Topi-logy!

02/05/10: Topii making. Made a lot of topiis! 8-9 different kinds with paper! Then solved some puzzles on demand! That's the first thing they asked for! Pooja, Priti, Mahesh, Irfan, Tushar, Akshay, - attendance in photos! Will upload soon!

I loved this class!

05 - Jul - 2009 (Sun)
A long standing problem was addressed in this class. A lot of kids do a lot of things in class, many a times! Today, kids were asked to interview themselves and people from their area on "How a class should be"! The interviews + kids' thoughts were put together and the kids themselves made rules on how they should behave in the class. These rules are now stuck on the classroom door and kids seem to follow them so far! :) This class was a long one and describing it in words is something I won't be able to so I won't even attempt!

Next class:

Played a lot at BC. Didii was late and hence, according to the rules made by the kids, she was to be punished. They unanimously agreed upon no-studies-only-play punishment for Didii! :) 2 new volunteers Deepika and Ranjini had come to the class, and playing a game together helped in better bonding of new Didiis and the kids.

Sagar!

Ajay says:
Hi everyone.
Here is the update for the session on 22/01/2012.

Ruby didi brought her friend Sagar to class. The kids were really excited to meet him. They gathered round him and started talking with him. Sagar shared a lot of jokes with the kids. Sagar also imitated various filmstars. The kids found this highly entertaining. Sameer in particular jelled well with Sagar.

Later, Sagar showed the kids his watch. The kids were amazed at his ability to read time from a braille watch. He later took out his stick. Sachin Bhaiyya and I asked the kids if they remembered the basic features of the stick. To our delight, most of them did.

Sagar later told the children about himself about his passion for music and how he copes and manages daily. Sagar also explained to the children the concept of braille. Then the class recited the song, "Little drops of water and sand make the ocean and the great land."

Phir, Sagar ne hamari shyam aur bhi haseen bana di. Ek badhiya raag gaa kar unhone hamara man jeet liya.

We then concluded the session.

This brilliant entertainer Sagar sure was a treat to all! Hope he returns!

Ayub Irani is a sick man!

13/02/10: This is the day when German Bakery is blasted. This is the day when I watch probably the greatest movie ever made in Marathi- Harishchandraachii Factory. This is the day I get to know about the rape of young girl from Patil Estate by Ayub Irani of the Irani basti.

22/02/10: Big event by KKPKP outside Patil Estate. Great posters they had brought. Anu Aga of Thermax had come in person! Met them all. They had displayed eve-teasing posters too. Saddest part- event attended by ladies mostly. When will our men learn???
All I wanted to do is, go to Irani bastii, scream out the name of Ayub Irani, paint his door, make a big scene in front of his family and the bastii about what a useless life he is leading. Krunal stops me!

Mathematical thinking and Sagar Chopde Patil!

9th and 10th Jan: Me, Hemant, Asim; all at Chopda! No class. :(
16/01/10: Only Sham and Akshay studied. Rest kept running around. Quite demoralizing! But are we not used to it? :D

17/01/10: Well, I had office so went an hour late. And guess what?! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Asim and Hemant - new teachers at Pankhudi! These two were continuing the topics from last class so beutifully! I was stunned! Fractions and their arithmatic was the topic of study. And I saw kids painting chess board squares to denote 2/3rd, 1/10th, and so on! These are the concepts that really really need to be understood well. And the kids are really not good at these basic things still. Anyway. They could do it within a sqaure. What about dividing a circle?

23/01/10: Zarna. She continued the topic. Circle!

24/01/10: Chopda's here! Zarna's birthday. No class!

26/01/10: Empress Garden for ever! Lovely lovely day! Still, point to be noted is that these kids don't like common picnics! They want exclusively their batch picnics only!

30/01/10: Asim, Hemant, Sumeet and me! Naseer and one more new kid joins us. This is Sumeet's first class. We are still getting the area concepts right through the Indian map. Kids have been given the problem of making the Indian flag. They're to calculate how much each colour cloth will be required, how much total cloth will be required, and so on. The idea is that they learn areas through this activity. Sumeet and Naseer instantly pair up! Naseer = sincerety personified! Amazing guy! He just wants to work hard! I wish the others learn from him! Sumeet starts off with some combinatorics problems. Sham's full of creative thinking. Irfan and Akshay are number too. Naseer too, picks up. Pooja and Naseer stay back longer, solving the problem of finding the sum of first 72 numbers!


