” of until the end of our discussion, so that they cannot avoid using their imagination. This activity is really valuable for a number of reasons:

1. It contributes to the strong and consistent structure we seek to achieve in our lesson plans. The girls walk into class each day knowing what we will be doing first, and in this way can (hopefully) prepare themselves to focus on and embrace the activity.
2. It consistently pushes each girl (emphasis on the individual) to critically examine an image and think about the ways that they interact with it. Without the influence of their peers (they all write silently in their notebooks during the activity) they can take small creative leaps and risks, breaking with the usual system of “yes” and “no” and “right” and “wrong” answers that they’ve been accustomed to in the classroom.
3. When the girls listen to the stories written by their peers, they have the opportunity to see how different interpretations of one photo can arise from a small group of observers. This helps them to engage with images in a more forgiving way, if you will – they begin to contemplate the multiplicity of possibilities that exist within a single captured moment.
4. The  daily entries in the girls’ notebooks allow Kara and I to track the progress of each individual student. Because our classes each have 15 girls, and we only have an hour and twenty minutes per class, it can be difficult to pay balanced attention to the successes and struggles of each of the students. By reviewing the girls’ daily writing exercises, we can more clearly determine which new ideas they’re successfully internalizing and incorporating in their work, as well as which concepts they still don’t understand well enough to use.

It has been so wonderful to see the girls growing through their writing, and especially to see tangible evidence of increasing confidence in their own imaginations and ideas. When we began the writing exercises, most of the students were very shy and focused on describing only specific elements of the pictures presented to them (ie “there is a park, the trees are green, the boy wears a blue shirt, the boy wears black sneakers”). However, in the few classes leading up to the break for quarterly exams, our girls really set their imaginations free. They have begun to spin stories about the lives of the people featured in the photos, becoming quick authorities on the moods, actions, preferences, and histories of the characters they’re creating. The best way for me to truly communicate to you how exciting this is, is to let you read and feel for yourself:

Free Writes by Nasreen

Our first free write photo:

A boy was play ball with her friend and his friend is balling and he was batting he is in a circket stadium. He was wearing red and black dress her socs was blue in color. Her friend was wearing blue dress. It was a big stadium. The boy was shooting the ball. There is tiny grass. The bat was red and brown in eolow and ball was white in colour. Thir was net and iron rod it was a shiny day. There are green trees and a house were they take rest after playing.

Writing exercise from the last class before our break:

Hai this is Nasreen The lady was a farmer she had worked in feild and she was tied and wanted to go to house in house her children were also hungry their is no food in her house so the lady was telling the owner of the field that she want to go to house and cook food for their she got 1000 Rs for his work and he wants to cook some special today for their children. She went to house and ask their children what do you want to eat today the children said we want to eat Biriyani But the lady did not know how to cook biriyani she odered from the hotel and eat and sleep.

Nasreen and the rest of the girls know how happy Kara and I are with their progress – encouragement means so much to them, and supporting their creative efforts is so rewarding for me as a teacher. Kara and I will continue to keep you updated on the progress of our free writes, so you can look forward to more great stories from the students! If you enjoyed Nasreen’s writing, or want to give her and the girls some words of encouragement, please leave comments on this blog post! Kara and I will be sure to transmit them to the girls.

Last Wednesday in Hyderabad felt like the day before a forecasted blizzard in Pennsylvania. More than one friend advised me and Ilana to go to the grocery store that night and stay off the streets the following day. Shops would close early, and school were planning half-days, despite being in the midst of quarterly exams.

