CCCL Hexaware: first interaction with kids: by Arnab
From Cmi Spark
Date of the event/events: January 28. 2007
This article is related to the efforts of CMI Spark to educate children of construction workers at the CCCL Hexaware site
This is a first-person article (or section of an article) by Arnab
[edit] Wishing to sprinkle more water on the flower buds
As Vipul has already mentioned we went to the CCCL Hexaware today (28 th Jan) in the morning and the duty or as would say the responsibility of interacting with Bengali kids was given to Bodhayan and me. Well truly speaking it was a pleasing experience for us sitting amidst some eight kids and trying to teach them. I would lay stress on the fact that we were trying to teach them rather than saying that we were teaching them as we were running out of resources such as slates and chalk pencils. The kids were of almost of the same age group that is from 3 to 5 though, one of them seemed to be aged 7. From what I get from our first interaction with the kids is that some of the kids have gone to the schools run by the government and attended the Sarnva Siksha Abhiyan started by the NCERT, New Delhi log ago. I could figure out that from the bags they were carrying as the logo on it said so. Anyway one of the girls named Labonya and a boy named Sappan seemed to know a lot A-Z as well as counting numbers from 1 - 100. However the girl outwitted the boy in knowing the Bengali script also. Another boy named Santosh, brother of Sappan seemed to know number counting from 1 to 20 and the English letters. How ever there were some other kids were present who did not seem to know much. They were enthusiastic about learning new things. I had a tough time in teaching Sappan a bit of Arithmetic that is addition and subtraction. Otherwise everything went on well.
The parents seemed to be enthusiastic about our project. They were eager to know whether we will be coming each and every day. After getting a negative response to this they were relaxed to know that we will be going to them for every week. Anyway some on went this further to ask that whether we will be doing anything to teach them in particular. I had no answer to this question. After getting a positive response from they today we will obviously move forward a bit and try to make our visit over there two days a week at least.
