One of the first questions the TMS girls ever asked us was, “When do we get to visit Google?” Ever since June, they’ve been anticipating this extra-special fieldtrip. Judging by their looks when they entered the Google complex, I’d say the experience was worth the wait.
After an early morning bus ride involving many snacks from home, (I think the girls thought I would starve to death on the journey and so they came prepared) “truth or dare” and singing, we arrived at Google. The girls were impressed when Suchi, energetic and welcoming as ever, ushered them to the lobby and began punching their names into a screen. They were then given printed name cards, something that raised some amusing conversations—I’m so thankful our girls are always curious and always questioning! Once in the conference room, the nerves began to set in. The session began and our usually vibrant and loud class refused to make a peep, until I gave Sravs some significant looks and she took the leap. She stood tall and explained that Google is like a book, but gives us more information. Sometimes I worry that we put too much pressure on Sravs to always be amazing, but she continues to dazzle.
The girls learned all about Google Maps and literally saw the world from a new perspective in that hour. From an aerial view of Charminar, to my favorite beach in Australia, the girls learned that we can travel the world with these tools.
While the Google team prepared some great sessions for our girls, I especially enjoyed watching their worlds expand before my eyes with each new experience on the trip. There was the time we went for a bathroom break and I literally had to pull the girls away from the automatic sinks. The elevator ride, when we exaggerated our dizziness because it was such a strange sensation. There was the foosball table (look, a new game!) At lunch, the girls went wild. In the words of A. Sushma, the ice cream was “mind blowing!” They also appreciated the chance to chat with some of the Google employees, who were enthusiastic and very encouraging.
Everyone loved the lunch, but most girls told me afterwards that their favorite part of the day was the interview session with Kodukulla Suryanarayana (Suri). I was inspired to see our girls push aside their nervousness and conduct an engaging interview session. Suri encouraged the students to always take the extra effort to grow; for example, if you like film photography, learn chemistry to better understand the process of developing photos. Needless to say, the girls were impressed.
The ride home involved more singing and even some dancing. The girls couldn’t stop grinning, and I have to say I was right there with them—what a great adventure to share with these students!
When Emily and I stepped off the plane from Hyderabad to Tamil Nadu, a giant stone warrior goddess watching over baggage claim immediately captured my attention. Our drive from the airport to Villupuram revealed several other huge deities, such as a two-story high Hanuman. The only other time I have seen gods this big was during Ganesh Chaturthi in Hyderabad, where icons are lifted by cranes to be submerged in the lake.
I didn’t know when I saw that airport goddess that her size and power would mimic the potential of the students we would meet through Communities Rising. Over the past two weeks, we have been conducting short TMS photography and video workshops at several schools. Our students faced a very condensed curriculum interrupted by a multitude of holidays, but still they managed to take to the concepts and cameras with amazing creativity. These students made our stay in Tamil Nadu unforgettable.
Anilady Boys Stand Tall
At Anilady School, we taught 7th and 8th standards. With Philip as our trusty translator and Siva as our go-to for drawing out the best in the kids, we found a new rhythm in our teaching. The students were clever, eager and kind. Each class had a “free-shoot” period in which we would break into small groups, venture outside and explore the beautiful school with our cameras.
What was striking about this experience was the fact that most of the students did not speak any English. We wanted to push them to incorporate other useful skills in their photographic pursuits (such as emotional expression, English practice and teamwork), but to do so made the support of our teaching team essential. We needed more than just translators; we needed teachers who truly understood the objectives of the program. The individuals we worked with far surpassed our hopes and stand as prime examples of how programs such as TMS can overcome immense cultural and language challenges with the right help.
These classes were very gratifying for us as teachers. In spite of having a large number of students, we were able to form special relationships. I also feel that we achieved our key goal of having each student contribute his or her ideas and have hands-on time with the equipment.
Arul Prakash, a star student
One student in particular comes to mind: Arul Prakash, a Vikravandi hostel boy whose friendliness and intelligence shone through even on our first day of class. Arul is a student that any teacher would dream of having; quick to learn, dependable and sweet with just a hint of mischievousness and humor to make working with him a joy. I taught Arul how to edit on iMovie using my laptop and spent some extra one-on-one sessions with him. By the end of the stay, he could easily put together a basic stop motion animation, add text and transitions and burn his work to a DVD.
These two weeks at Communities Rising have been some of the most memorable during our time in India. Just as that first image of the stone goddess stands out in my mind, the smiles, creativity and joy in these students will stay with me forever. I certainly plan to be back!
