Whispering Shadow

Yasmeen was neither the star or the struggler in the classroom. She liked learning but would rarely participate in any after school activity. She grew by 1.3 years in the span of a year with Pritish and me (between two MYs). Her participation in the class had increased significantly too.   The situation at home however was different. Her parents had been meaning to withdraw her from school for a long time. They would show little interest in her education. Adolescent had hit her hard - attraction and crushes were a part of her life.They wouldn't acknowledge her changing moods and interest and often beat her up at any expressed emotions of adolescence she would show. They would draw her into family politics, that was especially complicated with their extended family. Emotional or mood contagion (which we read about this week) was a reality for Yasmeen and would play out frequently in the classroom in the form of elaborate story telling about fictitious incidents of her lif...

While I haven't been blogging, I have been writing more religiously than ever before in the form of weekly reflections to empty my mind and synthesize my learning. Over the last few months, I have been exploring the many reasons behind why I do what I do. I am going to capture all these reasons in this one post on my blog. Story 1: Students' Self-Awareness  I saw a beautiful example of the connect between the classroom and community, through the learning circle Siddharth conducts every morning with his kids. It was great to see the students discussing issues like "challenges faced by working women" in which Siddharth roped in the guest Ms. Kamal Bajwa, who was accompanying me. Kids asked questions like "What were the problems you faced as student?","What values did you show to overcome them?","Are those values still useful?" (not exactly with this grammar, but headed in this direction). I asked them why their first response to get...