Sunday, August 14, 2011
I blinked and this week was over. Of course a lot happened in that week, but it was over before I could begin to take a breath. I taught, organized, typed, visited schools, hugged people, answered questions, ate fabulous food, attempted to sleep, laughed a lot, cried a little, and when I opened my eyes this week was all over and it was Saturday morning and I was beginning my fourth workshop…
To back up a little however. Here are some highlights! On Tuesday I was invited to visit Nandenum a school for Aurovilian children 2.5 years old to 6 years old, and is actually the school that Auro (lives in our house – 2.5 year old son of Ramalingum and Janaki) just began at. The school was quite beautiful- mostly I loved the architecture of the classrooms, how they had little arches and nooks built into them for the children, and there is a teacher doing a very interesting project with sand boxes there. It is for Auroville children which means that there is quite a bit more money in the school than in Aikiyam or Isai Amballam. I watched during snack time a teacher interact with a child who was not wanting to clean her plate. She did it in a clear, gentle, but firm way- it was lovely to see! Quite nice of course to visit another school and meet some new teachers…
A child plays in one of the sand boxes at Nandenum
Nandenum creche
In the evening I went to New Colors again. I had decided to return just because I felt so awed by what this couple has taken on and also I wanted to give them some money that a very generous man had given to me to use wherever I thought it would be useful. Aikiyam and the boarding house, while surviving on sponsers and donations always needs money, still has a lot of people fundraising and working on projects for them, and New Colors I felt, was just the place, just beginning and taking on a big mission with very little, where a little money might take them a long way. So I decided to give the money from this man to them for the school. I spent the evening again helping the children with homework and reading to them, chatting with Kumar and his wife and photographing the amazingly peaceful scene in the middle of the tiny village life. Kumar and his wife were very grateful and happy to receive the money and we discussed being in touch, and how I could help and participate more next time I am here. It was very lovely and I am so happy that I got to meet them and can try and contribute in some way.
Kumar helping a child from 1st std at New Colors
Wednesday was also an exceptionally busy but wonderful day! After a normal morning at Aikiyam the kindergarten teachers and I attempted to make playdough in the kitchen at the school. Of course right now the dinning hall is undergoing construction so the kitchen is actually a little shed made out of some tarps strung up over one burner. The women squat down in the grass cutting vegetables and preparing food for about 250 people each day on this one burner! So I was basically teaching them a new play dough recipe and very soon we were all crowded around a pot, my hands were covered with sticky blue playdough and we were laughing and talking a lot! After some trial and errors this week the kindergarten now has 4 batches of different colored playdough. After the playdough making session I dashed off to visit Isai Amballam. I brought some activities from the previous workshop, spoke with them a little, and they gave me a good bye gift! Then I dashed back to Aikiyam where I had a short meeting with a woman from Bulgaria named Victoria who has been teaching Hindi and yoga at the school. I had asked her to come to the last workshop and teach the teachers a little about what she does with the kids about yoga and we were meeting to discuss it. After our meeting I dashed off to Saskia’s where I received a fabulous massage as Saskia just completed a training in Ayurvedic massage and needs people to practice on. After the massage, I drove home, very relaxed and Galen and I went to Selvaraj and Tamilinthy’s house for dinner.
Selva got married in an arranged marriage last November. Galen and I had been very excited to meet his new wife whom we had heard great things about and we have not been disspointed! The week before we took them out for dinner. Tamilinthy has a large smile and a kind heart. She is a little shy but likes to tease Selva and they seem to be very happy together. They are also expecting a baby in October! They had invited us over for dinner and Tamilinthy had cooked a feast of dosas, chappathis, daal, a chicken dish, a salad and coconut chutney. It was so delicious!!! We sat and looked at their wedding photo album, and they played their wedding movie as background during dinner. We reminisced a lot about the good times we had had in Selva’s house when it was his bachelor pad. We compared marriage customs. We talked about NYC and the differences between there and India. And mostly we laughed a lot. It was a sweet evening and a memorable one.
Doing work in the boarding house!
With the teachers at Isai Amballam!
