Whispering Shadow

I wish... ...you know and feel unconditional love and belonging and can offer it to others. ...you feel heard and seen and can make others feel the same. ...you can care and provide for self without feeling greed or inadequacy ...you are compassionate to others and most importantly your self ...you have the courage to be yourself and yet, accept that the self is a perpetual work in progress ...you can understand and question different paradigms before embracing them in your worldview. ...you can let go of beliefs, values and world views that are disproved or no longer serve you and your world without feeling shame, guilt or inertia. ...you are open to your outer world of people, places, things and experiences, and your inner world of thoughts, feelings, values and beliefs. ...you can plan for your life but also respond to emergence, trusting your intuition. ...you are self-reliant and yet appreciate your interdependence with other beings and nature. ...you strive for happiness, meaning...

Seeing the new fellows who have joined our school team, I am reminded of how we started our journey in Jafari. I am reminded of the long path we have walked since that day of 24th June when we first met my kids. Looking at the journey of the fellowship from an everyday micro perspective did not make the growth easily apparent. However, when I compare my classroom now to how it was last year and when I compare our instruction style as compared to our incoming batch, I realize somethings have changed. I am much more perceptive of the needs of my children and how to reach out to them. Not only that, I am aware of how to convert the insights of perception to instruction in the classroom. I see how my teacher presence has improved significantly, how I am a lot calmer in the classroom now and as a result, a lot smoother in executing my plan. I understand the need to spend time investing my children in what I believe is good for them. Neither academic, values or exposure are complete...

I finally met half of the 140 sixth graders I will be teaching over the next two years, along with my team of three other fellows. Majority of them have been with Teach for India for four years but initial assessment results have shown that they lag behind their grade level considerably (some at an emergent level - which means at a KG level of reading fluency). Reasons for low achievement levels have been aplenty and at this point, I do not have enough information to deduce which of those are facts and which opinions. Let me present some of the facts.My school is run by a large Shia trust and is one of the largest in the Shivaji Nagar area. The class is mostly composed of Shia Muslims (around 60-70%) and Sunni Muslims (around 30-35%) and one-two Hindu student. An intriguing thing is that the school is next to one of the largest dumping grounds in the Chembur-Ghatkopar area - in which people claim bodies of victims of the gang violence are found. This gang violence is a reason why pa...