Endorsing Children’s Opinions

Our education system includes all the following persons in the decision making in schools – school owners, schools leaders, teachers, parents, representatives from politics and bureaucracy.

It does not however include an important stakeholder - the student. While we have built the entire edifice of education around students, we make them passively accept and imbibe all processes and policies that we adults consider pertinent. When we incessantly talk of moving away from teacher-centric classrooms to child centric ones, should we not also consider schools adopting a more child-centric approach to decision making?

Many adults may respond to this saying - “Ah! But children do not really know what is good for them. If given a choice they will only like to spend their time on fun activities. In any case they cannot think about serious issues such as learning and education.”

So we spoke to some children to understand what they had to say in this matter. We asked them to mention one thing they liked in their school and another that they wanted to change. The responses we got from them were startling. Here is a sample of what the children shared.

•  Mridula is 13 years old; fond of dance and painting. She has this to say about the public school in a Tier 2 city she goes to.

• Eleven year old Akshat is quite a musician. He plays the keyboard and the tabla. A voracious reader, he loves to read the ‘Wimpy Kid’ series. He writes:

•  Thirteen year old Meena studies in a government school. She aspires to use her education to succeed in life. She said that she likes her teachers in school because most of them teach very well!

These three responses from three very different children emphasise that they notice and appreciate the intangibles in their school environment. They’re not just thinking about having fun, having things easy, or focusing on the obvious such as infrastructure and comfort.
When we asked some children about one thing they would like to change about their schools, the suggestions were equally insightful as their opinions about their schools.  

• Mridula wrote:

• Sanah has just stepped into her teen years and has an equally relevant comment. She says:

• When asked to cite an example of a pointless rule she shared that they are allowed to borrow only one book from the library every week. She often is able to read through a library book in three or four days but has to wait for the next library period to get her hands onto another book.
• Meena would like her school to teach more English and Math since she considers them important for her future education and career. She also suggests they should offer extra-curricular activities like dance and music.
• Jay would like his teachers to be more willing to answer questions rather than telling him not to be cheeky. He says he asks questions because he is really intrigued by a topic and not because he is trying to be as his teachers call him - ‘oversmart’.

Notice how none of the respondents spoke about having air-conditioned classrooms, comfortable bean bags instead of chairs, soft drinks instead of water in the hot summer months. Each child has tried to focus on a real and essential issue.
This small survey reiterated that children are thinking individuals; they can distinguish between their wants and needs and express them clearly. Children's expectations from their schools are not frivolous or immature. We must begin to accomodate their thoughts and aspirations for their centres of knowledge. Not only will this make schools more democratic, it will instill in children a greater sense of responsibility towards their own learning.
 





 

The Day that Comes Once in a Year

Annual Days are quite the big deal for all schools. Weeks and months of toil and hard work are put into the preparations for the event. On this day the school comes out and tells the world, “Look at how good we are! All our students participate in extra-curricular activities.” In our adult wisdom we consider annual days a platform for children to exhibit their creativity and develop confidence.

Today we share a story about one such Annual Day.

A harried teacher was instructing her pre-scholars to remain quiet and line up for their performance. She kept running around, from one end of the waiting area to the other, getting her students ready. Just as the Chief Guest was to walk in, one of her students, Priya, started calling out to her loudly. The teacher ran to Priya, first urging her to keep quiet and then asking her what the matter was. Priya, with a face full of wonder and amazement that only a four-year-old can have, looked up at the skies, pointed with her small, chubby finger, “Look! Pigeon!”
The teacher was stumped. Should she shout at little Priya for being amazed by a pigeon, even as the Chief Guest was walking in? Or should she build on this wonder and fascination to talk about pigeons?

As people who are engaged with educating children we often encounter such ‘opportunities’. Yet we often ignore them for our pre-determined agendas. While we talk about experiential education and harp on the Play Way method, we often tailor these approaches to incorporate what we think is appropriate for the children. We try to determine the experiences and takeaway for children from these experiences. What we tend to forget is that each child is capable of thinking. We tend to ignore their authentic responses because we presume that they do not know enough.

Children can partner with adults in their own learning process, if their perspectives are accommodated in. We need to reflect on how we impose our ‘agenda’ on children. Take for example the choice of colour for their dresses - do all girls have to love pink? Or the kind of story books we select, as well as the learning experiences we create for these little individuals.

