Kidnapped in India. Getting to know our students through their stories.

Ghani: I was kidnapped when I was two years old. My brother found the thieves. He fought to take me home. He brought the criminals to justice. The police approached my brother. They paid him money for his good work. They also paid him money so they could take credit for the arrest and get [...]

Student work

My brother is like a star
but he likes little stars
He loves me a lot
But he doesn’t like my bad things
I like grape trees, my brother says
But I don’t like the grape seeds, he says.
I like the taste
but I don’t like the peel
-Gauthami
My mother loves me a lot
But she doesn’t like useless things
I like rose flower [...]

Incorporating Individual and Community Stories

At APRS, students started PowerPoint projects on the following topics: traffic, mosquitoes, water, and religion. Because we are only at APRS twice a week, it didn’t make sense to do individual projects, since they would require much more time considering the limited number of cameras we have. We asked students to research [...]

Using the Digital Camera

During this past week, our students have been taking photos with the digital camera on their school grounds. While they were asked to take photos of images relevant to text that they wrote beforehand, they’ve been sidetracked by their camera access. It’s great to see their enthusiasm for being able to document their [...]

Islam and India: Student writings on world faiths and recent floods

I asked the students to write about a special memory they had. Munna, a student whose group project was on religion, misinterpreted the assignment and wrote to me: Religion is like memory (for) anyone who cannot see with his eyes, he sees with his mind.
When asked, ‘If there was one thing you would change about [...]

Some More Photo Presentations from the Girls at Railway HS

As the girls that I am teaching at Railway HS are smoothly moving on to learning about the video camera, I uploaded their final Powerpoint presentations, which they put together with the photographs that they took in our little field trips. If you remember from my previous posts, the girls were divided into groups and [...]

The eraser and other simple poems

At Nalgonda A.P.R.S. Boy’s Residential School the chalkboard eraser is a newspaper. The students unfold the front page, read the headlines, the day’s events are then torn up and the paper is used to erase the board. Is someone willing to donate erasers to this school? The boy’s lessons are wiped out by current events.
Here [...]

Please keep the girls in your prayers.

We have just started to get to know the girls at the Railway school where we began teaching this week. Please keep them in your prayers. I was just informed that one student passed away from Dengue fever today. We are not sure who yet. I’ll try to find out more as soon as I [...]

Railway Girls High School

During these introductory lessons, I’ve been acutely aware of the role that gender plays in our students’ lives, perhaps due to the fact that both schools are single-sex. As Danny mentioned in his post, the boys at Nalgonda are really kinesthetic learners–in order to keep their attention, we must plan activities that engage their [...]

Our first day teaching The Modern Story at the Railway Girls School

In the Head Mistress’s office, a painting of scenic India is accompanied by the caption: “To know the world one must construct it.” Mr. Pravakar, a teacher and assistant at the Railway Girls School, said,
“It took me three days to select this quote. I believe it captures the spirit of our school.”
The quote also resonated [...]