The caution and closures weren’t because the weather was bringing us a freak snowstorm. Rather, Indian political winds were carrying the latest verdict in the decades-long court dispute over a religious site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Hindu and Muslim groups both stake historical claims to the site, and the general population’s wariness about reactions to the decision are understandable. A mosque that had stood on the site since the 16th century. These groups identify the site as the birthplace of the Lord Ram and maintain that the mosque was built after a Muslim ruler destroyed a Hindu temple there. A Hindu mob destroyed the mosque in 1992 riots broke out across India. 2,000 people died. Another 50 people died in 2002 when a train carrying Hindu activists from Ayodhya was set on fire, “allegedly by a Muslim mob.” (BBC)

At the time of the verdict’s release Thursday, Ilana and I watched #Ayodhya reach number one on Twitter trending and also monitored live feeds from Indian news sites. The court’s website of course crashed and though our web viewing didn’t provide us with clear answers about the decision, the constant Twitter updates provided an interesting cultural window, as Tweeters declared their passion for one side or the other, joked about alternative resolutions, and made claims about the meaning of the decision for India as a growing nation.

By Friday the result was clear: the judges decided on a 3-way split of the site. Two thirds to Hindus, one third to Muslims. Riots didn’t happen, proving the violence meteorologists thankfully wrong. What I still want to learn, which probably can’t be written in 140 characters or less, is more about the political context and undercurrents of not only the court decision but the tensions that surround it. As so many examples around the world can tell us, conflicts that are touted as “religious strife” typically have deeper political and economic issues at their heart…

Visualize this: you are a bird flying over a land called “Primary Eduction” – the terrain below you is strange, and you think to yourself, “what high hills! what deep valleys!” You also notice large tracts of flat geography that seem to stretch for miles before they abruptly morph into vistas of lumpy hills and curving rivers. End visualization.

This is how I can best depict the schedule we’re wrestling with. In this nation of  frequent exams and countless religious holidays, Kara and I find ourselves facing both periods of joyous, continuous class time, and periods of extended school closures (some of which drag on for weeks). We are in a stretch of the latter at the moment, and being the curious people we are, Kara and I decided to use these unexpected hours to work on independent projects, to investigate various additional teaching opportunities, to continue lesson planning, and to explore our current home state, Andhra Pradesh.

Over the past three weeks we’ve managed to adventure to Vijayawada, Amaravathi, Visakhapatnam and the Araku Valley. I am endlessly stunned by the beauty of AP – the unimaginably expansive stretches of rice fields, the soft, dark beaches, the cartoon-esque hills, the breathtaking valleys, the lush green of its agriculture, the artistry and history of its temples and mosques, and most importantly, the kindness of its people. For the most part,  Kara and I have traveled as cheaply as possible – sleeping upright on overnight trains, sweating endlessly in the heat of cramped buses and group autos, munching on Rs.10 samosas – and I’ve loved every minute of it. There are an infinite number of things to see and people to talk to and learn from, and I found (as I always do when traveling) that a chance to step outside of my normal routine really helped me to regain a fresh view of things – not just the scenery, but also the economic, social, political, and environmental, issues that constantly swirl through the days, occasionally overlooked . Traveling for 13 hours by rail through fields of crops certainly reminds me to think more critically, more often, about agricultural production and distribution systems, as well as the personal lives of the women and men whose sun-wrinkled faces I see in brief flashes through barred train windows.

Another opportunity that such long train rides provide is enough down time to read a variety of newspapers all from the same day (comparison of news coverage can be revealing – what are the incongruities amongst reports on the same topic? are there any biases apparent? how is information communicated effectively, or ineffectively?) I spent a furious few hours on one train ride reading The Hindu and The Deccan Chronicle from front to back, and I finished with ink smudges on my fingers and a profound sense of sadness. Like any nation, India struggles constantly with an infinite number of entangled issues – intractable political situations, violence, a shifting of blame within the government, complex and ineffective laws, lack of enforcement, security that seems to overstep its bounds, struggles for freedoms; however, the small hurricanes of grief that these issues stir up inside me, are only made more intense by the truly ineffectual and inadequate way in which they are most often reported, analyzed, and investigated (if investigated at all). I am illiterate  in Telugu and Hindi, so I have no way of comparing the coverage provided in these papers with that in the English versions, but I can say honestly (as an English major and a critical media consumer) that the daily publications available in Hyderabad often leave me more confused after reading their pages, than I was before I opened them.

