While our first few weeks in Hyderabad were filled with hotter-than-hot temperatures, things have drastically cooled down with the arrival of a cloud filled sky. The nonstop barrage of rain has been perfect for settling into the classroom and doing some quality brainstorming with students. The girls at Railway High School in Lallaguda were the first ones to get classes underway at the start of the semester and are thus further along with the curriculum than the rest of their peers — which means the beginnings of a photo story!
The girls have been musing and marinating about various problems that they perceive in their community and so for homework we asked them to illustrate two images: one picturizing a problem, and another showing a solution. I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of issues that the students spoke about: Jyoti was concerned about water wastage, Vennela is particularly interested in the plight of child laborers, and Mohammedi had this to say about child brides: “It’s very sad when someone’s childhood ends at the age of eleven when they get married”. Nearly all proposed contacting the government for solutions to the problems with Pooja even inquiring about the best way to organize a march downtown! I’m certain that the class contains the next Indira Gandhi or Pratibha Patil; these kids are not to be underestimated!
Sirisha diligently photographing while Pooja interviews Ms. Nirmala
Most of the girls centered their problems around the plight of those located outside of Hyderabad: “in the villages there is no electricity, in the villages there is too much pollution” and so on. Picking up on this common undercurrent the first photo story has been tentatively titled “Village Life” and will focus on four main themes: Roads/Pollution, Water, Education, and Electricity. Students then picked which topic piqued their interest the most and split into the appropriate group to do research on the internet and to interview adults. We’re still in the beginning stages but the girls are so enthused and energetic that big things are sure to come — stay tuned!
Hello all- Nicole here with the two week report! In some ways it feels like I’ve been here much longer than 14 days and in others I still feel incredibly new and disoriented. We spent Monday and Tuesday of this last week finalizing schedules with the remaining schools and had a few more introductory classes on Thursday and Friday: Shivani started herclass at Audiah Memorial High School and Nelle and I started our classes at Sitaphalmandi. Despite a little bit of initial confusion for all of us, the class I taught at Sithphalmandi was wonderful. The students are really willing to be creative and share their ideas and seem super excited about TMS (it’s the first year for us at this school!) Plus, our teaching assistants are incredibly supportive.
We had our second week of classes at Railway where we’re beginning to cover storytelling and camera usage with more depth. A lesson about the story elements of conflict and resolution led to a discussion and creative exercise surrounding issues the students see impacting their communities. The students drew pictures showing water shortages, pollution, gender discrimination, poverty, child labor, and poverty and for homework were asked to draw what they thought the “resolutions” to those issues could be (so more on those Thursday!) I’m really impressed with what critical thinkers the students are and can tell that I’ll be learning as much about Hyderabad from them as they do about digital storytelling from me.
Railway girls on a photo scavenger hunt
On a non work-related note I was lucky enough attend a feminist collective meeting last night and a film screening hosted by a local LGBT organization this afternoon. I was so thrilled to meet such wonderful folks at both events, but more so just incredibly excited to feel like I was joining a community that’s creating such a palpable progressive momentum in what is already such a beautiful, diverse and energetic city.
Namaste from Hyderabad and the 2013 fellows! We’ve had staggered arrivals (and a grand total of 48 hours of layovers) but we’re finally all together in our lovely new apartment. You can learn more about each of us and how we ended up here over on the Our Team page.
Want to see our adventures? Follow us on Instagram (just search TheModernStory)! It’s the future! Except that everything will look like a 70’s polaroid!
Notes from Nelle – In the car from the airport, I felt like a puppy in a kitchen full of bacon crumbs. One minute I’d be chatting with Remy about his move to Boston with Piya; the next, following an idea I had jotted down last week about assessment; all of a sudden, my eyes would find massive boulders stacked precariously on a mountain ridge, silhouetted against a mild blue sky and a scratchy horizon line of trees. Bacon crumbs everywhere! Delicious morsels of instant friendship, TMS potential, and the backdrop of gorgeous, enveloping Hyderabad overwhelmed my tastebuds and my poor jet-lagged brain. . . but my tail was wagging really fast.
