How do conceptions of identity inform perceptions of power and justice within larger communities?
Originally, when I conceived of this question, I had hoped to find lots of support for the lingering caste system. I did encounter instances and anecdotes that revealed caste prejudices and differences; however, I found far more support in the area of gender equality, specifically the treatment of women and girls. There is clearly an awareness among students and women that being a woman or girl means that you do not share the same power or opportunities as men. According to the United Nations Development Programme 2016 Human Development Reports, 12.2 % of women are represented in Parliament. 35.3 % of women complete a secondary education as opposed to 61.4% of men. The discrepancy isn’t necessarily in access to education as India’s infrastructure allows for lots of students to be in school, although The Teacher Foundation reports that at least 1 million children are not in school even though attendance is mandatory. In my host school, Brilliant Stars School in Tripura, India, I was fortunate to work with teachers and students who are committed to Project Based Learning to benefit not only their students but the local community each year. During my visit, the students were in the survey phase and getting ready to collect data before they decided upon an outreach project on gender equality. I observed a grade 5 class and they performed a few skits, two of which were scenarios in which girls/women were asking to either take a job or go out at night. The male figure in the skits shut both of these scenarios down. The fifth graders’ awareness of the inequity that is held in place, not by laws but by social norms and primarily the family structure. The teacher led a discussion regarding reasons why girls, specifically, are not in school. The web they created on the board listed a variety of reasons why girls do not have an equal access to education: educated girls would not be available to take care of younger children or aging parents; they would not be at home to take care of household chores; a prevailing stereotype that girls are weaker and incapable of being in the workforce; and insecurity among girls themselves. The fifth graders then talked to me about suttee, an outlawed (1829) Hindu custom, that still happens on rare occasions, where women voluntarily and occasionally are forced to burn in their husband’s funeral pyre. Although historically this has origins in respect and grief, but in reality it was often used by in-laws who did not want the widow to inherit the husband’s money. Our cook for the week was a widow, happy to serve at the school. Full of joy. In a candid discussion with two male teachers, one of who was a widower and said that remarriage was possible for him, we asked if S would remarry. They replied in unison “no, she will not remarry.” We did not ask why, but I can infer that social restrictions and family infrastructure prevent her from doing so. I observed as we went from home to home, lucky to be hosted by such gracious and open people, that the women did not usually eat with us. Often they served and either stood by the table or went out of the room. In several of the homes, the mother-in-laws and the women spent hours doing the cooking, and they cook for every meal, and they do their laundry by hand. Most of these tasks fall on the women. I did visit one home where there seemed to be a more equitable form of division of labor, where the male did most of the cooking and child care. However, this progressive family did not live with their extended family, which is typical in India, where the bride goes to live with the groom’s family, permanently after marriage. This couple had made a choice to defy traditional social norms, but you could tell that they were struggling with new roles, and even here, the wife did not sit down and eat with us. Another observation I made was that in my three weeks stay, I never saw a woman driving, so I decided to do some research. According to the Times of India, “ In India, driving an automobile is largely a male activity. An analysis of 21 states for which men-women break-up of driving licence data is available shows that only 4% of the total licence holders are women.” Again, there is no legal ban on women driving, but societal and familial pressure could be preventing women from driving. In every school we visited, we noticed that although there were students who did not fit into a binary gender identification, there was not a support system for those students. Although the Hindu gods appear in various gender incarnations and there is a recognition of hijras as a third gender, young people are not being supported in school settings, and homosexuality is still considered a criminal offense. The August 2017 Indian Supreme Court ruling on privacy seems to be a step in the right direction for the LGBTQ population as it, “... is an individual’s choice as to who enters his house, how he lives and in what relationship. The privacy of the home must protect the family, marriage, procreation and sexual orientation which are all important aspects of dignity.” My host teacher/principal has shared with me that his grade 10 class is currently narrowing their data collection down to target the following areas regarding the gender equality service project, “physical harassment and molestation to girls, girl child trafficking, female foeticide and equal opportunity and right for LGBT community,” and my students and I will be sharing in these same conversations. My guiding question started out too broadly, but I was able to learn quite a bit about gender inequality and how women, girls and the LGBTQ population were marginalized. However, there is an awareness of this discrimination, as noted, mostly embedded in societal and familial structures, and more importantly than awareness, groups of people and students who are taking action.