A student makes bubbles during a clean hands video shoot
The past few weeks have been intense, with extreme highs (like celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with our students) and quite scary lows (like Kelly ending up in the hospital with Dengue fever). We’ve all taken a step back to be thankful for our blessings, from health to children’s games and everything in between. Our students are now sitting their exams and being away from them has made me realize how much they anchor us in our life in Hyderabad. I’ve felt pretty lost without our regular routine of laughing, learning and producing with the students!
As much as I love Hyderabad, I’m very excited to be heading to Tamil Nadu with Emily for our Communities Rising adventures. This should be a challenging couple of weeks, filled with projects, interesting people and of course a whole new group of students. I’m looking forward to posting about our experiences and sharing some new videos!
Our students met the challenge of moving from photo stories to video projects with new confidence and bright ideas. We’ve explored a wide range of formats and concepts, from public service announcements and silent films to full-blown dramas. At Railway 8A, we divided the class into two groups and had each produce their own videos. Interestingly, the group with all the girls who love to dance ended up acting, while the group with the girls who aren’t as interested in dance ended up dancing!
A highlight of the short video production at Railway was when Prabhaker and HM called one of our students at home to congratulate her on her good work in the video. Her joy at this recognition was infectious and very gratifying. There were many benefits in dividing into two groups, such as getting to work more closely with each student and ensuring maximum participation, but the best part was the fact that some of the shyer, quiet girls were able to come into the spotlight. While the videos address completely different issues, they share a similar theme: bravery. Fighting for your rights and recognizing that your own talents and interests are of value require the kind of strength in character that we hope all our students will develop. They certainly seem to be on the right track!
We had decided long ago that the public service announcements were the way to go at Audiah Memorial for our short videos, because these students seem to have an endless supply of ideas along this line (perhaps stimulated by our early “cause and effect” lessons). These students recognize that “consequences” can be interesting to portray on camera. Since we were sliding into festival season at the time of pre-production, they were especially excited to make videos about their favorite celebrations. On our first day of shooting for the Sankranti PSA, I was dismayed to discover that our main actor was absent. Looking back, I realize that this was actually a blessing in disguise, as it required one of our shyest students to suddenly become the main character. Rahul really stepped up and it was so nice watching him finally relax and have fun in front of the camera. I enjoyed teaching the students about silent film and showed them some classic examples that amused them. While Sankranti production took several lessons, the Diwali team tends to be a bit more focused and was able to finish filming in one day—incidentally, the day that my parents visited the school. This was truly special for me to show off the students in action! Both PSAs address actual dangers that our students and their families face during what are otherwise joyful times. Every year, explosions from fireworks cause serious harm and small children flying kites from the rooftops are in serious danger of falling or being electrocuted. I feel that our PSAs captured the spirit of each festival while expressing a subtle message to enjoy carefully.
At Bansilalpet, Emily and I wanted to have a lesson about point of view to kick start our brainstorming session for the short videos. We thought of a way to demonstrate how individuals can see the same event differently. We split the class in half and lined them up on either side of the room while we stood in the middle. Then we hugged each other, while I smiled at one side of the class and Emily pretended to cry while facing the other. We asked the students to describe what they saw. They were surprised to discover the difference! My group of students came up with a story that looks at the perspectives or opinions of three people in one family: a grandmother, a mother and a daughter. I enjoyed this project because I felt I was gaining a small glimpse into some of the family dinner conversations of my students.
Below are several of the short videos, and the rest will be posted to our Vimeo and Youtube channels in the coming days. Goodbye to Hyderabad for now, but our return will mean launching into our final projects, a trip to Google headquarters and reaching new heights with our students!
The most recent census clocked the population of Hyderabad at 4 million, in a state of 8.4 million, in a country of 1.2 billion – the second largest in a world filled to the brim with 7 billion and counting. To name every person on earth, saying 10 names per second, would take 22 years (or my entire lifetime).
Inconceivable sums such as these dwarf the students of The Modern Story, who number 115 students between our five schools (to put it in perspective, I could recite all of their names in the time it takes you to read this paragraph). These numbers frighten one with their sense of scale, certainly, situating these 115 boys and girls within the colossal frame of the world. Statistically, they represent an infinitesimal blip, 115 stars in an oceanic sky. When it comes to the world, these 115 students are destined to be forgotten.
