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!