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“Until the lion gets a historian, the hunter will always be the hero.” As I observed a grade 9 English class in a Catholic school in Delhi, this week, I felt quite at home. The instructor was animated. They were discussing a book they were all reading called Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan. It was teacher-led, but discussion centered. The instructor made lots of popular culture references, both Indian and western. He made the students laugh. There was a strong respect and rapport in the room. They discussed the fleeting nature of truth and the importance of backing up our opinions with facts. It felt like the climate in my own classroom. He was discussing the importance of reading and researching widely to support generalizations in writing and debating, and mentioned the lion saying above. I have been pondering it for days now, and I think it summarizes the closing leg of my Indian journey quite well. In a session on Wednesday, we talked about the importance as teacher/diplomats of framing our stories of our experience in India. Now this is an easy sell to me as an English teacher of literature and composition. But even I have to be careful in my word choice and in what I choose to share and how. There is the danger of overgeneralizing, romanticizing, and misrepresenting our experiences as guests in this country. The last thing I would want to do is give someone a false impression of my incredibly rich and diverse experience from these three short weeks. For me, storytelling is about anecdotes. Short little quips that illustrate one aspect of experience. I also believe that yes, we can frame our stories, but ultimately, the listener/reader perceives what he or she is the meaning of that particular anecdote. However, I have a duty, as I re-enter my school and larger community, to represent these stories with the least amount of cultural bias possible, and I am thrilled to share them with my friends, families and colleagues. As we discuss in the classroom quite frequently, there are many aspects of good storytelling - imagery, poetic devices, dialogue, overall coherence and meaning. But the main aspect of any good story is what makes It human. What do we learn about human nature, humanity? What makes my experience relevant for other people? We all love to talk about ourselves, but how to make it meaningful on a larger scale is the trick. Everyone has had the experience of listening to someone ramble on and on with vivid description and animation but not really getting the point or connecting with the story. My kids will often tell me, sarcastically, “Good story, Mom,” meaning I did not make it relevant for my audience. It meant something to me, but I did not frame it in a way that was meaningful for them. So our challenge, as I return, is to share a wide variety of experiences in an authentic framework that provides relevance to my audience, which is essentially the task of any act of writing. As I reflect on my time in India, I do think about the food and the smells and sounds and the massive traffic confusion, but more significantly, I will remember and talk about people. It is through human relationships and connections that I find meaning in life. I was fortunate enough to work with a small host community and build deep and hopefully lasting connections there for future collaboration. From the various speakers we have learned from, to the students in our school visits, to the drivers and hotel workers, there is always a story. My partner teacher, my cohorts and the alliances we have formed have strengthened and stretched me, personally and professionally, all in positive, enriching ways. And there are plenty of stories there. Our IREX and Teacher Foundation guides have provided us with thoughtful questions and considerate perspectives. These two also have their stories. Human stories are abundant if one opens their mind and eyes to what we can learn from others. I subscribe to the dictionary.com word of the day, and I thought it quite fortuitous that last week the word “glocal” popped up on my phone. I had never heard of this concept before my TGC coursework, and I was excited to see it! The official definition is “of or relating to the interconnection of global and local issues, factors, etc…” Gender equality is an issue, worldwide. But what achieving gender equality looks like in Boone, North Carolina, USA, is not the same as in Udaipur, Tripura, India. We share a lot of commonalities and problems with the Indian culture, but the differences, in some cases are vast. While we might worry about equal pay and better representation in Congress, access to reproductive rights, some Indians in the community I visited might worry about challenging the family structure to pursue one’s own dreams, about girls dropping out of school to take care of families, about early marriage, and division of labor in the household. This does not make the Udaipur community less developed or evolved than my community in Boone. It does, however, show that a glocal perspective is needed to understand the struggle in gender equality that we both face and how our differing cultures inform those challenges. There is a saying here in India, “my guest is my guide,” and while that may not have origins with an international focus, I think it applies well here. The Indian people are a culture rich with stories, religions, regions, languages, and thousands of years of history. Yet they embraced us