Which of course, is the illusion of quantitative data: it fails to capture the magnitude of these 115 students, how their spirit exceeds the boundaries of their 4-foot/5-foot stature and ages of 12. 13. 14. Numbers cannot do them justice. They have lived a lifetime – 115 whole lifetimes – and possess rich inner lives we catch only glimpses of in their journals and our conversations. They are all different. They write differently, converse differently. The light catches their eyes in a different way. The astonishing powers of Krishna, the boy god of Hinduism, were revealed when he opened his mouth and inside was the entire universe. Each of these 115 students has done the same – swallowed an entire universe of stories, a unique name, a home, a family. And as much as we write about these young men and women in the collective, as “our students,” “the class,” “Railway 8B,” etc., it is ever so important to honor who they are as individuals and how they have grown in the past three months. Here are six such profiles, written for Adobe Youth Voices, and our small attempt to capture some of their whole person on paper:
B. Sravanti, or ‘Sravs’ is one of the most unique personalities we have in Railway Class 8A. From day one, she has not been scared to face the ‘doubts’ in her mind and is brave in asking questions and sharing her ideas. I will never forget the sincere curiosity in her eyes when she asked me early on, “Teacher, why are you white?” She is a Hindu girl who loves Jesus, and frequently writes in her journal about the ability of Jesus to solve all of our problems. Every time we collect the journals, we can be certain that Sravs has gone beyond what was asked of her and included plenty of her own poems, stories, songs, and pictures. Recently, she has starred in the role of Siri in the Railway Class 8A video project entitled, “Fight for Your Rights! Education for All” and it was so fun to watch her put her energy and dedication towards drama and performance. She is quite a talented girl and we are so pleased she is with us in The Modern Story class. – Kelly
S.K. Fuqrah Sultana of Railway 8B says her “life policy” is to make all the people in the world happy and healthy. She is a source of constant brightness in the classroom, living by this maxim with a sense of personal responsibility for the happiness of others and capable of making anyone feel that everything is well in the world. When Fuqrah was 12, her parents enrolled her in a madarsa, a school for the study of the Islamic faith. While there, she began to lose sight in one of her eyes, having developed a small tumor in her brain, and was kept out of school for two years. She was determined to return to school and enrolled in 8th class for the second time. At the age of 15, she is the oldest girl in our class and role model for the other girls. Writing with signature quickness and double spacing, she fills her journals with “thoughts” – such as the Marcus Aurelius quote “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts” – and dreams of becoming a professional animator. Authentic, imaginative, and full of wonder for all there is to discover in the world and compassion for others, Fuqrah is a very special young woman with enormous promise. – Emily
Kelly: As with most students at Sultaan Bazar, Kheertna is shy when it comes to expressing herself in words. She responds most commonly with “Yes, teacher” and excessive smiles and nods, but it is difficult to have her open up into conversation vocally in the classroom. That said, she is hard working and always arrives at least 15 minutes early for class, and I have been able to learn more from the writing she does in her journal. Kheertna has the meticulous work ethic of many of our students – the type that will not draw a line without a straight edge. While in the midst of preparations for a video project concerning conversations with the natural world, Kheertna characteristically spent days diligently cutting out a parrot – her favorite animal. I remembered another parrot that Kheertna had drawn and went back to take a closer look – the parrot was drawn in response to a Gandhi prompt following Independence Day: “In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.” Kheertna responded to this quote by drawing a parrot and telling the story of her own capacity to think for herself…
“Democracy: This parrot is my favorite bird and my parents are saying you get favorite peacock, zebra, but I like parrot. But my feeling is my feeling and not another feeling is my parents. And friends say your favorite bird is parrot, but why? I will say yes my favorite bird is parrot.”
