The Creative Revolt

In this history lesson Sneha and I wanted the students to investigate the important dates, major events and critical players of the Revolt of 1857 by creating an artistic timeline from the information in their textbooks. 

After our realization from the previous class that giving an example greatly helps the students’ understanding of the task at hand, Sneha opened class by creating an artistic timeline of her life thus far, complete with drawings and dialogue. The students really enjoyed her animated presentation of the timeline and became visibly more comfortable sharing and participating in the lesson. 

We then paired the students and gave them 10 minutes to read through the text and notate the facts they thought important for their timeline. The students found this extremely difficult. After each sentence they would come up asking if it was an important sentence or not. I was very confused why the students were not able to make these decisions for themselves, and eventually Sneha and I had to ease their worry by sharing our own list of important points. 

However, the real difficulty came when we gave the students pieces of blank poster paper for their timelines. The looks of stress were so intense I thought the students were going to pass out from fear. 

Sneha then explained to me that drawing is not presented as a creative activity in Indian classrooms. Instead, for the few times that drawing is required in class, the teacher posts a picture and the students copy it line for line. Perfection is the goal, not creativity.

So it was not surprising that once we instructed the students to begin drawing and creating their timelines, they constantly came over to ask, “But didi, what are we supposed to draw?”

I pushed them to follow their imagination. I reminded them it was not the quality of the drawing that mattered, but rather the effort and content. However, the students could not be assuaged. After positive reinforcement still failed to bolster their confidence, I decided to make it a personal objective to make imagination a norm in these students’ lives. No one should ever be afraid to let their creative flag fly! 

It's a Pune Thanksgiving!

I experienced a serious shock this morning when I wished my 5th standard students a Happy Thanksgiving and they replied with blank, bored expressions. As an American, I had completely taken it for granted that everyone must know Thanksgiving.

So I of course took the opportunity to inform them of the amazing holiday when we eat a huge bird stuffed with bread and sausage with sides of buttery mashed potatoes, gravy, and my personal favorite, cranberry sauce from a can!

The real fun started though when I explained the tradition of giving thanks before hunkering down for our ridiculously fat feasts. The children immediately wanted to try it out.

While many of the students buttered us up sharing their gratitude for "Callie didi and Sneha didi," others expressed gratitude for their mothers and fathers who do everything for them so they can attend school and for their best friends who always share food when they don't have any to bring for lunch and who bring them notebooks to do their homework in when they are absent. 

Below Namrata shares her thanks for doctors while Anjali and Sumit express their thankfulness for Teach for India and their school:

Once everyone had a turn, I asked the students to reflect on how it felt to express their gratitudes in front of the class. Below, Prajaya shares an insight that I think is a pretty universal fear that may block many of us from expressing our thanks daily:

So my challenge for those lucky enough to have made it this far in the post is the same values homework that I assigned the students in school today: go out and tell someone you are thankful for that you are thankful for them!

Image Theater and Experiential Learning

In our next history lesson, Sneha and I explored the feelings of social unrest that contributed to the Revolt  of 1857 through Image Theater. 

To bring the students into our world of imagination and to connect to the previous class’s objective to understand leadership, Sneha and I opened the lesson by reading the story, Free the Children, as 5 students created frozen tableaus (or frozen scenes) of each part of the story. 

This exercise was a challenge for the students. They found it difficult to be imaginative in their physical depictions of the story, for instance it took them a long to comprehend the idea of embodying an inanimate object. 

After reflection, Sneha and I thought this opening activity may have been more beneficial had we given the students an example of a frozen tableaux or frozen scene from a video.

After completing our physical reading comprehension, Sneha led the students in a word blast on the idea of change. 

The students shouted out some really interesting perspectives, like the fact that we embody change “when we stop doing bad things and use self control” and that we can bring change when we “become the leader.” This idea prompted the students into a discussion on the added responsibilities that come with being a leader, and how becoming a leader affects your relationship to others.