these past three weeks with open hearts wanting to learn from us just as eagerly as we sought to learn from them. And maybe we Americans can gain something from that type of hospitality and excitement. Yesterday, we visited the Taj Mahal early in the morning. It was a serene and profoundly reflective experience, but I think the building itself serves as a nice metaphor for my experience here in India regarding perspective. From afar the building looks grandiose and as one. Upon closer inspection, you can see the multiple layers of craftsmanship and detail and individual components that make up the Taj. And that is true for India, America, and I would imagine any other country you visit. We can look at it as a whole or we can examine it up close. I am beyond thankful to have been given an opportunity to experience India up close. And this brings me back to the lion. I shall repeat, “Until the lion gets a historian, the hunter will always be the hero.” My experience here in India has allowed me to get to know the lion – a few untold stories in India. It is my hope, with many blessings, I will be able to impact others, in my classroom, school community, in India and other countries as well by keeping a glocal perspective and not portraying the people and stories I have encountered from the hunter’s viewpoint. To this end, the activity I taught in the classroom was one I frequently do in the states. It is a simple poetry activity, based on George Ella Lyon’s work, that includes imagery and metaphor and allows students to depict themselves in a cultural framework that is not limited place on a map but instead experience. The poems I collected proves my point that what makes us human is our stories of happiness and sorrow. And while languages and nations and politics might divide us, our experiences define and sometimes break down those walls. We are global, and we are local. Glocalization, as opposed to globalization, seeks to preserve the local, to celebrate the community while at the same time recognizing its piece in a larger scale, globally, in an attempt to let the lion’s voice be heard. “I am not a teacher but an awakener.” – Robert Frost This quote forms the basis of my pedagogy. I try to run a student-centered, discussion-based and project-oriented classroom. While in Bangalore, Indira gave us a lovely “ideabook” journal, riddled with inspiring quotes and lovely art, and I was reminded of this Frost quote from the book. At Brilliant Stars school, each teacher serves as an awakener or facilitator. The students know this and they take ownership and are happy to be here. Growth mindset is practiced here. They are serving the larger community. In many ways they are a progressive, model school for what education should look like for the future of India and in some cases, even America. Through many blessings, my placement here allows me to learn from these happy students and teachers. I came as a teacher, but I am leaving a student. Here are just a few anecdotes that have touched me. On my first day at BSS, I observed a grade 9 physics lesson. Anyone who knows me, knows I am not science-minded. I like words, ideas. I never did well at science, much to my medical profession parents’ dismay. The young teacher spent a few minutes reviewing Newton’s Third Law – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. She drew a diagram on the board and asked for recall from the students. She then asked the students to get into groups and brought them each two balloons and a bouncy ball. The energy in the room immediately increased. The students’ proceeded to follow her clear guidelines to blow up one balloon and let it fall, let the other fall on its own, and then bounce the ball. Then they had to discuss how the Third Law applied to these situations. Then they wrote about it individually in their notebooks. I honestly wish my physics teacher had let us learn this way. I will always remember this now. When I was a student it was all conceptual, and my literary mind did not get this concept, which is pretty basic physics. To end the class, she had three students come up to the white board and draw the application of the law on each of the objects and explain it to the rest of the class. So many good things here – group work, reflective writing, kinesthetic learning, and teaching back to the class. Afterwards the teacher and I met and she so wanted me to give her feedback on how to make her lesson better, but I did not have any. Besides the time my chemistry teacher lit the room on fire in a marked line on the floor, this was my favorite science class ever. We did have a nice dialogue about putting kids in groups and those dynamics and how to best monitor that placement. In our professional development session on Tuesday, where we presented to more than 50 participants from here and neighboring schools – even the principal from a school in Argatalla (two hours away) came, we asked for questions to be “parked” or put on a piece of chart paper on sticky notes, so that we could address them during the break. Several questions and comments had asked how we incorporated “joyful learning” into our curricula. My partner teacher, Jane, bravely took on this question as I prepared for the next session by asking exactly what that meant. A participant answered something to the effect that joyful learning brings a sense of wonder and awe into the classroom, encouraging playfulness, community engagement, kindness and love. Apparently, there is a whole curriculum and yes, I plan to read up on it. This question threw both of us as high school English teachers. Yes, there are joyful moments in my classroom, but it’s not something I really think about in my lesson planning. It’s hard to