2.10.12

few reflections

I am attentive not to be biased in the classroom. Here I put some incidents in my classroom that I see as the expression of that particular student.


Jigisha makes me happy most of the time as she often associates classroom learning to real life and across subjects. I found a leaf at school backyard, carved by insects. I brought it in the classroom and asked students, what is it? Well, at the end Hetal and few other want at the back yard , returning with leaves other than the one I brought.(there were more carved leaves on the same plant.) Hetal shouted with joy, I found it, displaying the wrong one. Now, here is JIgisha, “Huh, Hetal found America and considers it India. Our Columbus .”

Jigisha has tendency to reflect incidents into her dreams. Every day she got a dream which is related with school incidents. One day we had talk about how copier machines (Xerox) work and a video I have seen depicting possibilities of making copy of bones. Next day she came up with the dream : she was afraid of returning home, she asked her friends to come with her but they could not as they both have to reach home. So, she went to the Xerox center and made a copy of her friends. And…

Jigisha is a lovely compo pack of innocence and intelligence. Whereas Krishna makes me worry with her perceptions to the incidents. She is quite influenced with the explosive display of relations and has tendency to take benefit from the flow of other. It displays in her stores and plays she writes. Her family is quite into education with her brother and sister attending colleges. Her father is a well managed person, particularly economically (this is quite different in the community they belong to, these people are good at ‘wrong’ spending.) She is confident and good scores good. I could not gather the reasons behind her tendency.

But, I understand the reasons for Divya’s competitive nature. We had election for class representative.( My class has no class representative-monitors. I ask all the students to become monitor of themselves. But, there is an activity in English and Social science, so we did it. We had funny incidents as the candidates asked : can we vote? As they wanted to vote for their friends.) Divya loose. She was shattered. She could not believe so I offered her to count the votes on her own. She took all the ballet chits to her house and counted them again, finding one more vote to her credit but still short to the winning number. At class, she would re-declare my instructions differently creating confusion among students. She is also a scorer so the class trusts her interpretation. I often talk with her, trying to help her. Her father is a stubborn fellow, working occasionally; her mother feeds the family with a sewing machine also attending social demands (which are very very demanding). Recently, the owner of the shop has asked her father to evacuate and once again her father is work-less. Though they have farms, which are a big support, I assume her father might not be working there. Divya is the best in creative writing and her frustration does not reflect in it, unlike Krishana. She re moulds poems, stories and choreographs songs, too.

Nisha, writes in a very small letters. She is an inward person with socio-emotional maturity. She is a typical girl child, helping all but not own self. She is a black beauty with lovely eyes. Every time I have to ask her to show me her work n when I praise her, a shuttle bright light shines through her eyes and face. (I just love that.) she is fearful and obedient, never displaying her likes or dislike. Often I get irritated, seeing the potential possibilities in her, I wish her to explode, but she never does.

Bharti is the other girl who catches one with her eyes and different way of expressing her regards. She would come up with, “why didn’t you looked at me?, I came with the home work, you didn’t checked it, you didn’t asked how is my father now…”in replay, I repeat her question removing ‘why’. She has slowly and steadily improved in educational skills. Particularly in Maths.

So is Sania, for the first time in her eight year of schooling, she wrote a paragraph completely on her own-the journey of a cloud, after an activity for essay writing.

I have 106 students in standard 8, where I take classes but we have 550+ students in school and each day one or the other girl makes my day lovely with a crystal clear expression of a child’s world, loaded with many many interconnections and a possibility of developmental change.

Last but not least is Gopi. She was a low confident girl who shined up this year. She comes up with minimum five questions a day, questions that are not from the text books. Other students fondly tease her, “don’t forget to ask, we teacher is leaving at five. ‘’ or “ask more as we have a holiday tomorrow.” I named her ‘savali sita.’ Due to her, I and the rest of the class get benefited of new exposures.