Thursday life slowed down a little. Free Play and choice time and a yummy dinner at the boarding house prepared by Geetha and Ramalingum and Janaki. I wore my new churidad which Vanitha and Manju helped me pick out in Pondi the Sunday before and had their tailor sew for me! The children in 4th standard had quieted down a lot this week as Mala has been out sick for a bout a week and they had had to adopt to my style of teaching and being. When Mala first got sick they were being extremly talkative and loud but on Monday we had done an activity during which I had them drawing and writing to music (Nick Drake) and they had had to really become quiet in order to hear the music. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we were finishing up a book that the children have been making of stories about a sailor named Sinbad. The idea came after we read “the Adventures of Sinbad.” Over the week I gave the children the freedom to choose if they wrote their stories first or made the illustrations first. They had already completed a rough draft of their story which I had edited. This also helped with their focus and the children seemed very invested in their work. One child, Ajit, had been struggling with re-writing the edited version of his story. “I can’t Meghan,” he would say, “its too hard!” After I told him that he could choose in what order to work, that he just had to finish by the end of Thursday, he was able to focus and complete the whole assignment! I believe that he alternated between the two different tasks! And then Friday morning I went to teach 6th std and announced that I was leaving the following wee. The children all looked at me with big eyes. “Why did you stay for 1 year before and now you have to go back?” Kavishma asked. They were all silent waiting for my answers. So I explained about my job and money and everything else. “Do you live with Deborah?” was another question. Actually one of my favorite questions this week came from Divya in the 4th std. “In your village what is the God’s name?” she asked me. “There is just one God and his name is God.” I said after some thought. “Thats it?” she said. “There arn’t any other Gods? And why would the god’s name be God?”
Saturday morning I woke up extremely anxious about the workshop. I focused this week’s workshop around the importance of movement, sensory activities and body awareness in schools. I had a plan that I had gone over again and again, but for some reason I was feeling nervous. Fortunately it went fine. I began with sensory materials set out on the tables: wet and dry sand, water, pebbles, marbles, seeds, dry grass, playdough etc. Most of the teachers immediately went to the playdough – they were so excited to play with it! 3 teachers came from the Montessori creche this week in addition to the Aikiyam teachers, a teacher from Nandenum, a teacher from Deepam and Victoria who is working at both Aikiyam and Udavi. During the introduction I spoke about how children learn in many different ways and that some children learn through movement and being physically active. I also spoke about how we notice different sides of children when we seem them in different contexts so that seeing children do movement activities may reveal something new to us that we don’t see when we observe the same child coloring or trying sit still during a meeting. Then we played a movement name game which had everyone laughing and Nava of course put everyone to shame by being able to say each person’s name and do the movement that they had created to go with their name in order! Then Victoria spent 20 minutes leading the teachers through some simple yoga exercises and talking about when and how to use yoga in the classroom. This prompted a lot of interest from the kindergarten teachers to possibly learn more from Victoria and have her work with them in their classrooms.
The teachers do yoga together!
More yoga!
After yoga, I lead some movement activities. 2 were focused on breath and 2 were focused on learning gross motor actions such as running, hopping, skipping, jumping etc. The previous two weeks I had spent some time talking with Sathiyavani (who teaches special needs for the young children) and Saski about Awareness through the Body Activities. I had also read the book the week before and some of the activities were ones that come from the book and their philosophy, some of them were activities that Sathiya and I discussed together. I ended up writing up descriptions for about 24 body awareness activities. (Which Nava informed me that she knew all but 6 of them- bless her of course she knows all of them!) After the activities I had planned Vijaya lead the teachers through a sensory activity that she had been wanting to try!
Breath and ping pong ball activity!
Breathing with bean bags!
Vijaya's sensory game!
Then it was tea time. After tea Anandi lead us through some movement activities for focusing energy. Then I did an activity where I had each teacher think of 1 child and describe his/her physical presence. This brought up some interesting discussions about what certain children may or may not need in the classroom in regards to their physicality and how provisioning for their needs could help them to be able to better focus and concentrate in school. To me this was a very important discussion and piece of the workshop as I think it helped to tie together why doing body awareness and physical activities in school can be so important to children’s learning and development. Afterwards we looked at a slide show of pictures of children engaged in movement activities such as dancing, and rolling on large balls. I also showed pictures of Bimal, a child from LKG who had made himself a kite one day in cutting and pasting. After creating the kite Bimal run around the classroom examining how the kite would blow in the wind as he ran. Then he stopped and tried throwing the kite up in the air and watching it float to the ground. I talked about how Bimal had done all of this without disturbing anyone else in the classroom and how wonderful it was to watch a child have the space to experiment with his body, wind, and something that he had created himself.
