A tryst with trust
Taking stock of books (and ourselves)
When kids help in taking stock of books
Text and images: Anshumalika
Rai and Nimesh Ved
Published at the Deccan Herald.
What
happens when we go with our guts and trust children?
A quick look at our
school before we jump on to the details. We focus on languages, Hindi
and English. The book
room
is a favoured place; many of the 250 children and 15 teachers can
be seen reading here.
Children of classes 7 and 8, the senior most children, also join us in taking
care of the book room. The idea is to deepen their engagement with books. This
year we got a tad ambitious.
The annual stock-taking turned
into a project: 1 room, 5 days, 1,500 books and 30 children of class 7. As we
look back, we realize, that throughout the project it was not the children
assisting us, as we had once envisaged, but the other way around - we were
assisting the children. This brings smiles to our faces and reminds us of P L Travers’, “you
should trust the children, they can stand more than we can”.
Now, the project.
Planning
We began by opening up. With -
how best can we do this together? Question-answers, with the children, then flowed.
These conversations bound the project together.
As we formed groups, we
realized we were in deeper waters than we had envisaged. We had considered the
class strength, 30, but the children pointed out that the average attendance,
over the past few days, was 25 and we need to plan the groups accordingly! They
had a point – on an average 5 of their classmates, number equivalent to one
group, were absent over the past few days. Sometimes we are happy to be proved
wrong!
Next, we observed the children
allocate tasks. One of the groups had no specific role. When we asked them
about this, they said that this group would assist the other groups as and when
need arose and also coordinate amongst groups. Their clarity and confidence had
us go happily silent.
One of the actions was to note
‘remarks’ in the list. This for each book - whether it was to be repaired, or
discarded, or handed over to a teacher, or moved to the almirah, or was lost.
On this the children could not arrive at an agreement and they asked us to take
onus of noting ‘remarks’.
This mix of seriousness, fun
and of course simplicity that the children brought to the project made all the
difference.
Action
Each day began, as also ended,
with a group chat. Children would open up on the difficulties they faced, their
mischiefs, what they enjoyed more, books and so on. They also updated the
status of the exercise, on the board, at the end of each day. Their interest
levels were high. We were in good company!
While mending the books the
children also got lost in reading some of them. These are times when delays are
welcome!
One day we spread the books on
the floor one of the days. This felt special. Not only did the room feel
different but we also realized that many more poems and stories were waiting
for us! Small joys for the present, endearing memories for the future.
During the process the damaged
books became ‘sick’ books that needed treatment while the discarded books were
declared ‘dead’. Children infused ‘life’ into the books.
We also noticed that a few
children, 4 of them, were not participating in the action. After a point we
conveyed that they could go home. They did not claim to contribute but said
were enjoying. They insisted on being around their friends when these friends
were working with books. It struck us, albeit somewhat late, that these 4 struggled
with reading and writing in the class. We were perhaps going at a pace they
were not able to keep up with.
Our initial concerns that the
children may get bored or tired with this ‘full-day’ exercise were misplaced.
They were in no hurry to leave even after the bell rang. At some point, we, too,
stopped looking at this exercise as a task and immersed ourselves in the anand!
We were happy that the book
room was finally a co-owned space!
Looking back
A few questions and reminders.
How much of this – bonding, observing,
listening, mahaul - would have been possible in course of regular school
schedule; with a bell ringing every 45 minutes and our urge to complete the
syllabus?
What other activities at
schools – mundane or mandatory or otherwise - can provide such learning
opportunities?
How ready are we for children -
evolving faster than us? co-owing spaces at school? need for meaningful,
two-way and equitable conversations?
How much did it help that we
brought in neither subjects nor gadgets amidst the books, children and us?
These 5 days have enabled
learning like few others, underscoring yet again, that the journey is way more pertinent
than the destination. We had set out to take stock of books, we ended up taking
stock of ourselves vis-a-vis the children!
Finally, trust and children bring us to John Holt, “trust children, nothing could be more simple, or more difficult”. However, “to trust children, we must first learn to trust ourselves”. And, we take the liberty to add – trust each other.
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