June 23 – a regular month with theatre, workshops, visits and lots of learning!

This month saw a visit by Prof Shishir Kumar Jha, of IIT Bombay. He interacted with the older children about the various options that open up for them if they have had a chance to pay attention to their learning. The interaction with the older children was interesting because they got a chance to meet somone who was part of an educational institution, but a very different kind from where they were. In his interaction with the TLs (Teacher Learners) Shishir bhai talked about the need to listen to ‘silence’. He talked about the need for pauses and giving the learners a chance to fill these silences with meaningful inputs, which sometimes we tend to miss in our rush to ‘teach’.

The theatre workshop this month helped children once again look at where they felt most comfortable, and it even challenged their ideas of what dress was identified with which gender. This was for the boys a especially interesting experience, because girls have often got into t-shirts and trousers, boys have rarely put on clothes marked “girls clothing” but they did so and many threads and discussions flowed from this experience in the discussion time.

One of the other workshops this month was on the theme of observing nature, making notes and coming back to report to the collective our own observations and descriptions of what we observed. This varied from observing the papaya fruit growing on a tiny papaya tree to observing the birds on the bamboo thicket. It is such efforts that have helped children have a less anthropocentric view of the world and love all creatures, giving a small space for love and kindness, the kind that prompted Taufeeq and a few others to rescue and care for this little bird, which had hurt its foot and was unable to fly away and another group of children, releasing a baby rabbit they had found scared and trapped at the jeevanshala.

At the Jeevanshala, every occasion is a learning occasion, so the mango and litchi season became a chance for the children to practice their counting skills, as they collected centre grown mangoes and counted them. Litchis also came to the jeevanshala from a well-wisher and were similarly, counted and then distributed