HAL Museum visit

23rd Feb 08, 11:40 to 16:20, Chalghatta school kids.

Second year in running for the 7th kids. The big difference was the volunteers. Last time, tons of people had turned up, but this time, it was just me! A reflection on my marketing skills ?? The teachers had other chores, and they left the 32 kids to me. 26 girls & 6 boyz. And soon, after their mid day meal, we marched along the wind tunnel road, passed a choclate to each, and we walked merrily, as we walked along the bridge across the gutter, I felt like a pied-piper. No wonder, as we descended the bridge, the HM stood there, waiting for us, saying she would also like to join. Ok! with her retirement in a week, guess she wanted to take no chances!!

We first checked out the galleries - itz all 'bout HAL history - threw some pointers here & there, kids asked quite a few questions, and took them out of the gallery quick before they got exhausted. Kids seemed more disciplined than last time. I could handle most of them as a group.

Next scene, at the cockpit, a simulator, the kids watched as the fighter tookoff, turned left-right based on the instructor's joy-stick, and soon crashed!! Some kids had to lifted onto my shoulders to view the happenings. Guess, itz major pain if you are short, and the tall ones crowd in front.

Next scene, was at the...observatory....where U get to see the run way......kids just lazed around happily as we waited for the flights.

And then, we went to audio-visual centre, where a movie on the Kuwait war was shown.....with the role of aircrafts being depicted......it was a well made documentary....and kids were glued.

Then the aircrafts came in to picture....had explained earlier 'bout how they fly....wings...rudder..propellor etc etc.....and some of them remembered it.....It was fun for them to see the real machines...touch them...look into the cock pit etc etc

The sight of flowers in the garden, mango trees, made them swarm towards it. Luckily, the security guard, an old man, gave one good look, and kept quite. With minimal damage I took the kids away, and got them to the fish pond......again helter-skelter......they just loved it.

After some biscuits, and choclates, we started back....guess...it was good to see the kids who grew up watching the planes take-off- & land so close to their homes...get a first hand feel of it.

Bus back, HM went home, and we walked back on wind-tunnel road. It wasn't a hot day, and soon all of us got treated with a vanilla ice-cream. Most kids handled choclate wrappers, ice-cream cups well.

Soon...it was the bridge across the gutter....as we walked over it...the kids started calling a girl in the gutter..'Roopa...Roopa...Roopa...'...I looked across and found two small girls rag-picking in the gutter. Thats a big gutter that cuts into the airport, guess goes under the runway, come out & feeds to the Bellandur lake. So, here were these two little girls, around 10 years, walking on the debris of the gutter. Both were wearing pretty clothes. The kinds I would like any little girl to wear to a wedding. And, they were busy looking into the amased debris, & pulling out useful stuff.

'Roopa...Roopa..' continued...the kids gushed....'Saar...shez from our school.....was in 5th std......and now has dropped out'.....................Roopa looked up, became conscious of the peering heads, and just kept to her rag-picking. I wanted to have a chat with her....calling her failed......so I decided to get close to the gutter....the kids followed enmass....and soon....after convincing her I just wanted to talk to her...she came over climbing the sides of the gutter.

A shy little girl, had the dried up black sewage mud plastered all over. Her brother was in the gutter at some distance. Conflicting replies came from her & the students. No father...mother is a sweeper, mother wants her to study..she is not interested....she is interested....but they need money at home etc etc. Decided to speak to her mother to get her to school from next year. The other girl with her, was younger, and as I called her to come over, she simply ran into the waters away from us. The kids gasped...'Uncle, see how shez running in the gutter'

We walked back to the school. The kids for a while, kept talking of their friend in the gutter......and soon as their homes and school came close....they ran...with big leaps....and joy on their faces.

IDay at Bellur Nagasandra School

In this academic year, this was my first visit to the school. But the recognition and pleasure of the chlidren at seeing their dear "aunty" was instant.

The festivities began with the children walking the area carrying a Gandhiji photo and to the accompaniment of the drums beating.


The mood just got more festive when the children were back at school. They all danced to their hearts content to the beats of the solo drum.

Finally they settled down, wondering what all the fuss was about (especially the anganwadi kids - they were so lost that they looked cute... )



This was followed by ample poojas of Gandhiji and Nehru, a rendition of Vande Mataram (Akash still thinks its a torture to his kids, but my kids dont seem to think so ;-) ), the flag hoisting and finally the rendition of the national anthem.



Shekhar, one of the two teachers at the school for the last 13 years, has been transferred from school to the main BEO office in K.R. Puram. There was a tear-filled felicitation ceremony for Shekhar and it is sad to see him go..