31/01/10: Hemant alone! All sitting near the river. They studied for some time. They all enjoyed the formations of boats in the river. Kids clicked a lot of photos through Hemant's phone. Then Hemant asked them to draw pictures of the river scene. Pooja drew beautifully. Some others were also not too bad. This is a good exercise. Can be extended in some other class full time.

06/02/10: Sagar Chopde Patil- the guy who's cycling the whole of India planting trees, was invited to the class. Kids interacted with him. It was an effort towards making them understand environmental issues. Sumeet's M.Prakash coaching officially started from this day. He was all set with all the textbooks.  Till post 8pm. Textbooks already with Sumeet.

07/02/10: Sham's creative intelligence marked the day! He solved Sumeet's questions amazingly. Others do not possess this ability. Only if Sham could concentrate better! Need to work on this. Class went on till post 5pm at BC, by the river. Till the time it was dark enough to not be able to read/write.

13/02/10: Class goes on from 5 to 8! Pooja and Nasir are the main culprits. These kids don't just stop studying! We're following their textbooks and studying everything chaper by chapter. Making them prove things. Of course, all this, under the able guidance of Sumeet. He's taking care of Pooja and I'm trying to keep the remaining junta occupied!

14/02/10: Record! 2pm to 7:30pm! Pooja's Maths textbook is nearly accomplished! Competition means a lot to her. She always peeps into Nasir's book to make sure that she's ahead of him. Nasir is least bothered about others. Completely concentrating on his work. Just that he's too weak in some basic concepts. He's done everything till date through the most used method so far: pattern matching. Hmmm... Let's see. Others couldn't keep up their patience beyond 1.5hrs.

Listen!

This happened on 25/07/2009. Just noting it here since it is one of those innovative activities that I now think should have been documented well. Today, many a times I find it difficult to explain to newer volunteers what kind of creative ideas we have been implementing apart from regular studies. 

Anyway, here it comes:

LOTS of new volunteers had come on that day. In those days, volunteers would just come to the little multipurpose community room inside Patil Estate without ANY orientation, which usually created more problems than any help to those conducting the class. Anyway. Had to involve all of them along with the kids.

Made 6-7 groups having 2 kids and 1 volunteer each. Explained the activity to all: We are to leave from this room and walk till Boat Club aka BC (inside CoEP, 8-10 minutes walk from the slum if all goes well, :-) ) with our mouths shut. We will only keep our eyes and ears and other senses open to reception and note things around us. We will discuss our observations only after we reach our destination.

And thus our mute parade reached Boat Club and settled. Only then we started speaking. Asked kids to be ready with their notebooks and pens. Then came the first discussion topic: "What did you observe? If you were to hypothetically label the observations as 'Good' or 'Bad' (their, or rather, everybody's favourite labelling), how would you do it?" Each of them were asked to speak one by one.

"Didi, I saw 2 boys fighting near lane no. 10. They were hitting each other! It was very bad!" -Irfan. Then we all discussed a bit on fighting and all of them decided- along with Irfan (at least in theory)- that it was 'bad'. All noted this down in the 'Bad' column in their notebooks. (Tip: Every activity can be so subtly linked with writing that kids never realize they are performing any writing tasks.) Now came the fun part. Since Irfan first observed this and termed this as 'bad', he should not indulge into it and set an example by never fighting! All of them noted this down eagerly so that it gets written down and they can refer to it later and remind Irfan!

This then happened for everyone. Kids remembered each others' points and kept reminding each other for the next couple of months. :')

Here are some of the other observations:
"That bridge we crossed was such a good bridge! I observed it. I will make one, one day!"
"People honk unnecessarily! Bad!"
"How they drove near that signal, didi! Too fast! Bad!"
"Because we didn't talk unnecessarily, we could observe so many things we never observed on our everyday route! Very good!"
"One car was giving out black smoke. Bad."
"They were leaving the taps open, letting water waste... Not good."
"I heard the birds!"
"There was too much noise outside but once we entered the campus, it is much better."
"There's a lot of garbage at the banks of the river."
"He tried to speak while on the way even when we all had decided not to!"
.
.
.

