January 23 meeting: the details: by Vipul

From Cmi Spark

Date of the event/events: January 23, 2007

This article describes events that happened in or related to a CMI spark meeting

This is a first-person article (or section of an article) by Vipul

This meeting was based on an agenda decided by Vipul Naik (the article writer) available at Agenda for January 23 meeting.

[edit] Precursors and successors

[edit] Precursors

[edit] Successors

[edit] Venue and other sundry details

Venue: Seminar hall
Date: January 23, 2007
Starting time: 5:10 p.m. (approx)
Ending time: 6:25 p.m. (scheduled departure time of the Tempo Traveller from CMI)
Open to: all interested students

[edit] Attendance

The meeting was attended by: Vipul, Kshitij, Arnab, Shreevatsa, Ramprasad, Ravitej, Anirbit, Padmavathi, Nivedita, Jayanth, Arpith, Swarnava, Bodhayan and Anshul.

The stage was taken by me (Vipul) and Kshitij played the role of documenting important points on the black board.

[edit] Progress on agenda points

[edit] Whom to teach

The following were to be decided

Whether to go ahead with the CCCL Hexaware project: There was a unanimous yes
Whether to parallely attempt to contact a local school (as Bodhayan was making efforts for): It was decided that Bodhayan will go to the Navalur Panchayat Office and collect information about local schools. It is possible that we might pursue this line if the CCCL Hexaware line doesn't work out.
Whether to continue gathering information about corporation schools in the city (as Ramprasad is currently supposed to do): This has been shelved for now, and will be picked up if the current lines of effort don't pan out. Ramprasad said it will dilute our main objectives.

[edit] What to teach

Before beginning, I made it clear that all further discussion would be in the context of Spark's proposed activities When the topic of what to teach was raised, Anirbit said that the matter had already been discussed and decided upon in the January 11 meeting. I pointed out to him that while it was true that the matter had been extensively debated and that he may personally have decided what to teach, no consensus had been reached. Further, we did not at the time have an idea of who our target audience would be, whereas we now had a clearer picture.

Modulo the assumption that we are teaching people in the CCCL Hexaware construction site, we decided on the following:

The student's mother-tongue would be used as the medium of instruction: There was unanimous agreement upon this point
Primary focus would be given to teaching the student arithmetic, as well as rudimentary skills such as reading clocks, counting money, and other applications of arithmetic: On this point also, there was unanimous agreement
The student should be given practice in basic drawing skills and other hand-motor skills, which will, among other things, help the student learn to write: The suggestion of teaching the kids drawing was first made by Arpith. Arpith, one of CMI's budding artists, naturally felt this was the best way he could contribute to the education of the children. Vipul and some others took up Arpith's suggestion, though there were dissenters (Anshul) who felt that learning how to draw straight lines would not be much use in writing. Jayanth, however, said that his own experience indicated that the ability to draw straight lines was helpful in good letter formation.
The student should be taught basic hygiene, sanitation, and health-related issues: the suggestion was made by Nivedita. She initially made the suggestion, then tried backing out, but by that time, there were others who had taken up the suggestion.
The student could also be taught reading and writing in English, and in the mother-tongue

Some other side-currents that came up were:

Whether it is likely that the students will get a formal education in the near or far future: If the students are likely to get a proper formal education in some topics, it may not be worthwhile to duplicate the teaching effort, some people opined. On the other hand, if they are not going to get a formal education, it is important to provide them some kind of lasting knowledge that will continue to be of direct use even if they are unable to get properly educated. We should focus on skills which they can put to profitable use immediately.
After somebody suggested that we teach the kids first-aid, we realized that most of us don't have formal training in first-aid ourselves. So it was decided that Spark members would undergo training in first-aid. We also realized that the safety engineers would anyway be training the workers in first-aid because CCCL is a very safety-conscious company (as most reputed construction companies are)
Anshul said that there was recently a movement in Chennai to teach people Hindi, and he was of the opinion that many of the workers in the construction site would be keen for their children to learn Hindi. He said that if this were the case, he (Anshul) would best be able to teach.
There was a cross-current between Arpith and Anirbit on how to teach people drawing. Arpith took serious exception to Anirbit's style of teaching Bhavani how to draw a leaf.
There was some debate and confusion on whether the kids should be given a sense of art and aesthetics or whether drawing should be restricted to imparting skills. Anirbit reiterated that it was important to teach kids the aesthetic beauty in things. Most people, however, didn't see it as something very important.