think of my students who are often reluctant, sleepy, (sometimes entitled), distracted and cynical as joyful learners. However, these students are also creative, insightful, independent, incredibly talented and strong. I am responsible for setting the tone in my classroom, and I have learned so much from BSS in just four days about the whole school climate I would like to be a part of. Yesterday, I was in the principal’s room taking a break, and I looked out the window to see a group of children standing in a circle. I thought they were playing a game but as I continued to observe, they were learning a lesson. The children held cards with letters on them and at the instructor’s cue, they would move to the center of the circle. Today, I asked this teacher what he was doing. He teaches Bengali, which is the state language in Tripura, and some students were having trouble grasping the concepts on the board in the classroom, so he creatively found a way to engage the students through movement outdoors so that they could grasp the structure of the sentence in Bengali. These children looked like joyful learners. Two of the girls in the grade 9 class, which I have visited twice and to whom I will teach a poetry class today, came to the principal’s room and asked me to look through their project. They are competing in a nationwide contest where they have to come up with a local problem and design a presentation as to how they will solve it and serve their community. They chose the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #4 – Quality Education. As we sat next to the computer, looking at their presentation, I was blown away by their level of compassion, knowledge and engagement. Two 14-year- old girls had already researched the problem, collected data in their community and brainstormed creative ways to address the lack of quality education in Udaipur. Their plan, which is extensive, includes meeting with parents, teacher training and a reading festival. These are not my students, although I feel like they are, but I am so proud of the work they are doing. They have joy and passion about extending the type of education they receive here at Brilliant Stars to others. The majority of the school, grades 4-10 are working collectively on another Sustainable Development Goal in a Service Based Learning project. They tackle one each year, and it is a daily class, part of the curriculum. This year their goal is #5 – Gender Equality. I have always been passionate about this issue and spend a good time talking about it in my classroom, so I was so pleased when I visited two service classes yesterday to see the wheels turning in their heads. They are in phase 2 of the project and are designing survey questions where they will gather data in their community regarding gender equality. The division of labor in India is still mostly divided into the women doing household chores and caretaking, while the men work and are usually the head of the household. Most people live in extended family situations with their husband’s parents. While Indian women do have lots of options, the patriarchal family system and the dowry keeps many women from wanting to or being able to seek their independence. Single, unmarried women will live with their families and widows, who were burned with their husbands until about 100 years ago - I learned from a student yesterday, will live with their late husband’s family. Supria, who has been kind enough to cook our meals while we are here, lost her husband, and I am told she is the only breadwinner in the family. Many girls and women are not allowed to use computers or cell phones, and they are definitely not allowed out at night, alone, unescorted, here in Udaipur. Now, these are generalizations, there are homes where people share household tasks and women have more independence, but generally women are not treated equally within the family or societal structure. (They aren’t in America either, but that is a post for a different blog on a different day). Anyway, within this context, the children are designing questions to elicit responses from their community members and then they will plan how to increase awareness in their community. As one of the instructors mentioned, this problem is “invisible” in that it is not like pollution or clean water. You can see it, but because of its systemic roots in religion and familial and societal structure, it will be hard to fix. I visited a grade 8 class where the students were learning how to write survey questions. They had to brainstorm in groups 5-7 potential survey questions. The group I worked with had trouble getting started, but once they did they generated questions like – “Does your husband allow you to take decisions? What toys do you keep to a girl or boy during their different ceremonies? What are the expectations you keep for your boy or girl when they grow up?” The division of labor in that little group (one girl, three boys) was interesting in itself because the girl did all the work, while the boys contributed quietly one or two questions to her list. Maybe it was because I was observing that they were quiet? I also observed a grade 5 class, which was a treat for me, because I work with cynical but amazing teenagers. These students, for their service class, had prepared some skits – one was about how a simulation of approaching people in their homes to ask survey questions. The other two were about gender roles in the home, a wife asking her husband to take a job, and a girl asking her father to go out at night with a friend. In both skits, the man said no. The teacher then gave a reminder of how history had created such oppression and why and he made a web on the board with the reasons why