Writing descriptions of a child's physical presence
Bimal dancing with his kite
August 29, 2011
Hello again dear followers of my adventures! It has now been a week and a half since I landed back in NYC on a gray cloudy morning and trudged from the subway station with my backpack to my apartment in Astoria, Queens. It has been a whirlwind as family obligations and weddings took us immediately away from NY to VT, Boston and New Paltz, but we are now back in Queens having survived Hurricane Irene settling in- which means rearranging out furniture and doing laundry and looking towards fall.
Our last few days in India were emotional and busy. It was a long weekend and so some of the kids went home for the weekend and we had some time to pack, visit Pondicherry and I was frantically finishing a book of activities for the kindergarten teachers. Sunday night Nava cooked a splendid meal for Galen and I as well as 3 other volunteers who were leaving the same night that we were and have been in Auroville for a year. We all stuffed ourselves while sitting on the roof at protection. Selvaraj and Shankar came over and it was wonderful to just sit while the night sky got dark and the stars came out and talk about so many different topics with such good friends.
Monday was India’s Independence day as well as Sri Aurobindo’s Birthday. Galen and I woke at 4:15 am in the dark and quiet to go celebrate his birthday at the bonfire at the Matrimandir. Arriving in the dark with many Indians and Aurovillians and sitting under the stars next to the majestic Matrimandir and the even more majestic moon still in the sky was very beautiful. We watched the fire and the sun rise and then greeted many friends who had all gathered their as well. When I am there in India it is easy to see how my life could be that- India, Auroville- even after 6 weeks there I felt so completely absorbed into the community.
The problem with getting up so early was that after we went home and then I went to the Independence day celebration at Aikiyam, I was so exhausted and drained that I spent a lot of time being emotional and crying. Finally I rallied Dhinagar, Partiban and Galen to go have ice cream with me and we ate ice cream sundaes. We were all tired but the ice cream gave us a little boost and I let Dhinagar drive me home from the gate in New Creation back to Roy’s house. Then we all went to see Manjula play basketball which was amazing as she is fiery and fierce on the basketball court and her team easily won the game. Then Geetha came over to watch a Tamil movie on my computer. Our evening ended as all the Tamil adults were out, at the boarding house with Galen teaching Partiban. Dhina and Geetha how to make grilled cheese sandwiches and all of us enjoying a western/Indian medly of sandwiches, salad, miso soup, idly and tomato chutney. The kids gave us big hugs as they went up to bed. Tuesday, my last real day at the school I had parties with the 6th std and 4th std classes during which we ate peanuts, dates, sesame ladus, and other fruits…and I ran around getting things finished up.
4th std class on my last day!
Pachayappan from 6th std making a card for Deborah on my last day at Aikiyam!
With Rehka, a child from the creche at the Independence day celebration!
Last lunch with all my favorite teachers!
Tuesday night Galen took the boarding house out for pizza at Giorgio’s. Suffice to say we had fun- just look at the pictures! Our time in India ended with a big lunch and cake with all the teachers which was moving as they could not stop hugging me and they presented me with a necklace, “to keep us al next to your heart,” they said. Then before our taxi, driven by Vanitha’s brother took off, a lovely gathering of friends in our room as Vanitha, Tixon, Manjula, Ramalingum, Auro and Dhina all gathered to wave goodbye to us. This goodbye was different though from the tearful, and wrenching parting we had last time we departed from Auroville. There was much more of a “see you later” and uplifted quality. As I stood in our room, sadly saying goodbye to it, Vanitha pulled my hand, “It will be here when you come back,” she told me. “See you next year!” everyone shouted at us as the taxi drove off. “See you when your married,” Vanitha shouted! Next year we are getting married, but I have already cleared it with Galen that I may run off to India directly afterwards! And so we took one last long drive to Chennai through the busy cow crowded streets and said goodbye to India…until next year.
Out for Pizza!!!
More pizza!!!!!!
Goodbye India!
galenmurray
meghankeil
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