First of all, PSA, if you’re interested in receiving an email every
time my blog updates, just submit your email address in the box at the top of
the blog, and you should be all set!
Second of all, to lighten things up (even though I'll get serious again afterwards), a story of adding money to my phone here: I went around the corner to the store/booth/street-front room where you can both add money to your phone plan and drop off your dry cleaning. Obvious business plan, why did I never think of that? So I gave the guy my phone and a 100 rupee bill and told him the name of my sim card carrier. He said to me, "100 rupees, 86 rupees of talk time." I said, "Where do the other 14 rupees go?" He drew me a little chart that looked like this:
Paid rupees Rupees of talk time
80 80
100 86
110 110
Then he said, "So either 80 or 110." I said, "Why?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "That's crazy!" He said, "Yes. So 110?" Naturally. This is just the latest in a series of strange and amusing quirks about India.
This week, we’re running lessons focused loosely around the theme
of self-expression, and today’s lesson was about stories and storytelling.
First, we explained the difference between fiction and non-fiction and had the
kids categorize some stories, including a biography of Ghandi, a movie starring
the Indian heartthrob Salman Khan, and Life of Pi (our synopsis: tiger and a
boy are trapped on boat, tiger is hungry, tiger doesn’t eat boy, real or not
real?).
Next, we read them a picture book that I put together yesterday. I
thought it would be a breeze to write a children’s story, but all of the
illustrations took forever! Fortunately, I had some help coloring them in. Our
plan was to read them the story and translate it line by line, but for each
line I read, the translation seemed to turn into a paragraph. So I ended up
asking the kids what they thought was going on according to the pictures they
saw, and then I added in bits of the plot that they missed. Interactive is
definitely the way to go here.
The next part of the plan was to have the kids create a group
story, where one student starts with one line, then another student adds
another, then another, and so on. In our first class we ran out of time for the
activity, but we gave it a shot in the second class. At first, I was really
nervous the game would fail. First of all, the class seemed more antsy than
usual today, maybe because it’s been getting so hot. Plus every time the train
goes by (multiple times per class), the noise is super distracting. Getting
them to sit in a circle was a whole to do.
Then, I called on a girl arbitrarily, and she thought I was asking her
to tell the story I’d just read to the class. Commence confusion.
After a couple more false starts, a girl who is a frequent and
enthusiastic contributor stood up and proceeded to begin a story, that kept
going, and going! I don’t remember it exactly, but it involved a boy and a girl
drawing in a garden and ending up at a lake. Her younger brother, who is
usually very quiet, volunteered to continue the story. He stood at attention
with his arms tight at his sides, and in a slight, lilting voice, he told of
how the boy was thirsty, and he wanted to drink some water from the lake. The
problem was that there was a hungry crocodile swimming in the lake as well. The
boy didn’t know what to do, because he wanted to drink some water, but the
crocodile was going to eat him.
At this point, the first girl took the story back, saying that the
boy decided to trick the crocodile by taking a stick and throwing it in the
water. The crocodile couldn’t tell the difference between the stick and the
boy, so he ate the stick, and meanwhile, the boy was able to drink some water
and get away safely. THE END.
I was so shocked and relieved that this sneaky story came out of
our generally rowdy classroom. Even though the kids were messing around while I
was trying to explain the instructions (granted, in English), they were
engrossed by the tales of their own classmates. I felt like a proud mother!
Running lessons where you aren’t sure you’ll really reach the kids
is scary. It’s overwhelming to have to answer to perplexed faces, and failing
feels like a waste of the little time we have here to make an impression. But all
the same, I’ve been saying to myself that if even two or three kids out of a
class of twenty decide to read more stories, write more stories, or read a newspaper
instead of play with it, that it counts as a step to success. The lessons that are the hardest to teach might be the most important.
לא עליך המלאכה
לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין להבטל ממנה.
It isn’t your job to complete the work, but you are not free to ignore it, either.