When asked for one unique thing about Zeenath, she replied that she is ‘punctual’ and in a similar fashion, this young girl is dedicated to hard work and studies. She is confident and vocal in class, and always willing to share insightful responses. She never misses a day of homework, and goes above and beyond what she needs to do in her journal at night. It seems that she must have supportive parents, because some of her homework responses incorporate information she has attained from the newspaper and current events that suggest family involvement in her education. She is also the star of MGM’s current video project, called ‘Sita’s Life,’ that explores the difficult topic of child suicide. In her performance given this responsibility, she has displayed maturity beyond her years, as well a relaxation into the ‘dramatic’ process that was reassuring to see in this characteristically disciplined young girl have so much fun acting. One day I asked her if she enjoyed making the video project, and she responded with a big smile, “Yes teacher! All week I could not wait until Tuesday to come!” She has also been important for creative input in the project, contributing many ideas to the post-production editing. Zeenath’s father is a shop keeper and her mother is a housewife. Her ambition is to be a government official. -Kelly
Rahul is quiet upon first introduction and stands out among his peers. He is older, taller, and hesitant, unsure of his footing at times among the more vocal of his peers. He is intensely curious about the technological aspects of video production and editing especially. Rahul is most happy when seated at the computer in front of Windows Movie Maker, filled with clips awaiting his growing editing sensibilities. Rahul was initially one of our least engaged students. He seemed especially afraid of handling the equipment and his English skills were very weak. With the help of our high school volunteer Praneet, Rahul gradually came out of his shell and seemed to enjoy the class. It wasn’t until we introduced video editing, however, that he transformed. He began to ask questions, to stay after class and beg us to show him additional editing tips. Rahul went from barely speaking to us, to being one of the most vocal and interested students in the class. He continues to be shy around the camera but now makes an effort to stay focused in class and has one of the best attendance records of our students. Rahul’s father is a politician and his mother is a shopkeeper. -Dana
Swarupa has a quiet introspection about her and is sharing more of herself each and every day. She has blossomed within the last few weeks as a prominent character in our short video project, demonstrating an energy and dry wit both on camera and off. When we first began teaching at Bansilalpet, Swarupa was the least talkative of our students, even at times appearing disinterested. We were surprised one day when the other students convinced Swarupa to dance after class. We filmed her dance and ever since she has been interested in participating in class activities. From improvising lines in our short video project, to making jokes on and off the camera, Swarupa has become one of our most enjoyably unpredictable students. -Dana
Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new. ~Rory Sutherland
At this point, we hope you’ve moseyed on over to The Modern Story’s video page, taken a stroll in Rainbow Park while pondering a girl’s struggle for education, and eaten birthday biryani on a rainy day. Our final batch of photo stories comes from the 8th standard class at Railway Girl’s High School, an extraordinary school in Lallaguda that was been partnered with The Modern Story program for three years. In a unique departure from the traditional photo story format, this year marked the first time that a TMS project counted towards students’ quarterly exams (representing 25 marks total). Through a collaboration with the 8th class English instructors, Mdms. Shimla and Vimala, the photo story assignment asked students to create a visual interpretation of William Wordsworth’s “A Spring Morning.”
“A Spring Morning” is fourteen lines in length and describes the beautiful day that emerges after a rainstorm:
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stockdove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with raindrops; – on the moor
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
A Spring Morning is also first poem in the English Reader textbook for all 8th class students in the state of Andhra Pradesh and between the five schools where we teach, it is one of the few common denominators. Nearly every student has some working familiarity with this poem and especially its resounding introduction: “There was a roaring in the wind all night.” A few have even copied a verse or two in their homework and claimed it as their own. But that’s another issue for another blog post.
More pressing in early July was the challenge of interpreting a remarkably straightforward poem in an imaginative way. “A Spring Morning” is fourteen lines long and featured Wordsworth at his descriptive best. Read it again and you’ll see. The poem is constituted entirely of images. It describes the beautiful day that emerges after a rainstorm, pregnant with the sounds of birds chirping, water flowing, and a hare bounding through puddles. This hare is the closest thing the poem has to a protagonist and his splashy journey the extent of the poem’s narrative, leaving those hungry for a plotline (or a story to digitize) wanting. And while the other TMS photo stories drew from the personal lives of the students, ranging from the everyday of cooking biryani to broader themes of caste division, and had clear narrative conventions (a main character, a beginning, a middle, and end), the story that landed in the lap of Railway was a snapshot of the English countryside written over 120 years ago. What possible connection did Wordsworth’s pastoral paradise have to their personal lives?
It was a question the three of us thought about for a long time, as we read and re-read those fourteen lines in search for creative wiggle room and a story to conceptualize. We had the students choose their favorite line of the poem and draw it. They wrote poetry for homework and read poetry in class. Kelly wondered if we could represent the emotional arc of the poem, showing the ascension of family calm after a storm of domestic violence. As a warm-up, she and Dana choreographed an expressive dance around the poem’s major images, which 8A enthusiastically memorized by heart.
Over in 8B, the girls turned the poem into a play – “acting out” what they read, roaring like a lion, chattering like a magpie, and raining like a flood. Neha and I were the costume department for that day, furiously scribbling “tree,” “sun” and that famous “hare” on pieces of computer paper and taping it to the front of their uniforms.
