Whispering Shadow

Mehak is one of the advanced readers in my classroom who demonstrates a high degree of value based leadership and takes immense pride in her team’s and her own learning. In the month of September 2014, our team was struggling with two out of four fellows in the grade being out of action due to severe illness and the rest of us struggling with our own wellbeing. As a contingency plan, we had to reshuffle fellows among grades 7 and 8 to ensure continuity of learning. Due to the sudden changes in class structures and increased number of students to manage, the quality and quantity of my interaction with my own class fell significantly. I was feeling dejected that I couldn’t finish the term on a high after starting off on a strong footing. Noticing my mood, Mehak wrote to me a letter. Among the many things she wrote, she mentioned how I was the one who told her “how each chapter links to the vision” and “made her goals more clear”; how I showed her the “importance of friendship” by “c...

Aliya (see picture) is one of the sharpest and most hardworking students of my class. She is an exceptional leader. Above all, she is tenacious and raises her bar every time we require her to. Considering how most parents are in Shivaji Nagar, I had assumed her parents would be well educated to have trained not only Aliya but also their other two daughters well. I had assumed that they would be financially well off to afford education for all their three daughters in private schools or colleges. My visit to her house today proved me wrong. I had never visited Aliya's house because I always prioritized other parents over Aliya's  considering her parents' and her own investment in her education was high. I was at Mehfooz's house when he told me that Aliya lives in the neighbourhood. I told him to take me to her house after I had met his parents. He took me down the pathway to the street bordering the garbage dumping ground, which is  the largest in Mumbai. The stenc...

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...