Thanks to the warmth and openhearted guidance of Remy, and my instantly lovable roomies, I am now re-grounded. My tail is still wagging. Yesterday I bought a cherry red kameez, and today I wore it to Railway Girls school, where we met the most unbelievable chorus of “Hello, Teachers!!” We begin teaching this coming Friday – a fact which had been causing some apprehension. But meeting the students and teachers that make this program work instantly melted away my nervous energy. Everyone was welcoming, with a sweet and poking sense of humor. We will be teaching at Railway for at least a week before we start at the other schools. I feel lucky to have the luxury of time to troubleshoot programming in such a friendly place. Also today, I negotiated the fare home with the auto-rickshaw driver, and made it across Mahatma Ghandi Road without giving myself a heart attack. Small victories. Wag wag.
xo! N
Notes from Nicole – The first 40 hours of my journey were completely packed with so much chaos (a flight cancellation, a reroute, a delay that resulted in a missed connection, a 24 hour layover) that I didn’t really even have a stress-free moment to stop and think about or process the adventure I was embarking on. Somewhere between Life of Pi and an episode of Parks and Recreation on my final flight, though, it hit me: I was almost there, I was going to be in Hyderabad until December. I smiled to myself, took a deep breath, and soon enough was walking away from the airport through the hazy early-morning air with Remy. Since then it’s been nonstop sensory overload in the very best of ways.
This city is massive and it’s been hard to orient our friendly little neighborhood within it, but maybe that’s for the best. There are all kinds of stories to investigate just within the few block around our apartment like the elusive moneys in an alley off of Mahatma Gandhi Rd. or the group of primary school boys who’ve formed their own little bicycle gang in our apartment complex’s parking lot. Along with my wonderful co-fellows I’ve started tackling challenges small (figuring out how to shop for salwar suits), medium (hailing the 8A bus during rush hour), and a little bit larger (impromptu teaching a class of 20 eighth graders). Cheers to all that’s to come!
Snippets from Shivani – It has been so great being back in Hyderabad after almost 12 months! However, I return not with the intention to visit family or go sari shopping but to be in the classroom — and what a great first day it has been! After quickly meeting TMS Co-Director Remy and my lovely Co-Fellows Nelle and Nicole we all raced off to hop onto a bus to Secunderabad, a true experience in navigating the idiosyncrasies of Hyderabadi traffic. After finally making our way to Railway Girls School in Lallaguda we met Mr. Prabakher, an enthusiastic teacher who’ll serve as our liaison for the semester. We also got a chance to chat with Waheeda, who will be joining us in the classroom as well. I’m already looking forward to using these two as valuable resources! Then it was off to to meet the 8th class batch of girls we’ll be working with for the next 6 months! All of the gals, ranging in ages from 12 to 14 greeted us quite enthusiastically and my Co-Fellows and I got the ball rolling on introducing ourselves and what we’ll be working with them on. Most of the students were already familiar with TMS from years prior which was great to hear. What started off as a small exchange between us and the students quickly (and unexpectedly!) turned into a flurry of chalk dust on the blackboard and the assigning of their first real piece of homework — impromptu teaching at it’s finest! I can’t wait to return on Friday for our first real class and to see what the girls have come up with. Here’s to a beautiful start to what’s already shaping up to be a great semester!
day number one at railway, super duper “VE-RY NICE!”
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:
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.
Festival season is in full swing here in Hyderabad – exacerbating the familiar sense overload of India and creating a series of obstacles to navigate in class scheduling and seeing projects to completion. August 15 marked the 66th anniversary of India’s independence, and coincided with a transition period occurring in our curriculum – photo stories finished and venturing into the new territory of video pre-production.
Each of our schools extended anxious invitations to join them for their special school programs to celebrate the brave actions of Gandhi and the Freedom Fighters that allowed India break free from British rule. However much I wanted to attend both schools, I should have anticipated that it would not be so easy to peel away from the students wrapped up in excitement at the first, MGM, to share their pride in being Indians. I also did not anticipate that I, myself, would be expected to contribute to the ceremony by giving a speech on India. I have to admit that when they announced I would be speaking it came as a complete shock, not entirely sure that I felt appropriate to speak on behalf of a country I feel only humbly welcomed to live and teach in. That said, it did not take me long to realize upon this spontaneous reflection on the Indian Independence Movement, that this was not an isolated historical event of localized importance – but rather, the introduction of the power of nonviolent civil disobedience onto the world scale. The whole world has, through its influence on global social justice movements, and can continue to benefit from a remembrance of the words and actions of Gandhi and the Freedom Fighters. I enjoyed incorporating this into this week’s lesson plans by having the girls make ‘protest’ signs inspired by various quotes from Gandhi – on topics ranging from Character and Truth, to Women, Religious Unity, and Democracy.