While these exercises helped the students in isolating the major “characters” of the poem, they didn’t generate a more profound interpretation than the literal fact of a spring morning after a rain storm. At first this disappointed me. Years of schooling had coached me in the “seek-and-ye-shall-find” methods of literary analysis, in which a careful reader cannot in good faith leave any symbolic stone unturned, but must dissect any verse with a mental scapula, extracting the meaning hidden by the all-knowing poet/creator/mastermind. If our students wanted to represent the hare as simply that – a hare – would we be allowing them to settle for a superficial interpretation?
Maybe. But maybe not. For there is another kind of wealth to be found in poetry that operates on the pure level of language, of words. And meaning revealed by the simple stringing of several words together. “All things that love the sun are out of doors.” To read these words on page, to understand them, and to represent them artistically is an accomplishment for anyone, let alone students whose second language is English. Any deeper meaning lacquered upon the simplicity of Wordsworth’s words does not indicate a more meaningful understanding of the words themselves. And the more we worked through the project, the more I realized that our earlier fixation on finding a deeper meaning distracted us from the beauty of its delivery. We changed focus from questions of message (What do we think Wordsworth means by a spring morning?) to questions of medium (How shall we recreate a spring morning? How shall we evoke the feeling of a spring morning?), recognizing the ample inspiration in this spring morning to produce a photo story of substance.
And that’s when the fun began. 8A brought the outdoors inside, hanging raindrops from the ceiling and birds from the window, and embodying Wordsworth’s menagerie by turning their cheeks towards Kelly’s face paint brush, grinning hugely beneath rabbit whiskers, chattering like jays and magpies with cut-out speech bubbles, and forming birds wings with their adjoined thumbs. With a little help from Dana and the Electric Light Company, they learned to read expressively, to make their voices rise calmly and brightly like the sun, matching the cadence of Wordsworth’s iambic pentameter.
After breaking into three groups, 8B received blank story boarding sheets.”You choose. Its your choice,” Neha and I kept saying when they asked what to do next and after some initial discomfort, each team attacked the project from a different angle, with a different story board to show for it. Velankanni and Shanawaz took digital photographs on the school grounds and created rain where there was none, sprinkling “dew” on grass blades, draping leaves in puddles, and commissioning a few of the Tiny Tots students to pose with umbrellas. When a downpour did come, Srilekha and Ramya Sree bolted outside with a video camera and returned triumphantly to class with a sound recording.
Other teams delved into mixed media collages and stop motion animation, condensing a series of 30 still pictures of a run rising upward or a hare moving forward into a four second clip. While teaching them these techniques, their application and execution was entirely up to the students. It seemed that the more free they were to experiment with different media and represent the poem as they wished, the more personal responsibility they developed, as they recognized this project was in some way an extension of themselves and there was no “right” way to complete it. “A Spring Morning” may have been written by Williams Wordsworth, but “A Spring Morning” photo story was all theirs.
Their burgeoning sense of artistic ownership culminated in a showcase of the photo stories for their parents during the annual Parent-Teacher meeting and for the head administrator of the Railway schools on Teacher’s Day (see video below). Our students spoke proudly about their work and what’s more, seemed astonished that they themselves (rather than another adult or teacher) were speaking on their own behalf and representing their original work. Watching them from the side, I realized it mattered little in the end whether we were in England or in India. These students were resourceful enough to illustrate “A Spring Morning” poem on the moon provided they were given the moon rocks to do so. And therein lies the true success of Railway’s photo story project: that the students experienced the thrill of creation and just how personal it can be.
Religious freedom and equality is a particular topic that resonates deeply with my personal conviction, life philosophy and ambition. Thus, naturally, given the opportunity to live within such a rich tapestry of culture and belief here in Hyderabad and have access to children from such varied backgrounds – it is a topic that I enjoy exploring. It is easy in the context of the classroom to cultivate some false sense of harmonious coexistence. Certainly, the unity in diversity within India that the students talk about is a reality that the whole world can benefit from paying attention to – but, sometimes, there are harsh realities in my confrontations with the ‘real world’ that force me to recognize how much progress still needs to be made.
The experience filming this small clip for the video I am working on at MGM is what has brought me to this topic. The MGM Project is called “Sita’s Life” and shows the two possible ‘tomorrows’ of a young girl who is having a problem in school and contemplating suicide. The video is supposed to reveal all of the small ways that our lives are interconnected to those around us and who love us, and to approach this difficult topic from the perspective that ‘Life is Beautiful.’ In order to do this, we show a day in the life of her family and friends, had Sita killed herself, alongside the normal day. At the end, mourners go to console Sita’s mother. The day we were to film this small clip, the two students playing the ‘mourners’ forgot their costumes. Half of this class is Muslim, and half is Hindu, so one Muslim girl suggested that they just wrap the scarf like a burka and we do a close up – nice idea.