One of the volunteers asked me after the class: "Is this what you do? What's the whole point of this? I mean, what's the use?!"
Would you like to answer him? If yes, then please leave a comment! :')

Many Santas! Christmas2011!

Told kids on 24th that since they think of themselves as 'hatke' people, they should celebrate Christmas in a 'hatke' manner. They were told that instead of depending on some one Santa, we'll all be Santas! Means? Well, they were supposed to get gifts for their classmates. Gifts whose value cannot be measured. That is, not anything that can simply be bought, but something that is handmade by them. And the gift that they can get for didi-bhaiyyaa is that they will study well in the class.

And just imagine what they did the next day! Beautiful cards- 3D folded, painted, written, ... Even boys did all of this! And Bushra got an earthen pot painted! And height of everything- Amreen got kheer made by herself and gave a spoonful to every bhaiyyaa-didi! They got multiple presents for their classmates and then argued that now they are eligible to give presents to didi-bhaiyyaa! So we had to accept, finally!

And what gift did didi-bhaiyyaa give them? A screening of one of Unicef Meena videos in which a sister and brother exchange their daily routine tasks for a day and the brother realizes how tough house work is and promises to help his sister everyday!

Class update

Sunday 13th November 2011

1. Only two volunteers- Ruby and Shivam. Very difficult to make kids come as the famous Marathi reality show "Home Minister" had come to Patil Estate. Went to every home and tried to convince parents and kids to come to class. 10 from 3A, 6 from 3B and 8 from Batch2 came finally. 
2. Escorting was made easy by not shouting at kids at all and by just telling them once to be careful while on the road. Batch2 kids- Naseer, Sufia, Khushboo, Ruksar- were requested to help in escorting both times.
3. 6pm- class starts. All kids were asked to sit in one class. There was only one rule- there will be no rules. Teacher sat on the podium and asked kids to sit wherever they like (Discipline is a relative term. It is we who attach a meaning of sitting straight on a particular bench to it. If kids concentrate better sitting wherever they like, then let that be the discipline!). 
4. Immediately everyone circled the teacher and all tried to fit on the podium. Few batch2 kids sat on the last row benches and studied Math and asked doubts in between. Remaining joined all the younger kids. 
5. Teacher asked kids what they would like to do today. "Story!" Thus started the story of one Diidii and one Bhaiyyaa. What do they do? "They teach us!" But that's only on Saturdays and Sundays. What do they do on weekdays? Do you know the weekdays? Can you recite all weekdays? Everyone shouted out the days of the week in their respective mother tongues. Are you smart enough to recite the days of the week in all the three languages that we all collectively know here? Then we all learned weekdays in Urdu, Marathi and English. 
6. OK, so the story must go on. So then kids answered whatever they imagined about these Diidii-Bhaiyyaa. "On weekdays, Diidii-Bhaiyyaa must be having lunch, washing clothes, going to college, working, ..." OK. So let's find out how much time Diidii-Bhaiyyaa spend in these activities. How many hours do you go to school? If you attend school between 11am to 5pm, how many hours are these? Thus we solved some clock examples. 
7. Story must go on... So then these Diidii-Bhaiyyaa who are just as busy as the kids during the week, have holidays on weekends. So they get up little late, do some pending tasks of the week and come to COEP at 4pm. Then they go to Pataangan. Then they go to every home and ask the kids to come to Pataangan. Somehow kids come and then they take the kids to COEP with some difficulty. By the time they reach the classroom, they are exhausted! Then they shout a lot, run around the classroom, teach something and get even more exhausted... So that's the dard-bharii daastaan of these Diidii-Bhaiyyaa.
8. Sorry to have told you a very boring story having a sad ending. Would you like this story to have a happy ending? Would you like to reduce the dard of these Diidii-Bhaiyyaa? "Yes!" Then do something about it! You will be given twenty minutes to think and design some action plan which can help these Diidii-Bhaiyya. You are free to punish these Diidii-Bhaiyyaa if you think they are going wrong somewhere. Make groups of 4-5 among yourselves quickly, sit anywhere you like, one bhaiyyaa/diidii from Batch2 will be your group leader and under his/her guidance, you've to write down your action plan. 
9. 2 kids didn't join any group and worked independently (Remember, no rules!). After about 40 minutes, everyone was done and we all huddled back on the podium. All groups read their list of rules. 4-5 kids had also written down 7 weekdays in three columns, in three different languages, without anyone asking them to do so!! 
10. As each group finished reading, teacher asked the group members to tell out their names loudly so that we could clap for them. Teacher noted down these names and thus marked attendance (no extra effort or time is required to note the attendance!). All of us together consolidated the list and then everyone wrote down the final common list. Thus 3A and 3B kids made rules for their class. 
11. A competition was announced for the coming class- During the week, kids are supposed to make a nice chart of these rules- using whatever resources they have- and bring it to the class on coming Saturday. The best three will be given very precious gifts (Teacher didn't tell the kids what gift it would be. It would be- the top three get to become the caretakers of their class!)! Naseer, Sufia, Khushboo, Ruksar from Batch2 were the ones who helped the younger kids. Pooja, Priti, Mahesh, Tushar studied Math. Class ended at 8pm. Kids were dropped back home by 8:30pm.