girls weren’t allowed to go to school traditionally. He asked me if I wanted to comment, and I shared that 120 years ago, girls weren’t allowed to go to school in America, for the exact same reasons they had listed. In grade 9, the classroom I have spent the most time in, a Baha’i saying is posted, “Let your vision be world-embracing rather than confined to your own self.” In our online work for TGC, we read lots of scholarly articles and watched videos and had discussions on what it means to be a global citizen. Here, at Brilliant Stars School, I have seen young global citizens in action and it has finally clicked with me. I am inspired by these brilliant stars to take these ideas and connections into my own classroom and school. It is not a utopia, but they are making change happen on a small scale, awakening young minds to their role in the the world and their possibilities and the problems of the future. When I saw the other fellows’ urban placements, I worried about being insulated inside a small school community campus. Instead, I have been blessed by strong connections and surrounded by joy and enlightenment. These people and this place will always remain with me, as a teacher, as an awakener, and a learner. Our host guru, Indira, introduced us to the Indian education system in one of our sessions last week. She reminded us the Buddhist parable of the six blind men who are trying to figure out what an elephant is by touching individual parts of it. They all have vastly different ideas about what the elephant could be, but none of them perceive the elephant as a whole, only a part. Obviously, the parable speaks to us about perception. Indira used this parable to describe Indian education as a whole, mainly to demonstrate the lack of cooperation and disparity in the various forms of education in the country. As our engineer session leader mentioned, “what’s missing in Indian education is that most people have not been taught to work in a team.” This past week in Bangalore, we experienced two vastly different school experiences that brought Indira’s teachings to light.
Some background facts and figures: There are 1.2 billion people in India. 418 million of them are children who are of school age. There are 22 modern languages represented by the state, 1796 regionalized languages and 1576 indigenous languages. The literacy rate, as defined as “the ability to read and write one’s own name” is 69%. As a whole, parents are willing to spend up to 40% of their incomes on their children’s education. An estimated 1 million students do NOT attend school, even though attendance is mandatory for ages 6-14. There is a teacher shortage of 1 million. As I have observed, and many of my hosts and students have mentioned, India is in a period of transition. There is a constant pull between the modern and the traditional. Education, as it is evolving in India, is being pulled by this dichotomy. Indira referred to the “colonial hangover” that India is still experiencing and its effects on the education system. Traditionally, Indians have been taught in a rote memorization and lecture style. The government curriculum, for government sponsored schools, requires them to do the same thing on the same day in preparation for the test. The students who will graduate from high school are pushed to be doctors and engineers. One student on the panel at an army school, who attends university in New Jersey said, “arts are fine, but this is not what India needs.” Immediately after she said it, the younger students vehemently contradicted her. They imagined the potential to explore careers in the humanities. The idea that India needs more doctors and engineers is still quite embedded in young people’s minds from both family and societal pressure. It is true that parts of India needs students to excel in these areas and promote change and innovation in their communities. But it is also true that students, while still feeling an enormous competitive pressure to receive high marks rather than think critically, are beginning to experience learning from varying methods and techniques and value learning for its own sake rather than performing for a test. The tests are still there, but some students and teachers are starting to see value in progressive pedagogies that promote engagement and 21st Century skills. We visited two schools – one a government/management funded school for traditionally impoverished castes and the other a large Army school. Despite the readily apparent differences, several things remained constant. Students respect their teachers. When a teacher or adult enters a room, they all stand up and say, good morning, ma’am. Only a few of my students back home even greet me. A few special ones thank me as they leave. Bless them. Indira told us that the hierarchy of values in India was father/mother/teacher/god(s). So you can see that teaching and learning forms an important part of their cultural identity built into their customs and value systems. Another similarity I noted was the eagerness among the students to interact with us as visitors, and that kids are just kids wherever you go. They act silly, full of contagious energy, shy, embarrassed and often ask poignant and profound questions. My own students provide me with motivation in their innocence and optimism and these students are no different. The experience at the government/management school consisted of a more traditional type learning. The English medium school is about 100 years old and has other branches in Bangalore. I first went and sat with a man who runs the computer lab. He has 28 desk tops. They weren’t working, probably an electricity issue, which tends to go on and off in India. He told us that many of