The day ended with chocolates for the children, and that had the children overjoyed. But yesterday also got me thinking. Is this education going to improve the lives of these children in anyway? If not, what are we achieving from this whole drill of making them mug to pass exams? Are these children going to grow up to be daily-wage labourers with children studying in this very same school? Are their grand-children going to have a better standard of living, better food, better infrastructure?

60 years under the national flag, and we still have so many open questions. Is there anything we can do to answer any of them?

6th std Math test

These tests were conducted by Nagrathna who has been predominantly handling the 6th std batch, and Chetna. Good info for us to follow up, as these kids move to 7th std soon.

HAL Museum visit

These children have their home very close to the airport runway. They grow up with the sound & sights of all kind of flying machines. So, one saturday afternoon, after their classes, we decided to take the 7th std kids at Chalghatta school to the HAL museum. The kids were quite excited as usual. They wanted to skip their mid-day meal and start. I used that day to explain 'How airplanes & helicopters fly'......a quick read of the book HowStuffWorks early morning majorly helped. Simple concepts, how they move forward, upwards & turn were explained, 'Propeller, Engine, Wings, Rudder' were introduced. And soon, couple of students explained it to the class.

So, 22 of the students, 4 teaching staff, 7 volunteers landed at the museum soon. The museum authorities seemed to be very happy to see the children, and all thru they treated us warmly.

And for the next 2 hours the children looked at aeroplanes, touched them, heard about them, played simulator games, ran around joyusly and so on...

Mission accomplished.

As we went thru the place, a few things seem to attract the kids wildly.

1. The Fishes in the pond.

2. Mangoes on a tree: There was a wild run for it. (The Rose garden besides was majorly eyed, but we guyz were in sufficient force by then).

3. An Air Conditioned room we walked into, almost every one said 'AC...AC...'

As I watched the children running around & playing, some inevitable thoughts cropped up. Will they make it big ? Would they be an Engineer etc. What sort of jobs would they get into ?

Well, their learning levels have been a serious concern. Its quite bad, simply not comparable to others from private schools. They seem to belong to classes many rungs below. At times, the classes, resemble a creche, the kids simply come & go for years.

Government schools remain a challenge. How do we as volunteers transform the school. Get these children to fulfill their potential. How ??

Chalghatta 4th standard assesment

The following is the assesment for kannada and maths ( addition ) of 4th standard class chalgatta school. One poem in kannada was given to read and students were assessed based on their reading speed, word formation, fluency in kannada. Some students were not even able to frame words using kannada letters. The condition of few students is really bad, need to do lot of effort to improve thier kannada reading skills.

Maths (only addition) was assessed. Some students dont even know how to place commas for numbers. Some dont know units, tens, hundreds etc place. Addition without carry is done by almost all. Addition with carry some students had problems. But almost all students could not identify ten thousand and lakh numbers. Here is the assessment details. Next week will try to assess subtraction, multiplication, division and give final assessment of maths.

Name, Kannada assessment, Maths ( addition and general number concept)


Venkatesh A A
Vijay A A

Martin Luther B A
Swati B B

Vijayalakshmi C A
Triveni C B
Priyanka C C

Gopal D B
Manjunath D C
Deepika D C
Bagya D C
Preethi D D



A. Very Good.
B. Good.
C. Average.
D. Poor.

Chalghata 3rd std assesment

The school continues to surprise me.

Narendra (new volunteer), Madhu & me landed to find the 5th, 6th & 7th occupied by teachers. So, we decided to check out the 3rd & 4th who sit in the same classroom taught by teacher X (Vandana/Muktha).

Initially Kannada assesment was done (read a para from their textbook) followed by Math assesment (addition & subtraction). The kids seemed to be surprisingly good in maths. The small class strength helps.

Name Kannada Math-add Math Subtract

Priyashakthi M G G
Dhanalakshmi M G G
Mary G G G
Suma M G G
Ajith B G ND
Joseph G M ND
Venkatesh B G ND

G - Good
M - Medium
B - Bad
ND - Test not done

Madhu looked at Kannada, while I looked at Math. Math was more of oral addition & subtraction, followed by paper problems. Didn't have much of carry etc.

Two Bad's in Kannada is a concern. Math skills seem to be good, need to test more. And this was the BIG surprise, the kids both 3rd & 4th seem to be real good with maths.

Narendra to update on his assesment of the 4th std.

English B5

Most of the kids in the school are learning words by rote. When told to read, they guess the words instead of reading them. Except for Chetan who puts in some effort into really reading the words, all the others find it difficult. One possible cause is that these kids dont know the small case alphabet.

Also, Madhu is very restless and seems totally uninterested in learning or questioning about anything at all. :(

Eng c4 Bellur

Bellur school, following kids in 4th std are bad at English alphabets - can't write -

- Vidya
- Lingaraju
- Suhaas

Shud teach them b4 schools close.