15th August 2011

An idea:

We can call kids for 2hrs, just like we do for weekend classes, maybe between 11am-1pm (their school flag hoisting gets over by 10am) or our usual time of 5pm-7pm and conduct this activity.

Advance work:
Prepare nice colourful friendly sheets which look like time-table in some sense. One sheet per child.

On the day:
1. Engage children in a discussion about what you do whole day. Share the things you do, responsibilities you take, etc with children. You'll have to make it easy to understand as well as interesting. This discussion is just to help them understand what exactly they need to fill in the sheet.
2. Distribute the sheets and ask kids to write about all the things/work they do whole day. Give them enough time for this.
3. Ask every student to read out what he/she has written. As the student reads it, ask others to conclude if that student is more dependent on others or more independent of others in his/her daily life. For example, a student who washes clothes and goes to school is more independent than some student who simply goes to school and does nothing else.
4. Thus, try to make two groups of students- more dependent and more independent. Lead the discussion in such a way that the dependent group concludes on its own that it needs to do something to become more independent. Ask them to write down this conclusion.
5. Ask each of the dependent group kids to specifically write about one particular responsibility that he/she would like to undertake, in order to be more independent. Ask them to take help of the independent group kids. Once they are done, collect the sheets.
6. Make everyone understand that it is not really a good idea to let someone else do your personal work. And those who do your personal work for you are actually "taking care of you".
7. Ask each of the dependent group kids to tie a raakhii to any of the independent group kids' hand, symbolising the actual meaning of "protecting / caring for". Even the young boys at Patil Estate think that girls are there to protect for. But this exercise can lead to- a boy tying raakhii to a girl. Make sure they understand that girls provide daily protection to boys.
8. Motivate dependent group kids to become independent and have a raakhii tied on their hands next time.
9. Thus celebrate "Independence Day"!

May day!

01/05/10: Yesterday Shirish Sir called. All our kids passed the exams! (Except Raj, but we'll take better care of him this year.) Celebration time! Aamrakhanda at lunch for entire Hermann center! Great students filled our bowls first! Me, Shrikant, Asim, Hemant, Jessica. Then me and Shrikant went to Patil Estate post lunch. For updates. Karishma, her brothers, Sham, his brother, Raj, Vijay, Swati.


Class: 3to5pm. At BC. Sham, Akshay, Irfan, Mahesh, Pooja, Priti. Ruby. Tushar and Reshma and Nasir are out of station. Nasir's other friends were not interested in coming today. Me and my kids after a long long time! We tried solving 3 puzzles in 2 groups. Then made a paper plane which returns to us! From Arvind Gupta's book. Then sat and talked about early marriages of girls at Patil Estate. Sundar is getting married on the 25th!! Told my girls not to do it at least in their own cases. Told the boys too. And yeah, Priti failed this year. 2 of the puzzles are still unsolved. Tomorrow!