“Wait!” one girl says.
“But, the girl’s name is Sita (a Hindu name) there would not be Muslims in her family”
I happen to be from a Christian family (with a much more complicated relationship to the spirit) that has Muslims (newly and warmly welcomed) into it…so, I said
“Why can a family not contain all faiths? And maybe these are not direct family but close friends who have come to mourn. Religious unity is a possible reality that we can show in our movie!”
The girls agreed, and went on with it.
Just as we were about to film, the teacher at this school that I work with came out and saw the girls. She said,
“That looks horrible, wrap it like this” – and re-wrapped the scarves in a religiously neutral way – obviously tending to imply that they are Hindu like the young girl.
I was put off by this reaction. I did not say anything to stop it, because I also did not want to offend the teacher, and we were running short on time. But I felt that it was worth a reflection on, and every time I see this clip I think about it.
It reminded me of other experiences we have had here in India that have put a thorn in our dreams of the peaceful coexistence we see in schools reflecting onto the scale of the city and country. About a month ago we were invited to a wedding in Charminar in the family of our teaching assistant and dear friend, Neha. The function started late, went late, and being the old and ‘dangerous’ part of town, when it came time to go home Neha and her brother decided to follow our ricshaw back to Abids (the area where we live) on his bike. Just as we were making our way home, there was some confusion in the street that forced us to make a U-turn. Neha told us that it was an imposed curfew because of violence. She blamed this violence on the Hindus and said that it was the result of what was happening in Burma to the Burmese Muslim minority, the Rohingya. (The following is a picture from that wedding)
Since June there has been mass violence against the Burmese Muslims at the hand of the Burmese Buddhist majority, and many Indian Muslims are upset that India is not doing more to help them. Tonight I asked Asma some more questions about it, and these are some notes from our phone conversation:
“Burmese want the immigrants to leave Burma because they think Burma is theirs. They killed 150,000 innocent people. Common men, innocent people, not in the army of Burma. They wanted help but no one was helping them. Turkey was the first country to help. They want to kill the Muslims because they belong to Muslim religion and they are Buddhists. They are saying, go to your Muslim countries, leave Burma. They are from Burma, only! They lived in Burma. In India, so many Muslims are there so they are thinking that they are doing wrong to the Muslims and they are against the violence of them. The Hindus want to fight the Muslims here in Hyderabad also, but they can’t do anything here actually because they have Hindu unity is bigger than Muslims, so the Muslims can’t do anything against them. It started with the Buddhists, but they are not showing on television.”
(A picture of dear Asma)
I wanted to learn more about it, so I went to youtube and clicked the link for “Burma Muslims Exclusive video: “They will Kill us all, please help us!”” but it could not play, saying it was banned by the government of this country. Maybe you in America can see it, here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X_Y1PL-eTA. I asked Asma about what was happening now, and she said that she did not know because the government and everyone is trying to hide what is happening.
“Last time I tried to see that video, it said it cannot open in your country. Muslims feel that India is not doing enough, hiding the whole thing! India wants to hide the violence. It started about 5-6 months ago, and it may be continuing but we can’t see in the news. Some people uploaded the videos on the net that’s the only way you can see.”
The Rohingya is said to be one of the most persecuted minorities on the globe – although they have inhabited Burma for years, they have been common victims of violence and the junta was hostile towards them since the year 1978. Many have fled to Bangaladesh, but are also not welcome in this country. Reflecting on all of this within the context of the 9/11 anniversary, and now, today, Emily, Dana and I being warned by our parents to be extra ‘aware’ due to the violence that happened in Libya against the United States embassies – I feel saddened. We have become so close to these two girls, Neha and Asma, who come from completely different background than us but we would never have difficulty being friendly and/or friends! with. All the time you experience beautiful moments of neighbors, friends, bus seat mates, school friends, colleagues, etc. working across cultural divides within this one city – Why is there so much fear of the ‘other’ on the big scale?
(Emily and Asma)
Sometimes I am humbled and energized by the dissonance between the ideals we love to believe in, and the way the world enacts itself around us. I think we all aspire towards love, and to find the beauty in our own lives. On that note, here is a message to leave you with from the same girls at MGM:
I have to thank Selena Gomez for helping me achieve a recent feel-good moment. Her song, “Who Says,” lent itself to a lesson I created about bullying. For those of you less strangely in tune with the world of Disney Channel music than myself, here are her lyrics:
“I wouldn’t wanna be anybody else
You made me insecure,
Told me I wasn’t good enough.