the students would come after school to work and that teachers brought their students to the lab. He had been in the army for 17 years and came back to Bangalore and thought it was his dharma and an honor to work for the school. His children, however, went to a private school. As I walked around the school, on the boys’ side, I saw kids working, but chattering away, with no teacher in any of the rooms. Indira mentioned there was a lot of absenteeism from teachers. But I surmised that perhaps they got the lesson started and then left for a meeting. The lesson I observed was a 10th grade social studies class. The enthusiastic teacher taught a basic lesson in English on the difference between cities, villages and tribal communities. She defined them on the board. The kids wrote it down, recited it back to her and then they listed the pros and cons of each together. It amused me to see the students so enthusiastic to call out the pros and cons and the teacher struggle to keep up with their answers as she wrote them on the board. The same thing happens to me. As in any country, the kids pointed out that in cities had access to more resources but more pollution, while the heart of India’s cultural traditions lay in the villages, that often lacked resources. The teacher used her cell phone to show a video of a village (or rural community – not tribal). I found this interesting in that she was creative enough to find a way to use technology to deliver part of the information, even though there was none in her room. She brought great passion to the classroom and the children were clearly engaged. Their homework was a recall of the lesson. As we walked out the students we met in the hallways kept politely to the other side but they all wanted to greet us. As we met with the head of the school, the principal and the teacher over tea, we began a candid dialogue. One of the TGC fellows asked the teachers what they saw as the greatest challenge in Indian education. Their passionate response resonated with the challenges in American education: government mandates. They felt that the constant pressure of the state adding more to the text and curriculum as well as the looming presence of testing. As we left the school, the principal of the high school wanted us to sign her visitors’ book. Meanwhile the girls were all lining up in the courtyard for a group picture. Several U.S. teachers were positioned prominently in the middle and the girls yelled and screamed for the man who was taking the pictures. After we took several pictures the girls all crowded around us like we were rock stars and wanted us to take selfies with them (on our phones – they had none). They were silly and giddy and full of life. I could not stop smiling for hours. The demographics of the families of these children differs not only because them come from poverty, but that poverty causes the mothers to have to work, which puts a strain on the family life so very important to Indian culture. Also, the parents tend to not value education and often do not speak English. The students are unable to receive help and support at home if their parents can not understand the language in which it is written. The army school (also English medium), less than a kilometer away from the partial government school, had about 3000 students and a huge facility with interesting circular architecture, kind of like the Globe Theatre. The children there had moved around from state to state with their fathers’ positions and had varying perspectives on India, having traveled and moved frequently. This family structure also affected the students in that the mothers were often illiterate, non-supportive and unable to help their students at home because of their various responsibilities with husbands in the military. We listened to a panel of students, two 11th graders from that school, two graduates of the school who attend university in America, and one girl who attended a neighboring private school. They formed articulate and intelligent responses to our questions and were obviously the cream of the crop. They all spoke of immense family and societal pressure to receive high marks and attend a university. They said college was not an option. They all agreed that India’s diversity was both its strength and its weakness in terms of education. They were proud of their varied cultural heritage and ability to tolerate so many different ways of life and languages; however, they all saw it as an obstacle in moving education forward. They spoke of stereotypes based on specific states that were hard to get rid of, and we have that too. I have a lot of them about Alabama. They saw the system as outdated but recognized that it would take time to evolve. One girl spoke of how she was able to focus on her pursuit of performance arts. She had support at home and she had the resources at school. This is a huge shift in options in just one generation. After the exchange we interacted with the kids who also treated us like rock stars, but with more intellectual curiosity. They asked me about our president, whether I was afraid for my safety, what stereotypes I had, and whether a “brown person” (their phrase not mine) would be treated as such an anomaly in the states. All good questions. We took pictures and reluctantly left the students who had to go back to class. A common thread in Indira’s presentation and both school visits is change. Teachers and students want it, but it is difficult to move forward as a whole when familial, societal and institutional forces are clinging to the old. Mr. Singh reminded us of a story of the Vedic goddess Shiva, who represents many things, but destruction is one of them. Clearly the old will be replaced by the