02/01/10: No time for class! Shady! Sad! :-/


03/01/10: Hemant and his cousin Dhananjay had come. Tushar and Mahesh and Sham were trying to say things like- "Well... Been ages since Didii took us to BC..." :') So BC it was!

Then somebody somewhere said "Cricket!" And off they all went! And came back in negative time with 2 bats and a blue plastic ball! Hoof! I was to have a tough time today!

But then immediately we had a deal. I told them, you can play, but only after 16 minutes of study. Jitnaa study utnaa khel!

Thus we started with the homework problem at BC. None had done it at home anyway. :) With some difficulty, they calculated the length and breadth of the 3 strips of our flag. Which came out to be 12 and 2.66... (recurring decimal).

By this time some of them were already putting up the stupms! :D Then they played! They fought! When I tried to give some technical suggestion, Mahesh looked at me and asked, "Have you ever even played this game?!" And thus I knew who was the student then! :D :)

Enough! 16 minutes of cricket! Back to study with lots of mental resistance from all kids. Now since each strip is of equal size, its area could also be found by dividing the whole flag area by 3. But then, 12*8/3 didn't match with 2.66*12!! Why?! What if we calculated 2.6666*12?? Which is bigger among 2.66 and 2.6666??

Thus it continued. With an increasing demand for cricket! :D But then there was no cricket since Tushar and Mahesh and Irfan didn't pay attention during the study time. No one student can be separated from the class. If even one student does something "bad", the entire class will have to face the consequences. Unity!

During the second study time, Tushar and Irfan had an argument which broke into a violent fight. Terrible. All the way back to Patil Estate we tried convincing them both...

P.S.: Dhananjay left early. But he had fun. New volunteer in the making?? ;-)

27/12/09: What is meant by identity?
-"Olakh".

How would you identify yourselves within Patil Estate?
-By our names! Simple!

Just outside Patil Estate? Say, at BC?
-"Mahesh, from Patil Estate."

Correct! Anywhere in Pune?
-"Priti, from Patil Estate, Shivajinagar."

Right. Outside Pune?
-"Pooja, from Pune."

Right! What if you go out of Maharashtra?
-"Akshay, from Maharashtra."

Good. Imagine that you have achieved excellence in your chosen field from some big institutions in India and now you've been invited outside India, to say America, or Australia, or some such country. Then?
-"Poonam, from India."

Let's suppose that going out of the Earth will not be easily possible in the coming decade. :) So we'll have to end our questionnaire with the question given above. So now, what is it that associates a primary identity to your name in this world?
-"India."

I see. If India is so important, let's check what all you know about her.
National anthem?
-"Yup!"
Our flag?
-"Of course, yes!"
What do you know about our flag?
-"3 colours, their meaning, the wheel in between, its meaning, ..."
Haa! We all learnt it in primary school. Tell me something that all the smart kids in 7th, 8th and 9th std may know! :)
-"Well... Um... That..."
OK OK. Tell me, what if I wish to make a flag of my own? I go to a cloth store. Then? What do I ask for at the store?
-"Oh! How much cloth?! Well! The length and breadth of the flag! I think one of it is 12 or something..."
12?! OK good! Let's say the other one is 2/3rd of 12. So how much is it??
------

From here it all started. And went on till finding the area of the flag, finding the cost of the cloth given the cost per unit area, and went on till a homework problem in which the dimensions and area of each of the 3 strips were to be found.

I hate to begin the class with "Today we'll learn some geometry..."
:)

20/12/09: Geometry. Area. Wanted to cover some basics of these. But Mahesh, Tushar and Priti, the only attendants of the class, went like- What's this Didii, we went to such an interesting outing yesterday and you don't even wish to know about it???!
:) :) :)

Thus let them talk about the TCS event. And talk they did!! There was only one rule from my side- If you wish to tell me about the event, you'll have to give me every possible minute detail! If you stop in between, I'll start teaching geometry!

Thus they explained it all. Asked them to draw a graph of the place they visited, so that they understand proportions, distances, orientation, etc. :)


26/12/09: Photo time! Kids enjoyed all the event photos till date on Krunal's laptop, rendered by none other than Shrikant!