But who are you to judge
When you’re a diamond in the rough?
I’m sure you got some things
You’d like to change about yourself.
But when it comes to me
I wouldn’t want to be anybody else.
…
The girls did not know what I meant by bullying. Besides the fact that this is a strange English word (if you say it enough times you will start to feel that you are speaking gibberish), they did not know how to identify bullying’s basic components. Why? These components are built into the everyday school life of these girls. I’ve watched one girl pinch another into submission. I’ve overheard conversations about excluding a girl that is not as well liked. I’ve grown impatient as the girls who always listen when their friends speak in class deliberately talk to each other while another who never shares finally gets up the courage.
There is not anything particularly sinister about these incidents. These girls are eighth graders; middle school is famous for being one of the most difficult times of adolescence. We’ve come to know and love all of our students and I’m 100 percent confident that each one will grow to be a thoughtful and compassionate adult.
What does bother me is the institutionalized nature of bullying in our schools. The brightest students tend to be favored to an extent that can squelch the chances of others to thrive. While I was able to find a few campaigns against cyber-bullying in India, I struggled to uncover any anti-bullying efforts or resources for schools. Ten minutes into my lesson, I realized I was in over my head. How can you teach anti-bullying in a twenty-minute rotation when its basic premises are just not the norm? At the end of the day I felt quite discouraged and fairly certain that the only part of the lesson that worked was Selena’s peppy video. Imagine my joy at coming across this original story in one of the student journals the next day:
“Once upon a time there was a garden. There were many flowers with beautiful colours except the Datura Flower. All the flowers in the garden teased Datura Flower. Datura Flower felt, “it’s not my fault to be like this!” All the flowers are colourful and they tease the colourless flower, saying “dirty flower,” etc. But one day God appears and takes the Datura Flower. All the other flowers say, “it’s not a colourful flower.” God said, “oh, I know but it is a good flower. This flower is not bullying any one.” So good people do not do bullying.”
She also included this drawing:
Sometimes the surprises are the best part about teaching, and these little gems are what make any moments of doubt seem irrelevant.
(Disclaimer: be prepared to play Selena’s video more times than you thought possible if you ever decide to show it to a group of girls in a school in India!)
Praneet Reddy first approached The Modern Story in late June. He had just completed 10th class and was home in Hyderabad for the summer, looking for a valuable way to spend his time before pursuing his Higher Secondary School Certificate in Bangalore. He had discovered The Modern Story the way many people discover The Modern Story – through a chance encounter with our website – but took the extra step of contacting us directly and asking whether he could get involved.
Its a rare and wonderful step if you think about it – the type of gesture that makes non-profit organizations such as The Modern Story possible. Ideas are only as powerful as the number of able bodied men and women to act upon them and doing so invites a certain leap of faith. I cannot count the number of times I’ve stumbled across a web page for a cause whose work I admired, whose photographs I picked through, maybe whose newsletter I signed up for to give my time, eyes, and momentary attention. But it takes a special amount of courage, initiative, and character to send a cold e-mail and offer yourself. Praneet did this very thing and for six weeks, volunteered his creativity and English-to-Telugu translation abilities as a co-teacher at Audiah Memorial High School (during production of A Rainy Day photo story). We gratefully accepted, little knowing just how valuable he would be to our teaching and just how beloved he would become to our 15 students.
In the five weeks we had the pleasure of working with him, Praneet juggled a multitude of roles with steadfast calmness and cheer. As a co-teacher, he muscled through every technical failure, every power outage, and every change in the lesson plan with patience. As a translator, he managed to digest our lengthy explanations into an abridged Telugu version faithful to (and often more articulate than) the English original, choosing those very words that would would bring a wave of comprehension across the faces of our Audiah students and draw our classroom back together.