new, but the question is, for India, in what forms? Now that I am in Udaipur, just spending one day at a progressive school, in a remote rural area I can see one way that positive change is taking place. I did not see rote instruction. I did not see large classrooms packed with students. I saw creativity and engagement. As my week unfolds here at the school, I will continue to learn and share. The past two days, we have met some sage people in our session work. The one theme that seems to prevail over the days is dharma. Now, I have taught a section of the Ramayana before, and I am aware of at least one translation, which is duty/purpose, according to the editors of that Prentice-Hall textbook. Mr. Chiranagu Singh, who was kind enough to give us a background introduction to Indian culture and someone I want to “take home with me” as we say in the South, described dharma as the unifying force for the Indian people through many years of change. He also defined it through parable. There was a boy who sat by the river and saw a scorpion drowning. As he picked it up, it stung him. He threw it back in the river. It started to drown again. He picked it back up and it stung him again. He threw it back in the river. And so on. A man asked the boy why he kept repeating the same action and the boy replied, because it is my dharma to save the scorpion and it is his dharma to sting. Mr. Singh defined dharma as that which holds or sustains us; in other words, duty or purpose. I learned that Bangalore, the city where we are staying, is considered the Silicon Valley of India. From 2001 as a city of 5 million, it has grown since the last census to 8.4 million. That blows my mind, equivalent to NYC. I guess if I did the least bit of research before I ventured across the world, I would have known this, but wow, that’s a lot of folks. And the impact on the city and people of that growth is hugely significant. In 1947 India won its independence from Britain and the caste system was officially abolished by the Constitution in 1950. However, caste still exists as is readily evident. Mr. Singh told us that the vertical caste system is abolished, but the horizontal caste remains. For example, one of the TGC participants proposed the question that he saw ladies in the street crying over the death of a little squirrel, but why do the people do not see the water and nature of alive. Singh replied that the abundance of trash is leftover from caste. The upper castes depended on the untouchables to clean up their mess for thousands of years. Since the caste system was abolished, most people still do not place their trash in proper receptacles, and I only saw one at the park we went to yesterday. The upper castes think they are above it, and if my family came from a former untouchable class, I wouldn’t pick up anyone’s mess either. However, Singh told us that there was a governmental campaign to clean up India and begin a system of trash collection and disposal. And obviously education plays an enormous role in that. I have not been to a rural area yet, but my guess is that the garbage isn’t as prevalent there. Now, the hotel is quite clean. This is in the streets I am talking about. Another way caste still remains is in the family structure. 90% of all marriages are still arranged, and most people do not marry outside of their caste. Indira, who is the lovely lady, responsible for coordinating our trip on the India end, told us last night at dinner that the servers at our restaurant were primarily from the northeast, where I am going on Sunday, were from an impoverished caste. She knows this, she says, by last name and by regional dialect. Yet another example of caste lingering exists in access to clean water in Bangalore, and maybe other parts of India, but I am not sure. An engineer from the Biome project came to talk to us about the water problems in the city. This situation is complex, and although I now understand it, I don’t want to go into it here. And I’m no engineer. The previous main river source has dried up and water is being pumped in from another area. The ramifications of the lack of access exist in scarcity, flooding and pollution. But the water has become a commodity and although the utility subsidizes it, there has been a rise of entrepreneurs who own tanks and disposal tanks and even on a smaller scale, property owners who bore groundwater and sell it to their neighbors. The government is unable to regulate these markets. But the interesting thing is that people are adapting and finding creative ways to solve the problems, when the infrastructure fails to do so. He told us of a partner project with schools where they offer rainwater collection bins and then work with the schools (teachers and students) to find the best use of that water in their particular schools. He said, “every crisis is an opportunity.” We would all do well to remember that phrase in the trying times of our lives. From what little I have observed, the Indian people have a powerful sense of purpose, family and place. And that dharma has been able to sustain their plural culture through occupation, political and cultural change and remain diverse and mostly tolerant of each other. How inspiring! On a personal level, I often forget what my dharma is in the midst of work and family and day-to-day chaos. But distance has its advantages, and one of them is perspective. In the three days I have been here, I know my purpose is to learn and help others achieve their best potential and be a loving, generous, kind person to those I love. My other conceptions of dharma might change as I do, but those remain constant. After a long day of getting up too early and working out and walks and seminars and a late dinner, I was questioning my dharma on this trip. I came back to the hotel, exhausted, and a more than a little home sick. After visiting a local school today and interacting with the students and teachers, I am re-energized and confirmed why I am here in the first place: to make connections, learn from others so I can be a better guru to my students. After a LONG day + of travelling - Vilas to Charlotte (2 hours), Charlotte to DC (1.5 hours), DC to Frankfort (9 hours), Frankfort to Bangalore (5 hour layover and 8.5 hour flight), customs, money exchange, bus to hotel (2 hours), I finally made it to India and settled into my hotel room around 4am. As it was 2 am (ish) as we were riding through the city, I could not see much, but I did notice a few things.