One of the most disturbing news trends that I noticed in the papers (which also illustrates my general frustrations with the reporting quality) was that of small, paragraph-long “articles” on the suicides of primary school girls.

From The Hindu:

Schoolgirl ends life

A schoolgirl committed suicide as her mother chided her for neglecting her studies. B. Chamundeswari 12, a 9th class student of Prema Smajam School, was interested in dance. Her mother used to scold her for neglecting her studies. On Wednesday night after her mother went out of the house to meet someone, Chamundeswari hanged herself from the ceiling fan hook at their house. Two Town Police are investigating the case.

The same story, as reported by The Deccan Chronicle:

Minor girl commits suicide

Sept. 23; B. Chamundeshwari Devi, 14, a Class IX student of Prema Samajam School and a resident of Allipuram committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan in the early hours of Thursday. According to her father Mr B. Suryanarayana Rao, who filed a complaint with the Two Town police station, she could have committed suicide as she was asked to focus on academics, rather than dance by her parents. The Two Town police are investigating.”

Not only was B. Chamundeshwari listed as two different ages (12, and 14,) but The Hindu presents her love of dance and her mothers’ scolding in a way that makes the connection with her suicide seem much more certain than the way in which The Deccan presents it. They both flatten the story and fail to provide any real insight into the life of the subject. This isn’t the worst of the things I read, in terms of language, but it is especially upsetting because I feel so strongly that this poor young girl (and the others like her) deserves the posthumous respect of a proper telling of her story.

Of course, despite sadness, there is happiness present too (sharing, as impossibly as always, the same chaotic space,) and with every story I read of a young student who’s lost hope in creative outlets and a future beyond strict formulas for testing and living, I also have such wonderful examples of opportunities in our classrooms and others for kids to grow and be active participants in their futures. Some of the brightest moments of our travels outside of Hyderabad were the frequent instances in which I could give mini photo lessons to the curious children I met in trains, on buses, and on the street – after even just a few minutes of pointing and miming and (attempts) at explaining with words, the sparks of excitement always began to fly.

Although we (obviously) couldn’t take the girls from Railway and the boys from Nalgonda along with us on our adventures (oh what field trips those would have been!) I’m greatly looking forward to sharing with them all of the images and audio that I documented. In some of the early exercises we did with the students last month, we asked them to write down a few things that they would like to take pictures of, as well as a few things that they’ve never seen a picture of. Many of the girls included the “Araku Valley” and “waterfalls” in their answers (to both questions), and I’m quite pleased that our travels could help us gather these requested images for them (much more meaningful and personal image collection than that which can be done on the internet).

There is much to be shared, but for the sake of brevity (perhaps I’ve already missed my chance at that though, considering the paragraphs above) and a desire not to overwhelm, I present to you now a select sampling of memories from our two short sojourns:

[vimeo 15405990]
(as always, putting multimedia to use wherever possible! audio and images: recorded/photographed by me. song: “Veera” from the new Tamil film “Raavanan”)

Some Images from Vijayawada and Amaravathi (you can visit my own personal flickr for more from associated albums):

We arrived in Vijayawada during the start of Ganesh Chaturthi – the streets were filled with both miniature and gargantuan Ganeshas.

Kara, waiting patiently for Kondapalli Fort to open for entrance.

Auto Exhaust(stion)

A strangely decrepit, colorful park we stumbled upon while wandering the city.

Ganesh, illuminated, during a festive, evening street bazaar.

On the bus to Amaravathi

View from the back of a group auto.

GIANT Buddha Stupa

New friends from the Buddha Stupa

Passing the time on the bus

Undavalli Cave Temple

New friends at a large and joyous family picnic!

For those interested in hearing an excerpt from Dr. Smt. V. Indira’s speech at Railway, you will find the audio below! Dr. Indira’s passion for teaching and her love for the Railway Girls’ High School community is evident throughout the speech, and I am particularly fond of the “egg breaking” analogy that she uses. Enjoy!

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/5155124?secret_token=s-b55HV”]