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Greetings from Sittilingi!
The Northeast
Monsoon this year has brought torrential rains in excess to
TamilNadu with extensive damage to life,crops and property.
Sitttilingi too has been affected badly. Luckily, there has been no
loss of life or heavy damage to property in Sittlingi. The
approach road to Thulir has a small stream without a culvert.
This normally has no water. But in these rains , it had chest
-high water and many days children and adults have been unable to
cross this to come to Thulir. Consequently during these past weeks
attendence has been very erratic.
Parents meeting:
We called for a meeting with the parents of the children coming to Thulir, on 8 th Oct. There was a partial response to our call. One problem was that there was a solareclipse that day during the hour of the meeting. Some parents didnot want to venture outduring the eclipse [partly reined in by the special movie on TV!]. Some children had stopped coming temporarily during that week as a new private tution centre was opened in the village. The parents of these children too didnt come. Subsequently the centre was closed down after a couple of weeks as there were not enough students to make it profitable for the teacher. Some of these have since come back to Thulir and a few others are feeling embarrassed to come back!! [We are trying to reach out to them!]
For this meeting, we had planned an exhibition of chiuldren's work so far and also a demo of the learning materials. These were enthusiastically put up by our senior students as well as our trainees. They also manned the different demo desks to explain how the learning materilas are used.There was much enthusiasm and it was heartening to see their sense of ownership, and pride in Thulir.
During the meeting, in which about 20 parents attended, we first asked for their feedback of what they felt about children attending Thulir and whether they felt that there has been any change in the children. Almost all of their responses were positive [we guess the parents who had negative opinions simply didn't turn up!!]. One parent was happy that her daughter speaks a bit of English now, something she has learnt after coming to Thulir. A 15 year old boy's parent felt he has improved in his conduct at home. [He had severe conflicts with parents earlier]. The mother said that he helps her with accounts in her work with the women's sangam. She also felt that his general awareness level has increased.They also felt he is polite in his conduct now [earlier the conflicts woould involve much heated arguements and consequent beatings by parent]. Parents of teenage girls felt that the girls need to come home sooner, as some days they come after it gets dark and this creates anxiety in their minds.
We then explained our approach to learning and how we go about it in Thulir. One of the common perceptions [and a complaint] among several parents earlier was that there was much noise and playing in Thulir. We tried to explain that play is an important aspect of child's growth and that we do try to balance it with more academic pursuits, and how ours is not a "silent classroom" approach to teaching and it is more of children learning by themselves with our help. We also explained that keeping a child's motivation to learn alive is important and that much of our focus through various activities is centered on this aspect.
Soap making
We have made soap at Thulir using a cold process which is quite simple. Parents from village and staff of our Hospital have bought this soap and have placed further orders. This has been very encouraging and we hope to make this a regular activity.
Alternative Schools' Network meeting
We are part of an education network that meets every year once. This year the meeting was hosted by Anand Niketan, a small school in Nashik. This year's theme was "body and mind", and there were some interesting discusssions on what schools can do in integrating the activities of the body with those of the mind. The meeting was an opportunity to meet people with different approaches to teaching/learning and hear about their experiences. Several of the schools exchange students and provide for exposure, and this seems to be a very important learning opportunity for children. We hope to become a part of this programme as it looks very promising for Thulir students too.
We also visited some of the network member schools during this trip. The Timbaktu school in Andhra Pradesh, is a school we have been interacting with for several years. We visited the school after a break of 2 years and it was nice to see the changes there. They have new buildings for the school and have added several new features in the campus such as a cowshed, a chicken coop and new vegetable gardens.
The Khel-ghar in Pune is a Learning Centre for children from Pune slums and is very similar in character and activities to Thulir, though in an urban setting. It was interesting to note so many similarities and also discuss several of the details of activities in the centre [and the several problems one faces!] .
We also visited the Aksharnandan School in Pune. This school is a privately run Marathi medium school offering excellence to middleclass/ elite children. The School is well equipped offering a range of activities to children.
Visitors
Vijay and Gracy, friends from Bangalore visited Thulir. Vijay
is an electronics engineer. We had been doing binary maths at
Thulir and had mentioned how it is used in Computer circuits. So
Vijay's visit became useful in discussing basics of logic
circuits. It was an interesting sessions with lots of questions
and the basics became clearer. Vijay has made detailed notes for
further classes and has sent them by email.
As always we will be very happy to hear from
you.
Anuradha and Krishna
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