Traffic goes slowly. Most communities are gated. There are random dogs everywhere. People are friendly and eager to help. The mosquitoes were already biting. We had to scan our luggage before entering the hotel (hey, why don't we do that in America?) The temperature here in Southern India is quite pleasant right now. Our travel, though long, was thankfully uneventful. I lost my cell phone the moment I got to Dulles, but I found it in ten minutes. Great way to start, right? Lots of temporary panicking. When we arrived at the Frankfort airport, all 11 of us went down the wrong escalator. Twice. Blind leading the blind. But other than those slight mishaps, we all made it as did our luggage, which amazes me that my luggage can follow me from Charlotte to Bangalore and still be in tact. Here is a pic of my view from the hotel room. Since I slept through breakfast and lunch, I think I'll venture out of it... In one week from today, I will be in Germany, transferring flights (if I am figuring out the time change correctly) on my way to India. This journey marks a year + of anticipation, collaboration and hard work with the U.S. State Department's IREX Teachers for Global Classroom fellowship program, of which you can read more about here: www.irex.org/project/teachers-global-classrooms-program-tgc Yesterday, I was speaking with my bestie, trying to describe the mixture of feelings I am having about leaving for three weeks. I have been out of the U.S. exactly three times before, and I live and work in the same county in which I grew up. I have an adventurous spirit and love to do new things and meet people from varying backgrounds. I seek to open my mind and heart. However, as I told my friend, I am anxious about the impact this trip will have on changing my whole being. She responded that it will be a good change, and of course it will, but a small part of me fears that. Since I am going to a country with a 79.8 percent Hindu population, I thought it might be appropriate to consult the Bhagavad Gita, which says, "What you have taken, Has been from here What you gave has been given here What belongs to you today belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow Change is the Law of The Universe” and “Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.” So as long as I accept that the person who enters India will be profoundly different than the person who leaves, I can handle my anxiety about change. The second quote speaks to being open to learning from my encounters and lowering my expectations of how it will affect me, but rather on how I can impact others - my Indian students, my own students upon my return, my host principal and teachers, my partner teacher and cohort of American teachers. The real reason teachers teach and stick with it is to help others. We work diligently, sometimes rarely receiving a personal reward, but knowing that the work itself is important provides incentive to cultivate growth in others. I do not have my complete itinerary yet, but I fly into Bangalore on July 4, with my 11 other TGC fellows, where I will be getting a cultural introduction to the country and its education system. On July 9, my partner teacher, Jane from Michigan, and I will fly 4.5 hours and then ride for 2 to reach our host school, Brilliant Stars School in Udaipur, Tripura. As you can see from my map, it is on the other side of Bangladesh. Here we will teach lessons with the students, lead professional development, observe and visit cultural destinations as well as having the honor of being invited to dine in home with several people associated with the school. Here is the link to the school if you want to check it out. http://www.brilliantstarsschool.org. We will be here for 8 days. Then, we will fly into New Delhi, where we will reconvene with our other American teachers to debrief and plan for implementation of global standards into our classrooms, school and communities. In just writing this first entry, my anxiety is starting to change to purposeful direction. I am just about ready to roll. I have my vaccinations, anti-malaria pills, anti-naesua pills, DEET, antibiotics, a sunbrella, chargers, airplane pillow, and seemingly endless list of things I need to take with me. As the last-minute-motivated person I am, I am still working on my lesson plan and presentations. I have Sykpe and whatsapp downloaded on my phone. I have letters and photos to share from my high school students, and an assortment of gifts for the students and my hosts. Yes, I will miss my family, a special someone, friends and pets. I will not pretend that the tourist part of me is not excited about the Taj Mahal, elephants, curry, chai, beautiful saris and flowers. And despite my fear of the uncertain, I am honored to be chosen and open to the rich and life-changing experience that lies ahead. Please follow me as I travel along. I will be updating several times a week. Namaste! |
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