-A

First computer lesson for Std 7th

"Just give us one week, and we will know computers" This was the sentiment in the 1.5 hours computer session I had for 5 students from the 7th standard.

Selecting the 5 students was a task in itself. Almost everyone wanted to go and try using the computer. :-) So we promised the remaining kids that we'd have a session for 5 kids each every week. That pacified them for a few mins.

Moved the 5 kids to the HMs room, and spent a lot of time trying to start up the computer. Finally two engineers got this one computer working!!!

I started with a brief description of the terminology of the computer - CPU / Monitor / Mouse / Keyboard. And then showed them how to open Paint and then let them paint. The purpose was to accustom them to using the mouse - both pointing and clicking. The paintings took different hues and different shapes - circles looked like eggs and the sun had rays going till the roots of the trees :-)

Could give two chances to each kid to use the computer and still the session went on for over 1.5 hrs! Would like to provide more time to each child in the coming few sessions. Would also like to go to some level of computer internals such as RAM, hard disk, motherboard - atleast teach them the terminology.

At the end of the session, they didnt want to leave the computer. And their words were "Just give us one week...."

7th std English assesment

The idea is to do a crash course on English for the 7th. The focus will hopefully remain on their textbook. So, Madhu, Chethna & me went around assessing them last saturday. Asked them to read out a paragraph from their English book first chapter also asked them to copy & writedown a paragraph. And, based on these, we have catagorised them to Good, Average, and bad.

The idea is to handle the kids based on these groupings, and we would need atleast 3 volunteers for that!!!

The list more for records, is as follows, I seem to have misplaced the list prepared by Madhu. Need to extrapolate that data!

Good

Rajesh, Prabhudev, Nagaraj, Manjula

Average/Medium

Yellappa, Annapoorna, Kamala, Narayana, Chandrika, Geeta, Priyadarshini

Bad

Vinodraj, Umarani, Arun kumar, Sunil, Jyothi, Prabhavathi, Manjula


Yellapa is the restless kid around, looks quite sharp, need to channelise him.

An extraordinary experience...

I've been contemplating this idea of joining an NGO since long...am glad that I could finally move one step ahead & get associated with the Dream School Foundation...

There goes a saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side"...My experience at the school has only reinforced my realisation that I am one of those lucky ones to have my foot on the greener side...
I have read quite a few articles about the under-privileged sector of our society, but it's nothing close to experiencing the veracity in person...Come face to face with the kids & you sure will be left rapt !! It's amazing that even though they are deprived of the very essentials, that every child has a right to, they radiate so much of exuberance & are so eager to learn...These kids so convincingly portray all the rare qualities that maybe even I, as a child, might have been nervous about; then why must they be deprived of their right to chilhood ? Just a thought to ponder...

Am sure it's only the beginning...I hope to make a positive difference...

Ganarajyothsava

India's Republic day means & doesn't mean a lot of things to people. But to school children, itz fun time again. Marchpasts, community processions, speeches, flag hoisting, songs, skit, dramas & chocolates!!! It was 9ish in the morning, when I reached the Chalghatta school. For a change, all the kids were neatly seated, and awaited the proceeding to start. The chief guest was to arrive, and there was no sign of him. And soon, there was these colorful distant objects in the sky that got the kids excited. Parachutes, balloons ? None of us cud make them out.




The 6th std kids rehearsing

Shivaji & a look-alike!
Awaiting the chief guest.

Finally, we decided to go ahead.
The culturals started, but we guyz had to move to the Bellur school.


Initial photshot with Chetna & Hena.

' Bharath Matha ki Jai'

The Anganwaadi kids.

The Vande matharam song. Chetna & Hena had trained these kids for it. One complicated version, with tounge twistors galore.......I regarded it as pain & torture to my kids.......but to my surprise they pulled it of with aplomb.

Loose control... One more time!

Man...now for THE skit. The 'Punyakoti' song. Chethan, who sang was running away with the song. I barely managed to click a few snaps.

We had wonderful masks for the cows & tiger, but the one for the calf wasn't available, and we had to make do with a rabbit mask!!! Here Punyakoti is talking with her calf....'bout her impending surrender to Mr. Tiger.

After sentimental scenes, Punyakoti goes to Mr. Tiger, who for reasons I haven't fathomed all my life, feels sorry for wanting to kill her and instead of sending her back & going home, jumps from a cliff, and ends life!!!!

Teaching with my 5th std kids goes like this....45 minutes of English...restlessness.....and suddenly they jump and say 'Uncle, we will dance'......and thats it...they have their 'n' dances...that includes Dhoom machale!!! Here, we have them as Gopika's cribbing 'bout Krishna!!!