Let us go back to our story.

The teacher reflected on her experience. She realised that the children were not engaged in the show because it was not something they had wanted to do. They were merely abiding by her instructions. No one had asked them for their ideas or suggestions. So the next year the teacher started a theme on ‘Water’ a month before the Annual Day. Children experimented with water, shared experiences. Among other activities, the class heard stories on water and rivers. The children identified a story they wanted to act out. The teacher then asked the children to pretend that they were 'water' and to decide how they wanted to move. The young children with the teacher’s guidance actually choreographed their routine - deciding movements that were simple, suitable and spontaneous!
Every day the children looked forward to practicing their story. For Annual Day they put up their best performance because they were showcasing ‘their’ story for their parents!

Children have an infinite capacity to learn and express. We as teachers and parents just need to tap the potential and watch how they blossom.

Build the Trust

Today we will talk about the influence teachers have on the minds of their students. We have a lot of stories to demonstrate this, but the ones we have chosen were shared with us by two parents.

The first story is about Ishaan who is fifteen years old and like most teenagers spends more time in the virtual world. His parents often worry about the amount of time he spends in front of his PC. They feel that he is somehow losing touch with the real world and Nature. On a recent road trip to the country side, Ishaan was spending a lot of time on his smart phone updating his friends about the journey rather than experiencing the real journey. As the car was passing near a village, Ishaan suddenly asked to stop. There were sugarcane fields on either side of the highway. He stepped out of the car, entered a field and just touched a sugarcane plant. He then requested one of the farm hands to give him a cane. He turned to his mother and said, "Mom, do you remember in KG we did the theme on sugarcanes? Seema ma'am got some sugarcane for us and we had so much fun chewing them! I never realized that sugarcane plants grow so tall and that the leaves have such sharp edges! It has always fascinated me….and Nature too."

Seema would never have thought of the deep impact her getting sugarcane to class would have on the children. She had simply done what she thought then was the right thing, to help children learn better. It eventually influenced at least one child in the way he looked or connected with Nature.

Here is another story.

A little while ago, when the environmental conservation drive was just gathering steam, prominent schools across the country started a 'Ban Polythene' drive.

Our friend, a parent from such a school was strictly instructed by her son to never pack his lunch in a polybag again. Back in those days, paper bags weren't readily available. Packing anything for school had become a daily battle. Every morning there were tears and fights about not taking poly bags to school. This continued for quite some time, till one day, during a struggle to find paper bags, the son just shouted, "Give it to me in a poly bag!"

The parent was taken aback. After months of abstinence from polythene bags, why did her son suddenly not mind them anymore? More than anything, she was concerned that maybe her son no longer gave enough importance to rules or socially-relevant causes. So she asked him, "Why are you asking for a poly bag all of a sudden? Won't your teacher tell you off?" To this her son replied, "How can she tell me off? She gets polythene bags to school herself!"

Adults have incredible impact on children. Sometimes this influence is way beyond what they intend or expect it to be. This is an important message for all adults who engage in 'educating' children as parents as well as teachers – Practice What You Preach. Always try to be honest in your intent. Children look at 'grown-ups' with trust and expectation. We need to work towards retaining and building on their feeling of deference. For if children stop trusting us, then who will they look up to for guidance?

Lesson from a Four-year Old

Warm Wishes for 2011 from Inspire! 

We begin the New Year by sharing some experiences that have influenced who we are and how we work at Inspire. As you read on you may find likeness with something you have seen or been through in your life.

For every teacher all her students are special. Each class that she has taught stays on in her mind beyond years. Sometimes even a single memory of a student lingers.

Radhika had a student, whom we shall call 'A' for the purpose of this narration. A was a precocious toddler, who wore glasses, that partially covered his droopy eyes. Even as a child he carried himself with immense confidence, looking his teacher straight in the eye and calling her 'Ms Radhika' instead of the usual 'Ma'am'. He always had an opinion about things and a matching wit too. All in all – he was a little guy who could not be missed easily.

During one time around the Annual Day celebrations of the school, Radhika was readying her class for the rehearsals. The children were not the most enthusiastic considering they had to wait for hours for their turns for practice. They would get restless. Some would even cry.