[edit] How to organize the teaching

Where to teach: Should we teach in the construction site or get the people to CMI? It was decided that we will initially start operations at the construction site and we may later get the children over to CMI, once we have gained their confidence.

How to organize the students and teachers: Should we segregate students based on age, language and other factors and have separate teaching sessions (with different volunteers) or should we teach them all in one big bunch with 6-7 teachers hovering over them?

Small groups of students all with the same language and within the same age group could mean more focus, less distraction.

There was general consensus that age and language could form bases for segregation but it was decided that the details could be discussed only once we actually started out our educational programme.

[edit] Teaching aids/tools

Teaching kit: Belliappa mentioned something, and Arpith said that K. S. Balaji's friend could help us in the matter. We decided that Arpith would follow up with this person to determine more about the availability, affordability and utility of the teaching kits. Actually, Arpith himself didn't commit to anything but gave what could be construed as agreement to the suggestion that he find out about the teaching kits.
Slate, crayons, stationery etc.: Anshul preempted me on this issue by asking me earlier how we would get blackboards to teach the children. I informed him (and others who had newly joined Spark) that we had taught the children at CMI's construction site using slates, chalks, crayons and papers. So we could use the same package again. Some people were quick to point out that all the crayons had been finished/broken/misplaced and that this would pose a challenge to our activities. I felt that crayons could always be bought again and we simply needed to replenish our stocks. There was general agreement on the fact that we could always buy a new set of crayons and that lack of crayons should not hold Spark back.
Books for the children: These include basic math and basic language books. A question of funds was again raised. I brushed this question aside saying that if Spark actually managed to do something, funds would be the least of the problem. There wasn't general consensus on whether funds would be major issue, but nobody seemed interested in it.
Books for the teachers to decide how to go about the teaching: Apart from books for the children, there may be books/resources that will help the volunteers decide on a more effective teaching programme. Jayanth said he would talk to the volunteer organization he worked for to get names of books and other resources via which we could guide our activities. Some time around this point, Padma suggested that if sufficiently many CMI students were interested, we could ask the friend of Dr. K. S. Balaji (the same one to whom Arpith had alluded) to address the interested CMI students. More on this later.
Other aids that we haven't thought of: We still didn't think of them.

Padma suggested that if we wanted guidance on how to go about teaching the students, we could consult Balaji Sampath (a friend of Dr. K. S. Balaji), who was actively working in the area (Arpith opined that this person was a senior person in Aid-India or some equivalent social work organization). There was discussion on how and where we could get a briefing session in how to teach little kids from this person. Possible places include P. S. Senior Secondary School (Mylapore) and Institute of Mathematical Sciences. There were a lot of questions on what locations would be convenient for us or him but we finally decided that location was not a factor to be taken into consideration at least from our end.

Followup: Discussion with Balaji Sampath

[edit] When to teach

The project office people said that Sundays were the only days when they could help us because they (as well as the workers) were busy for the rest of the days. We decided to start our activities on Sundays and later move to the weekdays after having gained the trust of the children and their parents.

[edit] Allurement policy

The first question was: Should we offer any sops to the kids for coming and listening to us?

The following points were raised:

Nivedita and Arpith were principled objectors, though for ideologically different reasons. Arpith's logic was that everybody should do things out of their own selflessness and love and greatness, so that offering sops was incorrect. Nivedita's point was that children should come if they really get to learn anything and not just for the sake of getting toffees and chocolates. Nivedita's ideas was simple: tell them what we offer, and let them come if they are interested.
Bodhayan was a strong supporter of the reward (sans punishment) policy. His idea was that children were children and they liked toffees and chocolates and since we wanted them around, we should offer them what they want. I raised the question of whether this would encourage them to always seek toffees and chocolates, but Bodhayan smilingly said that he didn't mid being pestered by the kids for toffees and chocolates.
Anirbit was also a principled objector, though he did not voice his objections in full.
I raised the point of whether we should provide some meals/nourishment. Here again, principled objectors like Nivedita took strong opposition to me, but others, like Arnab, were more agreeable. My point was that some meals/nourishment can be part of our package, as long as we first of all don't inculcate bad and unsustainable food habits in them, and secondly, we make it clear that both the education and the food are good things and one is not a reward or a compensation for the other. There were questions of feasibility raised.

The next question was: how do we convince the children and the parents of the value of the services we are providing?

