It's Tuesday, August 7, at 9:53pm in the YMCA Guest House in Mumbai. Today was our second and final day of teaching at the Diamond Jubilee High School. Tomorrow we will go to the Diamond Jubilee Girl's School, located a little distance away. It's a school expressly to educate the Muslim girls in its neighborhood, and one of my favorite schools in the world. They do great work there. I look forward to it. I am scheduled to teach a 9th grade class in the morning, and a 1st-grade class in the afternoon. After school, we will return to DJHS to host their first-ever Family Literacy Night. There are over 60 signed up to attend so far! It should be fun.
On Thursday, there is a protest scheduled by a political group. Due to fears of disruption and possible violence, the student workshop scheduled for that date has been postponed to Saturday. DJHS plans to have school that day, but we plan to take the day off to remain at the Guest House to recuperate, rest, write, and prepare for the Teacher Workshop, which is still on, for Friday August 3rd. There is an outside chance that there will be a curfew imposed on Friday which might impact the Teacher Workshop. I really really hope not.
Our colleague Brendan leaves us after tomorrow - he must return to Boston to attend to his regular life. Mohsin still has nor secured a visa to come to India. I really hope he is able to get here for the Teacher Workshop. That's exactly how it worked out three years ago. Perhaps we will see a redux.
Today we were all busy at DJHS. I taught six classes, going pretty much straight through fro, 8:15am-2pm, with a 30-minute break for tea. My day opened with Class 6-D, working the Mehnaaz, on a mystery story called "The Broken Ear Goes Missing." I helped with some pre-reading and critical reading strategies, and in helping her plan a lesson. Next, I worked in Grade 8-D with Parishma, where I taught a narrative writing lesson. This lesson was videotaped for demonstration later. I went over the Bread Loaf Rules for Writing, and discussed the importance of storytelling. Parishma then offered four topics for students to choose from: Rain, Food, Sport, Holiday Destinations. We invited the students to write a story about one of those topics. then had a sharing session. The students were very involved in their writing and in the sharing session. One boy wrote about food, and his father, who is a single father raising his kids. The boy teared up halfway through the story, but was able to finish.
Next, I worked with Saira and Class 10-B on an environmental issues advocacy piece. The students created posters that advocated for solutions to environmental issues. They were all great. One in particular about water included a raindrop with a human face - and the human face has a tear running down its cheek. Water is crying.
My fourth class of the day was with Fatima in Class 6-B, where they worked on message writing. The students all use What's App to communicate with fiends, parents, etc. We invited them to write a What's App message to their friend, and then to re-write it to their parents, and re-write it to their teacher or coach. I explained the idea of code-switching, and how we use different grammatical structures and vocabulary depending on audience.
After a tea break, I joined Mubaraka for Grade 6-A Geography. They are starting a unit on Water Bodies (lakes, rivers, etc.) We used a K-W-L chart, first asking students to write and share what they know about water, then showed 2 videos about water and water pollution, and asked students to add to their KWL chart. To synthesize, I then led a dance exercise. We were in the music room, so we had a big, open space, ideal for movement. I put the students in three groups. One group represented the Ocean, one represented a River, one represented a Lake. I taught physical motions to each, to demonstrate what healthy Oceans, Rivers, and Lakes look like. Oceans wave and move back and forth; Rivers flow; Lakes ripple. We got all three groups going at once in a collective, 35-student dance to demonstrate healthy water bodies. Then I asked them to freeze, then meet as groups and determine how to change the dance to represent a polluted, unhealthy water body. After a brief planning process, they resumed the dance, and the moves they came up with were very cool. Because the unhealthy dance was too sad, I asked them to end with a re-play of the healthy dance.
My final class of the day was Class 6-C Geography with Mehnaaz, and we did the same lesson we did with Class 6-A, about water bodies. This class met in a a traditional classroom, but we didn't let that bother us - we did the dance anyway. We gave them more time to plan than the other class, and these students produced a really interesting dance to show unhealthy water bodies. The lake group, for example, began rippling as usual, but then several came by to throw trash into the lake, and the dances slowly shut down their dance, demonstrating how pollution can kill a lake.
The teaching day ended at 2pm, and then we had lunch and a de-briefing session with the cooperating teachers in the Teacher Resource Center. Overall in 2 days I worked with 9 teachers to teach 12 classes in 3 subject areas (English, Geography, Chemistry). Our group of 5 (me, Julia, Alan, Brendan, Ingrid) worked with 22 teachers in 26 classrooms from grade 3-10, teaching more than 50 lessons, reaching over 800 students, providing more than 50 hours of job-embedded professional development.
After the de-brief, we headed downtown, to a shopping area. Ingrid, Brendan and I browsed markets, where we bought clothes, scarves, and art. Crossing the street in Mumbai traffic is always an adventure:
We walked to the Gates of India, which were built to "welcome" King George V to his Indian colony in 1911. In 1948, when the British army left India at the time of its independence, they left through these gates, and no one has gone through them since. I wore my Andover Wrestling hat to represent.
We concluded the evening with dinner at a nice restaurant downtown, hosted by Lee. We were joined by Lee's son Duyshant, who I have known since he was 11. He is a grown man now, a lawyer who works not far from this neighborhood, and he is to be married this December. He and Lee have a wonderful give-and-take that shows both their deep love for each other, and their quick-witted intelligence. It was joy to spend time with them.
Thanks for reading,
Rich
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