Poetry | The Modern Story

Thursday afternoon I arrived at the Railway school feeling tired. Ilana and I had trekked to Nalgonda for the last time Wednesday before and Thursday morning held an unexpected session at Sultan Bazaar, after finding out at 9:30 am that Friday’s scheduled class would not be possible.

When we began the class, Ilana and Asma each had a group of 7 girls editing videos (two computers for thirty girls makes a “stations” approach necessary), while Neha and I took the rest of the students outside for more time using the video camera. At first they were going to interview some of the tenth class students. In recent weeks our girls have conducted several teacher interviews for their final project about choices and decision-making, as well as two fantastic interviews with Google staff members during our recent field trip. (Have you watched Monika’s interview on Vimeo yet??) But after the first interview Thursday I could tell that the eighth class girls needed a change of pace.

So Neha and I divided our students into groups of five and instructed them to create one-minute silent skits of the following scenario: they are in a village and an alien lands there. (Thank you to Mira Dabit, a Palestinian storyteller who shared this idea in my children’s art class in Nablus.)

Amidst giggles and a few “Really, no words??” responses, the girls set to work planning their dramas with little need for guidance. When they were ready, each group performed their skits for the others, with one or two girls filming. All three groups portrayed a scary creature arriving to break up a group of girls working or playing. The actresses reacted to the alien with fear and violence. Here’s an example:

Alien Landing! from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

After watching all of the performances, we applauded all the groups, and I asked the students to separate into their acting groups again.

“Okay!” I declared, “I want you to make a skit that starts the same way: you’re playing in a village, and an alien lands there. But this time, I want you to pretend that the alien is friendly. Show us what happens.”

Looking a bit more pensive but nevertheless full of ideas the girls got back to planning and rehearsing. Again the groups performed with students filming. Here’s the second skit from the same group as above:

The Friendly Alien from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Coming together for a wrap-up, I asked the girls what emotions we saw in the two sets of scenes. For the first set, they identified happiness in the village, fear when the alien arrived, and anger directed toward the alien. In the latter scenes, the girls identified happiness, friendliness, sympathy, and sadness (when the alien left).

“That’s great,” I told them. “You demonstrated a wide range of feelings in your scenes. So now tell me something…Why are you afraid of aliens?!” The girls burst out laughing and shouted things about aliens being gross or mean or harmful. I asked if they knew any aliens. “In movies!” they replied.

“Sometimes things we don’t know are scary,” I said. “You didn’t know me six months ago…Were you afraid of our class?” Some of the girls ardently shook their heads, while others raised their hands with wide eyes, clearly recognizing the difference between how they felt in August and how they feel about TMS class now. I said something teacher-ish about how much we’d learned and shared with each other, and how even though some things we don’t know are scary, they can be really exciting, too. The girls were silent for a rare moment, looking at me with smiles.

After that we watched the videos they’d just shot and joined the rest of the students in the science lab, where some other girls recited a poem they’d written for me, Ilana, Asma, and Neha:

Railway Girls Goodbye Poem from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

As I listened to our students’ effusive goodbye, I reflected on my own feelings about our class, and how the lessons I really loved teaching were the ones where digital media skills were not the end goal, but the means through which we encouraged the girls to explore their world, to expand their imaginations, and importantly, to express themselves freely. The success we’ve had in those pursuits showed clearly to me during the alien skit exercise. When I left Railway Thursday afternoon I was no longer tired; I was inspired.

Oct, 22

tms@themodernstory.com

Daily Updates, Reflections, The Modern Story Fellowship, TMS Fellow Updates

Creative Writing, Hyderabad India, Islam, Jorge Luis Borges, Modern Stories, Poetry, Storytelling, The Modern Story Fellowship

Challenges to creative writing curriculum in India: Individuality, Borges, and the crowds of the city

Above the boy’s beds made of steel is written “The greatest men have always stood alone.” The quote, for me, lends weight to the tension between individuality and the teeming 1billion plus Indians in the subcontinent’s often overcrowded cities. ‘Individuality,’ in reference to our students and their education, is often at odds with the overpopulated city and the lack of funds to provide enough teachers for individual learning. This week taught me the challenges of implementing a curriculum teaching individual expression, creativity, and a sense of individual value in our students in Nalgonda. A.P.R.S. boys school is a Muslim boarding school. Although they are not necessarily minorities in all parts of Hyderabad, there is a rich record of complementary and antagonistic histories between the many religions living side by side in the country’s urban centers. Whether or not they would express it themselves, it seems to me that religion plays into a sense of pride in both their identity and interests. They are fascinated by the pyramids and mosques of Cairo, tigers, Arabic and Urdu calligraphy, riddles and religious songs from childhood. So far they have been doing great individual and creative stories while in class. For homework, however, almost all the students copied poems out of their English readers claiming that they had written the poems themselves. For example, one boy claimed he was the original author of ‘The Road Not Taken.’

Plagiarism is not always an un-creative act. Some philosophers, such as those Jorge Luis Borges would often quote, believed that anyone who writes a line of Shakespeare is Shakespeare. One of Borges’ most famous stories is that of a man who tried writing the next great Don Quixote. Realizing his pride, the man decided instead to live his every thought as though he were Miguel de Cervantes until, without glancing at the text, his life would lead him to write Don Quixote word-for-word, exactly as the original. In most contexts, such a conjecture would seem ridiculous. However, in the teeming crowds of Hyderabad, the individuality of one person or one student can often get lost in the shuffle of government education. Plagiarism can also lead a teacher to suspend their belief in a student’s creativity. But this is not so much of an alarm for our classes. Yes, it was not easy for the students to internalize an emphasis on individual work, original ideas and creativity. But they have shown excellent promise while working in class. As supported by the America India Foundation’s Digital Equalizer Program, we as Fellows recognize the importance of bridging the digital divide but also recognize a more pressing issue at the local level of our schools; the value ascribed to individual expression, and perhaps in proportion, individual worth.

There are daily news reports that emphasize a reduced value of human life in such a highly populated country; on-going fatalities on the highways, railroads, oppressive pollution hanging as thick as moss in front of pre-schools, the suicides after the Chief Minister died and the list goes on and is normalized. Granted, this is an outsiders perspective. Yet, on our daily rides home through the congested and chaotic streets of Hyderabad, I am reminded of the social context pressing in on the classroom once the bell rings and the day is over. For teachers, we return to our apartment in Abids. But the boys return to their metal beds and their walls where it is written: “The greatest men have always stood alone.” Success, it seems, comes when one has the privilege to live in a house with your own room, to ride in your own air conditioned car, to have the personal space to breath unpolluted air: indeed, it does seem the greatest men here strive to stand alone. There is a health related aspect to self-isolation. No wonder so many students perceive their solitude profiled in the city’s skyline; privacy is at a premium in India. Those who can’t afford it continue in the rush of the alley traffic beneath the high rises. Perhaps like our students they are fascinated by tigers, pyramids, and constructions of the mind that lead one man to believe, as Borges often dreamed, that he is any other man. For now, our challenge is to channel their energy into completing the assignments faithfully and honestly, doing their own work and showcasing their incredible capacity for wonder.

–Danny Thiemann
2009/2010 Fellow