I also thought that Independence Day came at an appropriate time of switching gears in our curriculum, because it is our aim to engage the students in socially conscious critical thinking. As much as Independence Day could function as a celebration of where India has come – it is also a platform to focus on the issues still alive in present day India and to imagine what India can be in the future. I love this country and its spirit, but there is also a reality that it is a place with some startling statistics if you begin to look into them- where 40% of schools do not have functional toilets, 42% of children are malnourished and underweight, and basic reading and arithmetic levels struggle to keep out of decline. It was nice to reflect on the relevance of the stories written by students for the Photo Story in this context, and I am excited to share these below.
Completed Photo Stories:
The girls of MGM wanted to draw attention to the struggle women face to receive an education in India. The story, written by students, is set in a village, where a young girl dreams about going to school. She pursues this dream for education despite the lack of support from family and community, creating a role model for local girls.
The girls from Sultaan Bazar bring us a lesson in overcoming our superficial differences. A new rule from the Commissioner has created rifts between the various people of Rainbow Park – fighting and prejudice transform the formerly peaceful park into land divided in inequality. It is only with the help of an observant young girl and a ‘Friend Book’ written in multiple languages that recognition of unity in diversity is restored. I like this story because subtly it addresses themes ranging from caste and religious unity to the celebration of Friendship Day and Independence.
“Wow! That’s a very green caterpillar! Don’t come near me!” I watch as Tulasi, normally quite reserved, stretches her face into a grimace and shouts these words at the camera. Earlier, I had shown the girls a short clip of an actress “reading with expression.” The actress changes her voice to represent various characters in a story, and the girls were impressed. We watched the clip several times (upon request) and then launched into a “reading with expression” session. I shocked the girls a bit by going first and choosing to sing about the green caterpillar. My fake opera seemed to encourage them to be a little more daring, and they giggled as they used exaggerated enunciation and varied their tones for the different words.
A few days before, Kelly, Asma and I had listened to the girls’ first few rounds of voiceovers for their “Spring Morning” photo story. The girls knew the lines, but rattled them off in a monotone, unintelligible breath before ending with “thank you.” We knew we needed to help them discover how to convey emotion with their voices. In the process of practicing, I learned that we have several potential actresses in our class. Sudeepika wrote down her caterpillar line and promised to rehearse reading in different voices as extra homework. While some girls would blurt out the lines in the first silly voice that came to mind, Sushma thought about which parts she wanted to emphasize before speaking. All the girls improved their voiceover “style.” And we certainly had fun changing our voices!
One of the best parts about the last few weeks has been solidifying our relationships with each of our students. We’ve come to know more about their individual personalities, family backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses. At Bansilalpet, Bhavani dreams of being a fashion designer and is one of our master photographers. At Audiah Memorial, Rohit is our go-to for brilliant ideas. Divya keeps Bhushan in check while Yakamma is always cheerful. The students have become more comfortable in class, and we have come to genuinely enjoy and appreciate their individuality. This new familiarity also brings forth new challenges. As Kelly pointed out, the “novelty” of TMS has worn off. The students are more restless, completing tasks more quickly and ready for more. While I prefer to have our students less in awe of us as teachers and less timid around the camera, we must find ways to expand our lessons to keep pace with their growth.
Our first short video unit lessons have also uncovered some hidden strengths in some of our students. Mamatha has a knack for thinking of follow-up questions on the spot, and Divya Sree can quickly direct and frame an interview shot. I greatly enjoyed watching the girls work together as a team during these first practice interviews!
I also want to give a shout out to our volunteer Praneet, who has been an invaluable help with translations and with encouraging the students at Audiah. He is embarking on the next phase of his education and we will miss him in the classroom!! Meanwhile…we will continue to mine the gems hidden in the imaginations of our students as we progress through our first video stories.