Most importantly, Praneet was an unfailingly kind friend and role model for the students, answering questions, sharing stories, and alleviating any mental roadblocks so our lessons had traction. The early confidence he inspired in these fifteen students, both in the technical process and in themselves (“Yes, I can do this!”), has made all the difference in their long-term engagement. This is especially evident among our male students – Rahul, Rohit, Bhushan, Vinay, Asif, and Nagaraju – who sat resolutely in the back row the first two weeks of class, physically distant and distracted. Once Praneet became a regular fixture, this pattern broke down. The boys began to talk. To follow their curiosity and ask questions. To share. Rahul, who barely said a word and shied the camera, was a different person with Praneet in the room. The two of them huddled in quiet confidence was a common sight before class. These days, Rahul is among the most active and technologically savvy of our students, inseparable from Windows Movie Maker and endlessly curious. He continues the legacy of his former teacher and friend in ever question that he asks and every technology that he masters. Today we set up Rahul’s e-mail account and wouldn’t you know – Praneet was the first person he wanted to whom Rahul wished to address his very first message.
This Kheertna, the student at Sultaan Bazar Government Girls High School who probably tugs the hardest on my heart strings. She does not say much – whether due to shyness or language, I am not certain – but she is one of the most hard working girls in class. Since the first day of TMS she arrives at least 15 minutes early, cutting short her post-lunch play time to sit as close to me as possible in a chair as I prepare the computer with our lesson.
I am dedicating this post to her because she has recently impressed me to a point I can’t ignore. It is always difficult with these students to gauge just how much the students are, or are not, picking up from our lessons – particularly when we attempt to delve deeper into social issues that test them beyond clicking pictures. We are right now in the midst of preparations for our video project and have been busy making stop animations to be used as transitions in our finished product. The story revolves around a girl who is new to a school and has no friends – every day, she returns home and reports to her mother about a new piece of nature that she has made friends with and something that she has learned from this. Students have chosen the sun, a river, the moon, a flower, and little Kheertna has chosen a parrot. For days she has been diligently preparing these parrot cutouts so meticulously you would think her life depended on it.
Watching her I could not help but think, “What is it with Kheertna and these parrots?!” I remembered that this was not the first time she featured a parrot in one of our projects, and I went back to take a closer look at an old drawing I had of hers. This earlier parrot was drawn as a form of ‘protest sign’ in response to the Gandhi quote prompt I had assigned just after Independence Day. One of the quotes the students were given to respond to was on democracy, it said: “In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself” Below is the protest poster created by Kheertna, it was only today I realized how cleverly she had related to this statement.
I know it may be difficult to read, so here is what the poster says:
“Democracy: This parrot is my favorite bird and my parents are saying you get favorite peacock, zebra, but I like parrot. But my feeling is my feeling and not another feeling is my parents. And friends say your favorite bird is parrot but why? I will say yes my favorite bird is parrot.”
I am so proud that Kheertna understood that her ability to choose her favorite animal despite what others say is a reflection of our right to think for ourselves. Cheers to her.
The time has come to officially post the TMS photo stories of 2012! All the videos are available for your viewing enjoyment on our Youtube and Vimeo channels, but I wanted to write specifically about the Audiah Memorial and Bansilalpet photo projects. While the students of Railway School were assigned a poem by William Wordsworth to interpret photographically, our AIF schools had the added challenge of writing and storyboarding their own original ideas. With the hopes of prompting some “change the world” thoughts, Emily and I held a cause-and-effect lesson. We talked with the students about how one action can often have multiple, unforeseen effects. We crafted several mini-stories out of photographs pulled from the web. The classic example of someone throwing a stone into still waters and thereby causing continuous ripples proved particularly helpful in getting our point across.
From this lesson we moved into a brainstorming session, which was easily one of the most fun and exciting days for us at these two schools. The students thought of stories about the carelessness that can lead to life-changing traffic accidents. They talked about the dangers of bad habits such as smoking, and the impact of one person using a trash bin instead of the street. Once everyone’s creative juices were flowing, we moved into making a full story based (loosely) on the cause-and-effect theme. Emily and I really tried to sit back and let the students take the reins. We were rewarded by two very different stories: one about the good and bad effects of Hyderabadi rain, the other about the rewards of perseverance.
We liked both stories for their connection to life in Hyderabad and for the fact that they were pieced together by all of the students in each class. That is, every student contributed in at least one way to the final product. Since some of our students are significantly less outspoken or less brave with the cameras than others, we felt that this inclusiveness was an important achievement.
At Audiah Memorial, we discovered that a balance is needed between action and planning. While our brainstorming and storyboarding sessions were very useful, some of the best ideas came spontaneously when we were shooting images for the story. Bansilalpet stuck more closely to the script, but also came up with some excellent on-the-spot solutions when their original ideas weren’t living up to their expectations.
At both schools, making the photo stories was an incredibly fun and rewarding process. We have high hopes for the next piece in the TMS puzzle: video shorts!