After the word blast we delved into the academic ‘meat,’ i.e. the specific details of discontent among the people and discontent among the soldiers that spurred the revolt. However, we wanted the students to discover these specifics themselves. 

To do this, we divided the class into two groups - the Indians living under British rule and the English living in India during 1857. We then instructed the ‘Indians’ to sit completely still and silent and prompted the English to go over and take any possession they wanted from the ‘Indians.’ (Note - we did tell the students to handle possessions with respect and to not touch them anymore after bringing them back to their desks). 

After the ‘English’ had taken their fill, we asked the ‘Indians’ to reflect on how it felt to have their things taken without being able to do anything about it. The overall consensus was that it felt “bad,” but after further guiding questions Uday made the beautiful comment that the English were not good leaders because they were not treating the Indians as human beings. (See video below.)

Capitalizing on this newly divided class culture, Sneha read “Discontent Among the People” and instructed the ‘Indians’ to create a frozen tableaux as the ‘English’ analyzed what they observed. We then read “Discontent Among the Soldiers” and repeated the image theater exercise with the opposite groups. By this time in class we found the students to be more open to physical interpretation of the story and quicker to demonstrate their listening comprehension. 

Our plan was to then reflect by creating one giant tableaux as a class to show how we felt about the lesson. Unfortunately, as the best ones often do, our plans went awry and we ran out of time. Nonetheless, it was exciting to see the students teaching themselves through their own experiences and deepening their reflection and analysis skills. 

Session #2	Objective: SWBAT understand the events that led to the Revolt of 1857
Activity	Description	Materials
Opening	Read the story about Free the Children (see below chart for the story). Exposure Value - leadership	Copy of the story
Icebreaker/Spark	Call up 5 students and ask them to create a frozen image with their bodies (tableaux) without speaking based on the story that has just been read. Ask the other students to share what they see in the tableaux.
Investigation	Word blast - Change Guiding questions: When do you see change in your self/classroom/community/country? How does the change make the self/classroom/community/country different - better or worse? Who brings about change? How do these people act to bring about the change? Can you think of one big change that has happened or is happening in our country?	Writing surface
Main Game	Divide the class into two groups - the Indians living under British rule and the English living in India in the early 1800s. Instruct the ‘British’ to go take whatever they want from the ‘Indians’ and keep it for themselves.  Reflect - How did it feel to have your things taken? How did it feel to take others’ things? How does it affect the culture of the classroom to have one group taking advantage of the other? Now read “Discontent among the people” and do the following activity in the two groups Image Theater - Instruct the Indians to create a frozen tableau (scene) of how they feel as that person in society and ask the students in the other group to think critically and analyze what they see; do the same with the English group Now read “Discontent among the soldiers” and do the same Image Theater activity with critical thinking	Textbook
Reflection/Closing	Image Theatre reflection - create one giant tableaux as a class for how you felt about today’s lesson. Can go one by one and enter the tableaux with your shape or can do it altogether on the count of 3.

  

Values, Arts and Academics… The Triple Threat

I’ve been integrating arts-based learning in Sneha’s 5th Standard Superhero class for two consecutive weeks now and am inspired and buoyed by the children’s progress in critical thinking, depth of reflection and focused participation. 

Day 1 involved a value-centered lesson exploring the concept of leadership to lay the groundwork for our teaching about the Revolt of 1857 and the revolutionaries who envisioned a greater India. 

After each activity we opened the floor for reflections from the students. After the mirror activity, Uday reflected that “it doesn’t matter that she is the leader and I am the mirror because we are doing the movements together and it is better together.” 

Later, during the soup reflection at the end of the lesson, Uday said the class was “mind-blowing” and even asked if the class could do a project to clean up the neighborhood so that they could all become leaders. 

Needless to say, mine and Sneha’s minds were the ones blown away by Uday’s reactions to the lesson.