As I mentioned in an earlier post, my main purpose for coming to Pune was to teach a week-long course about making documentary videos on cultural perceptions of climate change. The course was taught in conjunction with a group at Penn State, and both groups had twelve girls in the twelfth grade. Over the course of the week we attempted to create a dialog about climate change between the girls through blog entries and then they also broke into groups to create short documentary videos about local conceptions of climate change.
Before I discuss the class, I want to reiterate that my experiences are not representative of anything more than my experience and I'm not trying to draw broad generalizations about education in India. Ok, now that I've given my disclaimer.
The week started pretty awkwardly to be honest. Even walking into school, a lot of the students stared when they thought I wasn't looking, some even would say something quietly to their friends and laugh. I had returned to high school, but this time I was an outsider not just personality-wise but also because of the color of my skin. The girls in the class were quite shy at first. Our first exercise was called the “name game” in which they each interview each other on camera. Their answers in to the questions seemed a bit scripted and I suspected that I was getting more recitation of their coursework than their actual opinions about climate change. After we had a “discussion” that featured me talking until Rasika (my previously mentioned assistant) thankfully stepped in and acted as intermediary between me and the students.
Over the course of the week, we began to understand each other better, and we were able to even crack some jokes with each other. One student even gave me a diet pepsi during break one day! All in all, I was really impressed with how quickly they learned how to do everything from conduct interviews to edit the footage.
On Friday we had our screening. Maybe 100 people showed up, mostly other students, but also parents, the principal and board of trustees, and reporters from three newspapers (sidenote: I didn't arrange this, my liaison, who shall heretofore be known as “Mr. P.” arranged all of it. More on him in a moment). I even got a bouquet of flowers! About 10 people gave speeches about how great this project was.
So Mr. P is a bit difficult to explain without really going into character depth, but let's just say he is a bit of an eager beaver but isn't really aware of that fact. He was extremely helpful and the project wouldn't have happened without him, but by the end of the week he was promising to learn “cultural geography methodologies” so that he could travel to Bhutan with me next year. Also he had excessive ear hair that needed trimming and I couldn't help but stare at it when he talked to me. I felt horrible about it but it was really fascinating.
At any rate. I arrived in Kathmandu today, and I'll write about it soon. I have one more entry on Pune I'd like to write, and hopefully I should have more time here in the valley since I'm not technically working.
Here is a link to one of the newspaper reports on the class (its on page 3 if it doesn’t take you there directly) and apparently another newspaper in Marathi reported my name as Matthew Brank.
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=42&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=40&eddate=6%2f28%2f2009
Here's one of the group's videos. the other three can be found on YouTube:
Matthew - I am just loving your blog. What a great experience you are having. Thank you for sharing a slice of it with us.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy Nepal. Ech, dwi, tin, char, ponch, sat, oct, no, das (that is what i remember of counting from 1 - 10 in Nepali, spelled horribly, i'm sure.)
Keep writing! -kristin
Cool video posted, I think it is interesting that it is in English. I'm wondering if the whole school is taught in English...
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