Greetings from Thulir
We are writing this on Tamil New Year’s day. Thulir turns 22 today. We look back on these two decades with immense gratitude and happiness. It is truly a blessing to have so many students, parents, colleagues, friends and donors who are personally touched by and connected to what we have been doing together.
Teacher Trainees!
Our focus in Thulir has always been on creating a culturally relevant, community-rooted model of education that centers dignity and inclusion. Through the experiences that we have had with building supportive learning spaces for children, we have realized that having a cadre of young, Adivasi facilitators who can work with and in the communities is essential.
Towards this end, we have taken on seven fresh and enthusiastic youth from the valley to undergo a year-long training programe at school. We aim to share our pedagogical approach with them and help them as they gradually create several nurturing learning spaces in the villages over the next few years.
Practical Social Studies- Mock Elections in Thulir
The buzz and fever around the state elections this month has reached the Sittilingi village too. There were a lot of questions from the children about how elections work, whether Vijay would be the next chief-minister, how voting for a candidate in Sittilingi would translate to a chief minister in Chennai, and so on.
We thought this was a good opportunity to teach them all about this via a mock-election! The entire school was divided into five constituencies and three students were chosen in each constituency to be representatives from three different parties.
All the conflicts which normally play out among adults before polling day played out among children too. Our politicians could have learnt a thing or two from the novel ways in which the children solved the conflicts that arose. At Thulir, the number of books read and skills learnt are counted among the assets the candidates are asked to declare. While some children wrote the exact amount in their piggy banks(Rs. 49.50, Rs.0, etc.) others fabricated numbers and claimed to have read 80 books or even 410 books!
During counting the little citizens cheered for every vote counted with no regard to their favorite party. This time it was a landslide victory for the Iyarkai padhukappu kazhagam (Nature Protection Party). The MLAs were quite progressive and chose the chief minister by lottery to avoid any conflicts!
Science Fair
Science is not only the knowledge we acquire and have acquired from our study, but it is also the process or the way we study our physical world and the attitude we develop toward our world.
When teaching science, the emphasis should be on the process – how to learn – rather than on the product – what to learn. Observing, questioning, experimenting, and recording play large roles in learning and understanding science.
Inspired by our friend and mentor, Arvind Gupta, we believe one can learn science and perform scientific experiments without any fancy equipment or lab, but with simple everyday materials and trash that we would otherwise throw out.
We decided to hold a day-long Science fair to share what we do with parents as well as the teams from the other institutions in Sittilingi. Experiment stations were set up at various points around the school under different themes like Air, water, Human body, Electricity, Magnetism, pumps and the history of the earth. One or two students manned each station. The visitors could see the experiments demonstrated and even try doing it themselves. This fair was a huge success.
Cultural Evening
Yet another enjoyable and memorable cultural evening! The children once again surprised us with their talents, energy and enthusiasm. Children who just the previous day were shy or kept forgetting their steps and dialogues, performed amazingly on stage before a large audience. Everyone enjoyed Sai Swetha’s excellent choreography. The plays performed under the guidance of Souradeep, Ravi and Anu were also well received!
Other Events in Thulir
Bringing people together- The Sittilingi Run!
Trip to Sathanur Dam
Practical Social Studies- Visit to the bank in Kottapatti.
One day pedagogy workshop for SOFA , Porgai and THI team.
Learning basic programming- scratch classes with Mani.
As always, we are so very grateful to all of you, for the support which allows us to do this work. Thank you.