Speech in English. Chetna came with a simple written speech, and thrust it in my hands. None of the 4th & 5th were ready to speak it out, for they can't read it in the first place. Shocked. Well, thats the way it is. And, as I loudly contemplated writing the English in Kannada, and getting it read. Manjunath, a 3rd std kid, jumped, and forcefully said, he wud do it, and did a wonderful job of it. Long way to go for us.

3rd std kids singing the poem 'Bannadha thagadina thuthuri'

Man...this song has climbed up to the top of my charts. Something like 'Jannadha pannadha mangagallee'......Monkeys... please don't see, speak & hear evil! A dance, that evokes lot of laughter amongst kids.

End of celebrations. Lots of volunteers missed. Sunand, Dharin & Ami joined. And, the best part was the culturals at the Bellur school. Last Independence day, the kids just watched as Pooja & speeches took the centre stage. But this time it was the otherway.

After we left the school, came across this injured Brahminy kite. It may have done well with some attention & care, we left it to nature & moved away. And, so are these govt. schools ?

Ramnagara school trip

Thorns made red by bleeding hearts.

Well, if not a bleeding heart, I indeed was in a quandary. Chalghatta school - 200 kids - never been on a school trip - wow! lets take them out - but how ??

The logistics was turning into a nightmare. A bus can take 50-60 kids, a long journey makes it 9k/bus, and entry fees. And, food expenses. Mysore beckoned, but entry fees & quite long a journey. Same tale with Shravanabelogala-Tallakad-Bellur circuit.

Thorns.

My morning run ---> solution thrashed. Check with Sunand. 'Yes! we will do it', he says. Bliss.

Funda: Thorns are mostly in our imagination, as in the pic above. The locust intimidates other predators with it thorn like legs.

And, so on a saturday morning 9th of Dec 06. All the 6th & 7th std kids were taken on a outing. The 5th std kids from Chalghatta, along with 3rd to 5th from the Bellur school will be taken to Fun-world sometime in Jan. An elaborate pooja for the bus, seemed to satisfy the bus driver. He had cribbed heavily that only 46 passengers are allowed, and we were 66 kids, 8 teacher staff, & 6 volunteers!!!
And soon, Sunand & Shweta got some major Anthakshari going in the bus. Latest Kannada songs from FM 137.66
Ramnagara was the destination. A rock-climbers paradise. A quite place, with vultures above ur head, place to be. We wanted to introduce the kids to trekking and rock-climbing.
And soon, after breakfast, Sunand launched onto what trekking is....rock climbing is......the equipment used...how you need to be.....water bottles.....discipline....etc etc. At the end of the briefing, a boy promptly fainted!!!!
And soon, the 66 kids were divided into groups with volunteers Leena, Chetna, Shweta & Navrathan leading them. Sunand & Mallesh were the rock-climbing experts and leading the trek/climb. The teachers, esp the school HM Mary had a tough time in the small trek. She kept saying 'Since when have you been scheming this on me'...she struggled.....the kids literally ran.....and after some time 2 kids came back to help their HM!!!

Soon, we reached the base of Ramdevar betta. The joy here is the natural slide thats on this rock....the kids went up & slid down merrily.

We climbed up the hill, pitched in the equipment, and introduced rappling.
And after swift instructions from Mallesh & Sunand, the kids rappled down. It was a good test of their confidence, courage and trust.

Soon boyz & girls clamoured to get down. A few kept away, having a single rappling rope was becoming a botlle-neck. Shwetha took upon securing the harness & gloves.

Mmmmm......

By 5pm, we had finished with the last rappling kid, and went down for lunch. A good number of the kids had rappled down. The plan was also to visit Kokrebellur, some museum at chanpatna, and Rajarajeshwari temple. But, with rappling taking all the time we ditched it.

The school had raised Rs 2300 from the kids 50Rs each, from all those, who could pay. They covered food charges and also bought some canvas shoes for those needing it. Transport charges was covered by DSF. Rock climbing charges raised from volunteers.

The way back, the back benchers started with some major Ayyappa bajans, and soon being tired gave up and slept. It was 8:40pm, when the bus reached the school. Sunand wanted me to 'de-brief' the kids. And so, for the 66 kids seated in a corridor, that glowed in a yellow light lamp, for those who rappled, and those who didn't, with some of their parents watching, I spoke of 'Why adventure'....'Why push the body'...'Striving beyond the limits'...'Marathon running'.....'Rock climbing'....'Their exams'.....'their studies'.....'little more marks' The kids starred back sleepily, and their parents were quite.

Well, we managed to pull thru this outing safely. And, the kids enjoyed it. A new experience.

A zillion thanks to my buddy & Man Friday (Man Saturday ?) Sunand, who made this happen.