Radhika, aware of this spoke to her class "Children, I know it is difficult, I know it is boring to sit still for so long. But we need to do this so that we can put up a good show. So let's think how we can make the waiting time less boring for all of us." The children came up with several suggestions. After hearing them out Radhika said "Okay, while you wait your turn you can choose between blocks or books. As a class let us decide on one of these that we can take with us. Once we have made a choice we will carry it with us to make the waiting time less boring for us. But on your part, you will need to keep quiet during the practice time."

Children chose to carry blocks. Radhika had guessed this would work. She tried this successfully later in many schools during similar situations. Children always chose blocks and remained engaged and quiet after that.

On that day too children agreed unanimously and grew less restless almost immediately. Radhika, satisfied, turned around to see A staring straight at her. Radhika asked him, "What happened A? Why are you looking at me like that?" Taking his time, as if mulling the question over in his head, wondering how to approach it, A said, "I was just thinking, you are a pretty good dealmaker."

Radhika was stumped. This was totally unexpected from a four-year old, whom she was teaching nuances of proper speech. A, meanwhile walked past her to his place in the waiting area, as if he had said nothing out of the ordinary.

That day, Radhika learnt two things.

First that children are capable of taking decisions and providing solutions. They do not need to be told always to make them understand. Instead their perception of things needs to be given more respect.

Second and perhaps a more important one, that children understand moods and situations much better than what adults give them credit for. They are vigilant and pick up cues from adult talk and behaviour. So a teacher or parent needs to be a role model whose conduct a child can emulate.

Many of Inspire's methods are thus based on lessons learnt from four-year-olds. We have many more such lessons, each unique and interesting.

If you have a similar incident from your life, do share with us.

The Inspiration for Inspire

At the onset of a new year, a recount from the founders on how the journey of Inspire began...

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.                          Thomas A. Edison                                   

This one-percent though small carries a lot of significance – quite simply, it differentiates someone who completed something successfully from someone who did not.

It is this one-percent that makes an explorer sail in search of undiscovered lands; an inventor labour to craft that unknown miracle that could change the world; a writer pen hundreds of lines to find that perfect prose.

It is this one-percent that brought together the founders of Inspire.

Inspire started as a thought – to bring a change in the 'learning' experiences for a child.

Radhika Suri and Sameera Sood had been educators for many years. They had seen how parents though keen and involved in their children's education were hampered by lack of understanding of what actually 'good' education is. They often based their choice of schools on factors such as infrastructure or catch phrases used in the brochures. On the other hand the school promoters and publishers used the advantage of the situation parents were in to create a successful business model based mostly on superficial elements.The entire industry built around the child paid little attention to what the child really wanted!

The inspiration behind Inspire is the child. 

One of Sameera's fondest memories is of a day when she wore a pink sari on a school occasion. She recalls vividly one compliment among many that she received – this came from one of her students who said "Oh! You look so nice today! Just like a strawberry ice cream!" She had been teaching her class colours. The little child's simple and honest response showed her attempt to extend and apply her learning beyond the class. This has remained with Sameera after so many years.

Radhika recalls how during a class she realized that teaching demanded more listening than speaking. One of her students when asked a question responded exasperated and confused. "Arre Ma'am! Aap chup rahogi toh sochunga na!" (I can only think if you keep quiet!) Radhika calls her it her 'Lesson on Teaching from a 4-year old.'

Unlike Radhika and Sameera, Tilottama comes from a corporate background. Her first interest in education came from the time her son started school. When she began hunting for a 'good' preschool for her son, all the schools she visited looked more or less the same and said the same words. In many of the schools she saw children moving around mechanically with expressionless faces. Ultimately she settled for a school which had strong recommendations from some parents she knew. What she found later in the school was something she had hated as a child – homework! Toddlers were expected to complete worksheets to be signed and graded by the teacher.

Each such experience that the founders went through was like a seed for thoughts of doing something different - wherein a child would be loved, respected, asked, listened to, given opportunities to explore her likes – to channelize the boundless enthusiasm and energy that the child has.

The learning experience would make the child look forward to learning.
The learning tools would be appropriate to enforce this learning in the child.

In its journey, Inspire looks to find many persons who share this thought of bringing in a change. A change that must happen among schools, teachers, parents and even children – in order to be effective.

It is Inspire's aim for a collaborative and accelerated effort towards better education. 

That is the remaining ninety-nine percent...the journey for which has only begun.