Like this:

My first workshop was this morning! I am now celebrating by having cold coffee in Kofi bar in the village of kulapailyam. I may pay for this later as I haven’t had coffee since I arrived in India and it also definitely has icecream in it (I asked for no ice cream but that seems to have been lost in translation) which means that I am now eating a lot of things that I don’t normally eat- but it is so darn hot today and it tastes so good! Anyways- I feel very happy that this morning went well! As I was finishing my preparation work last night I realized that despite how much I was anticipating feeling nervous- I actually was not worried. I prepared thoroughly and changed my plan according to what I saw this week while working in the classrooms, and even though 7 teachers joined us from other schools (hurray!) I still was very calm. Of course I still woke up absurdly early this morning to prepare myself. I could barely sleep last night as it was, the heat was oppressive, any crease in my body such as the back of my neck and the backs of my knees and elbows were sweating heavily. I even tried propping my legs up against the wall to sleep thinking that the air would be able to flow around them better. I woke up several times, stumbled into my tiled bathroom (always checking with blurry eyes for any snakes, frogs or flying cockroaches that might have decided to take up residence over the night) and splashed warm water on my face to cool down. So it was not a huge effort to get up this morning. After breakfast and meditation I walked through our community (New Creation) looking for leaves and flowers to collect for one of the activities for the workshop. It was cooler, the air was still and the sun glinted off of huge leaves, red flowers. A huge frog sat on a lotus leaf in the lilly pond. It was beautiful. I was set up in the kindergarten and creche classrooms by quarter of nine. There was 18 teachers there (including myself) plus Shankar the director of the school who popped in and out at various parts. Saskia assisted me by leading a game to get to know everyone’s names which had all of us in hysterics! The workshop was centered around pre-literacy activities for early childhood classrooms which I defined as including drawing, art, dramatic play, storytelling and anything that helped children to form relationships to print and books and the written word. I asked the teachers to consider classroom setup and the way in which they set out materials and their daily routines as part of the curriculum. I had prepared all sorts of activities for the teachers to choose to try out and at the end I also had planned a slide show of pictures from the creche and kindergarten that I took this week. I asked the teachers to share what was happening in their classrooms and I discussed some of the highlights that I saw. I think it was quite successful as many teachers seemed to have gained some new ideas and I was invited to come and visit the other two schools represented there! Of course I feel honored that all of these teachers took the time out of their weekends to come and listen to my thoughts and participate in something I had put together. Here are some photos from the workshop!

Books for teachers to browse through and more ideas for activities

Setting up different literacy and drawing activities for the teachers!

 

Usha and Kalai look at different ideas I gave for an attendance chart, a daily schedule and a work time choice chart

Teachers working on writing and drawing activities!

One othe teachers art work which went along with a story that he created and shared with the group!

Kalai shares a book that she created!

Teachers share the ways in which they observe and document children!

 

Advertisement