Volunteers: Santhosh, Divya Sarasan
  (We actually had one more vol who wanted to come for the visit. But, my cell phone was down and Anita couldn't contact me. My apologies for the confusion!)

  We met briefly with the teachers (to get the salary vouchers signed) and then went upstairs to spend time with the 6th Std kids (the class Ram had taught). We had been in this class last week, so wanted to see if the kids were more comfortable this time around. I had some rough plan of what we wanted to do. We started off with the introductions and though they insisted, we refused the chairs and sat on the floor. Then a discussion started with 'What was the news today?' - we kind of discussed about what are the different news sources. Most of our discussion was a mix of English, Kannada, Hindi and Tamil. We only needed to communicate and we found one way or the other to get across the import of the discussion to all kids. This time, we tried not having just one kid helping out with the translation the whole time. That's the reason for multiple languages. The discussion then went into newspapers, what kind of news come on the papers, names of popular newspapers the kids knew etc. "Vijay Karnataka" is one kannada newspaper that kids were aware of. We then asked do the kids know how these newspapers are made - many of them replied that they get printed in the printing press. Then we went into "How does the press get the written material?" Some of them said a "news writer" gives it all. So, with some funny images on the board, new words were introduced - "Journalist", "Photographer" and "Editor" (I just tried to make it as simple as possible, yet giving an idea about the different processes involved). We managed to keep the interest levels of the children still high. The discussion went into how journalists get the information, different kinds of journalists, areas of news - like sports, politics etc. Then we decided to play a game. We will have our own newspaper. Initially, when I asked for volunteers to be journalists, photographers etc. no one came forward. Then we went through a discussion on what is expected from each role. Clearly, the idea was not to reprint or copy existing news - like asking a teacher for today's headlines. We decided India, Karnataka, Bangalore or just Chandranagar layout was too broad to cover. So, the newspaper became "Times of G... Chandranagar layout School" - Long name, but everyone liked it. Then the role of a journalist was clear - try and get news about the school - talk to teachers, other kids etc. about events that transpired at the school today. Then, we sought volunteers for photographers - we got quite a bunch, but again no clue as to what would these folks do without cameras! It was decided that they would draw the description. To help them out, we did an example - an energetic kid was sought and we interviewed him on his breakfast for the day. So, the headlines was "X had puliyogare in the morning" and we drew a picture of X having puliyogare. Editors understood their roles too.

  Around this time, we had the lunch break. We were slightly engrossed in the discussion that we went well into lunch time. Many kids didn't get the meal as the food got over! I spoke to Padmaja about it and she was worried - she invited the kids who were hungry to have lunch with the teachers. We need to understand how the mid day meals work better. When the kids were back, they came back quite energetic - I am not sure if they got a sugar high! They were jumping all around, so we switched activities - one of the kids gave her favorite - 'dancing rhymes' performance - she dances to popular english rhymes (something that padmaja had taught the children - to help them with the rhymes). Then one other boy did a kannada rhyme and after much prodding came up with a dance of his own. There was a stand up comic in class, who everyone wanted to see. The kid narrated a funny story that all the children already knew, but they still wanted to hear again. After all this, we switched to a game of pictionary. Towards the end, the journalists - couple of enthusiastic kids came up and narrated their headlines for the day - some of them are - "Divya came to the school from Marthahalli by bus", "The HM came from kudher by tempo traveller", "Santhosh had dosa and sambar for breakfast", "Nalina madam took a class on Kannada in the morning". When checking for photos, no one had done it. So, we made it impromptu i.e. on hearing a headline, they would draw the scenario on the black board. There were quite a few giggles when images of the HM and me were drawn. The kids seem to be able to latch on to this activity better after playing the game of pictionary (where they had more difficult words to do as well). We discussed the possibility of getting a real camera or even a video camera next time to record events. This did get them excited. But, I feel it will take some time for the kids to get more creative and develop an interest towards any specific activity - like for e.g. photography or art etc. In terms of possible outcomes - at this point I feel its only an exposure for a couple of hours - to see it translate into something more meaningful would mean 'reiteraion'. Nevertheless, we broadly seemed to have touched upon areas such as - English, art, science etc. Though the kids wanted us to stay back and play some outdoor games, we had to take leave while the other teacher came to the class.

Some issues - Its still tough to handle so many kids. One volunteer handling a full class is not comfortable - especially for new vols. We need to work on splitting a class into smaller groups - so we will need more volunteers for this. Maybe, we can start to work on "reiteration" i.e. slowly get into a phase were we can do focus on specific concepts over multiple visits with activities that interests the kid.

Divya, please add more info to this write up about your own experiences that I might have missed out.

Thanks,
Santhosh.