I had to attend Dad's programme. So me and Asim left within an hour. Shrikant and Krunal continued the class by reading out some interesting article on the laptop for some time; since it was really difficult to keep the kids away from the laptop.

12/12/09: Zarna came!

Revise! We tried revising the things done in recent past. As always, it was a task to bring the kids into study-mode from the game of "Aandhalii koshimbiir"!

They still have great difficulty in understanding fractions. I mean, they can do the typical textbook problems well; but anything put up even slightly differently makes them go blank sometimes!

Revised the banking concepts, interest, rate of interest, etc. Solved some simple problems posed differently. Tried to learn percentages and fractions through "chapatis" (ardhii chapati, chatkor chapati, 50% chapati, 30% chapati, etc).


13/12/09: Lohgad trip. Chhuttii given to the teacher by students.


19/12/09: Chhuttii to the teacher again. Kids went for TCS event. Conducted batch3 class. This was great fun!

Full of inventive steps to keep up the spirits fo the kids! Will write more about this, later!

22/11/09: Zarna madam. Along with some simple interest problems. At BC. Classroom not available. Me = not available.

Kids told her that I had promised them on Saturday that if they study well in that class then I would let them play on Sunday!

:D :D

I got to know of it when Zarna actually requested me to not tell such things to the kids!

They are so so so smart...


30/11/09: More by Zarna. Me = exams.

21/11/09: Banking. Children were made to answer it all.

What was it like when there were no banks? Where did people keep their money? What if someone needed more money than he actually had?

What will happen if all of us start keeping money in a safe in our houses? What are the dangers of keeping all the money like this? What are the advantages? Isn't bank a safer place?

How do banks work? What if I want to borrow some money? Where does this money come from? What if one fine morning all the customers go to the bank and withdraw all their money?

Why would anyone lend you any money? How will the lender ensure that he is profited through this deal? Have you ever heard of interest rate on loans?

Why would you put your money in the bank? Safety? Interest on deposit?

Why do fixed deposit schemes have greater interest rate? Do they give some kind of assurance to the banks?

Would you tell me, without solving for PNR/100, how much money will I have at the end of 1, 3.5 and 7 months, if I keep 100 rupees in a bank today, at a simple interest rate of 3% per month? Would you write down today's discussion after going home and show it to me tomorrow?

They answered almost all the questions eventually. Right from Saawkaars exploiting the needy to banks being supported by the govt through our tax money! Phew!

The objective behind this discussion was to study banks. The objective behind studying banks was to understand the meaning of rate of interest. The objective behind understanding the meaning of rate of interest was to solve simple interest problems. The objective behind solving simple interest problems was to study rationals and irrationals (which is yet to materialise).

08/11/09: Class by Zarna, Nivedita and Murthy! I'm busy with something at Modern Cafe Chowk, along with Krunal and Amruta! :-|

25/10/09: No class. Office office.

Long vacation. Sad things around.

07/11/09: ClassesInBrief. Had planned to give a holiday due to some family engagements. But when Nivedita called me from Patil Estate saying "Kids are asking about you...", I had to go! :) Their exams are on. All except Reshma and Swati were present.

Revised the "04/10/09" class. Then studied rationals and irrationals and reals. Studied the set theoretic resemblance between 'our classroom, Patil Estate, Pune' and 'Natural numbers, Whole numbers, Rational numbers'. :-)

Have been meeting Karishma's mom on and off. Her hand pains properly. :-| Realised that one can only take the horse to the lake...

P.S. : Girish came!

11/10/09: At SambhajiPark! Thought of taking these children to the park too! :) As usual, had loads of fun.

 And yeah, the first thing kids told me on this day was, "Didii, we had so much fun yesterday!" Yesterday = Class by Krunal = B-).

Diwali vacation!


24/10/09: Krunal. I joined post 6pm. 2-3 were busy solving their English question paper. Others were least bothered. We let them be. No Swati. :-/

10/10/09: Krunal alone. Patil Estate classroom's not avalable. But nothing deters Mr. KD! Class in the small hall near Ambedkar School!

They solved some Math problems. 'Finding the next term of a sequence', to be presice. Kids enjoyed doing it! Akshay would always be the first one to get the formula right.

Krunal's a very good teacher! No arguments!