Some people said that all we had to do was give the kids a good time and they would go home and give raving reviews of us to their parents.
Anshul disagreed. He said that it was important to get the parents on board and make them supportive of our initiative. He asked us to consider a hypothetical construction worker. What would that construction worker stand to gain if some bunch of people from CMI came with slates and sat down with his/her kid? Anshul suggested that we first be clear about our objectives. For some time, it seemed that we were about to return to the comfortable chaos of our January 11 meeting, but fortunately or unfortunately, order soon returned to the room. There was a cross-current between Anshul and Anirbit, wherein Anshul repeatedly painted scenarios of the workers' skepticism for our educational programme, and Anirbit replied with "We need to convince them".
Apropos the points raised by Anshul, it was agreed that we need to make a clear education: how important the workers consider "education", and how much they think we can provide in terms of education. While it was agreed in general that workers understand the importance of a proper education, we also realized that what we were to offer may hardly be equated with education unless we can prove it to be of some value. Thus, we realized that we need to convince the parents of the educative value of our programmes.
Anshul also suggested that we avoid talking down to the workers, because workers also have their own self-respect, and moreover, they are in many ways more worldly-wise than others, due to constant exposure to situations that we ourselves have not been subjected to.

[edit] Addressing the workers

The project office people suggested that, on the coming Sunday, somebody from CMI address all the workers describing our plans and enlisting the support of the workers. The project office people assured us of logistic support but said that it was up to us to convince the workers of the worth of our services.

In the meeting we decided:

Whether to address the workers: A unanimous yes
What to say in our address: This would be decided by the speakers with input from the others
What language(s) to address in: Telugu and Oriya
Who will address: Bhanukiran and Anirbit

[edit] Possible action points

[edit] Collecting more information

It has been decided that Jayanth will lead a team to find out more information about the CCCL construction workers and their children, prior to the address next Sunday. The people preparing the address (viz Anirbit and Bhanukiran) must convey their list of questions to Jayanth so that he can try collecting answers in a single shot. Jayanth will also interface with the project office. He may take help from Ravitej, Bhanukiran and others.

Current things that Jayanth needs to find out:

A more precise idea of how many children there are, classified according to age group and language
What are the various things the parents of the children are keen for them to learn
What are the time slots that the children and their parents find convenient for the educational programme
What could be good ways of attracting them
Whether they are keen on learning Hindi

[edit] Decisions on addressing the workers

Jayanth has agreed to talk to Rajesh soon confirming that we would like to give the address this Sunday and also giving tentative details of the educational programme. The target is to talk by this Thursday so that Rajesh has enough time to get the workers around.

[edit] Collecting a list of volunteers and their constraints

This was a fun activity: how many hours would each person be willing to donate to Spark?

I began by asking people how many hours of their time they were willing to give to Spark provided that it did not clash with any of their scheduled activities like lectures. Bodhayan gave a figure of 8 hours per week, and Jayanth simplified it to a figure of 1 hour per day. I asked if anybody were willing to bidf for more hours. Anshul said that if the teaching work was exciting, he would be willing to teach for even 15-16 hours a week -- something like teach for double the time he spends attending lectures.

Others were less forthcoming, though everybody (except me) was quite clear that they could spend a minimum of four hours per week. I was the only one who found even four hours a week a bit of a stretch. I said so and then asked whether everybody around me found four hours a very small amount. Most people did agree. This meant that we had around 70 Human Resources hours totalling across Spark members.

If we work with CCCL hexaware, then, the close proximity of the site to CMI means that travel time or effort is not a deterrent to our efforts of educating the children, and will not eat up too many volunteer hours.

We then moved on to the more realistic picture of finding suitable time slots. It transpired that most people were free on at least one weekday during a significant portion of the working hours -- however this free day was not common across Spark members. The feasibility of teaching in the mornings seemed low because the families would be getting ready; the feasibility of teaching in the evenings again seemed low because the families would be relaxing, having dinner etc.

Local students could not contribute on the weekends.

We had thus faced problems with weekdays and weekends; with mornings, office hours, and evenings.

We finally decided that the individual constraints of volunteers would be used to chalk an educational programme once the broad educational programme was decided.

There was some debate on whether we should have a static or a dynamic programme. Bodhayan suggested a dynamic programme, with a collection of people gathering every day based on individual availability. Anirbit reminded us of the fateful days of Spark in the first semester, when we used to gather on the steps of the institute, waiting for enough volunteers to pour in so that we could make the fateful move towards the hostels. We remembered all too vividly the high degree of pressure on Telugu-speaking people who were the only ones who could act as interface person, particularly the pressure on Jayanth, and also on Ravitej and Bhanukiran.

There was thus a vies that we should decide a schedule statically, and maintain the flexibility to accommodate dynamic changes.