Internship Program at
Dolphin International School, Pulwama
June 2020 - August 2020
Mentor: Lopa Shah, Director (DIS)
ABOUT THE INTERNSHIP
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There is no doubt that education is one of the most important aspects of a person’s life. Each and every person aspires to be a part of an education system that makes them capable beings, ready to take on the challenges that the world has to offer. As part of the mandatory internship to be undertaken for the Masters in Social Design course at Ambedkar University, I decided to locate my internship in Dolphin International School, situated in Pulwama, Kashmir. The aim of the internship was to learn the complexity that conflict adds to the educational journey of a student and the various mechanisms that educators have to bring in to ensure a way of navigation through the conflict.
While Social Design is an evolving field that aims to look at merging the practices of design thinking and social sciences, to be able to hone the perspective of human rights and re-imagine research practices and methodologies is a fairly new subject. As a student of a course that is part of this journey, it becomes imperative to see the existing examples of this practice.
Dolphin International School situated in Pulwana, Kashmir, is an Independent co-education Institution, established in 2008 in a rented premise, and driven to provide opportunities of learning to children impacted socially, emotionally and economically by various conflicts. DIS also provides free education to close to 100 children from the valley. One of the main mottos of the school is to become an active model of a culture, which fosters understanding and empathy, and prepares children to navigate critically in the world beyond school. Its design is to empower children to become independently responsible citizens of tomorrow.
The initial plan was to be at Pulwama with the school and its students for the course of the internship. However, the Covid-19 pandemic restricted this plan but also opened possibilities of exploring different ways in which students can be engaged with, making their responses a basis of learning. For the course of the internship, an elective called 'Karvaan', as part of the ‘Exposure and Exchange’ program, was offered to students of DIS and students of various schools/institutions in Ahmedabad. The idea was to engage students in exploring the vast field of story-telling and exchange their ideas. The facilitation and the responses would help in understanding how context and lived experiences of children shape their stories.
The planned outcomes of the internship were to –
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Conduct online story-telling sessions with students from Dolphin International School and students from various schools and institutions in Ahmedabad
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Create a space for exchange of stories and interaction between both these student groups
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Submit a paper capturing the observations made during sessions and especially during the exchange and interactions
the process
CREATING A LESSON PLAN
The initial lesson plan was aimed at introducing the idea of story-telling to the students and equipping them with knowledge of various mediums in which it can be done. The elective was divided into four subject areas –
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Stories of Objects around me
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Stories of Nature
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Family and Folktales
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My stories
Various mediums such as writing, drawing, doodling, audio story-telling would be introduced, giving students a chance to pick a medium they feel most comfortable in.
INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF A STORY
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Students would be asked to write a story that they read in school, that they remember and liked. They would be encouraged to write whatever they remember.
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Each student would share their story – discussion around what makes a ‘good story’ – what should the audience/reader “feel” while listening/reading your story. (Introducing the various elements of story-telling)
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Students would be asked to find 3 objects in their house – it could be anything, from a utensil to a toy; They would be asked to write a story about the object – it could be an autobiography or their relationship with the object selected (story about an incident)
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{Imagine the history of the object – where did it come from? What was its journey like? How did it end up in your house? How is it used? What is the object feeling?} – Guiding questions from students
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Students would be encouraged to at least write one story for each object. Once completed, they would all read it out, peers would be encouraged to provide feedback.
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Facilitator would ask the student to click photographs of the object. Students would be asked to choose certain backgrounds of the object as per their story and recreate it in the photograph. – Students can then choose to make a comic strip of their story, or a photo-story, or a journal entry style.
INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF A STORY
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PART 1 – Introduction to Sound
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Students would be introduced to the concept of listening for ambience sound – what does it mean and its purpose. They would be asked to define the various sounds that they associate with “Sounds of everyday life”; all students would be asked to record each of that sound individually.
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Students will listen to the sounds and write about what they “feel” when they hear that sound. They would be asked to record what they have written and listen to it.
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The facilitator will mix the various sounds with their voices to show how story-telling through sound works / OR facilitator teaches basics of sound designing through simple mobile phone apps and students can create their own stories through sound and voice.
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INTRODUCING OBSERVATION
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Students would be asked to select an object of nature around them (ideally a stationary object like a tree or a flower or grass)
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They would be asked to sit with a pencil and paper and draw and colour that object during different times of the day
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The next observation they would be asked to make would be the different interactions that occur with this object (For example, if the object is a tree, the birds interact with it by using it as a space to make their nest, and human beings use it as a shade)
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Their drawings of the different times should have these observations as side notes
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Once they have done that, they would be asked to create a story of their favourite interaction – they could use their drawings to create comic like stories, or use it as a reference for their story
INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF A STORY
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PART 2 – Stories of my family
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Students would be asked to speak to various members of their family and find out folktales and songs.
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They would be asked to record as many stories and/or songs as they can.
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A similar activity of sound designing would be undertaken by the students – they make a list of ambience sounds, (facilitator can provide with other background sound if needed) and using an app, students can edit and design the stories
This is the first iteration of the lesson plan created for the elective.
ENROLLING FOR THE ELECTIVE
Before the classes began, students in both the cities were sent a video and a write up describing the elective and the first assignment that they were supposed to do. The aim was to create curiosity amongst the students and give them a sense of what the elective is going be like.
The video was created to showcase a theatrical oration of a childhood story that I had heard from my grandmother. The aim was to give an idea about one the mediums of story-telling. Along with the video, a brief write-up was created that would provide details about the elective and the first assignment.
CONDUCTING ONLINE SESSIONS
The classes began in both cities in the month of June. The total number of students who registered for the elective in DIS were 22, and 4 in Ahmedabad. Zoom (DIS) and Google Meet (Ahmedabad) were preferred mediums of conducting classes.
Each class was for 30-40 minutes, with previously planned sessions (as per the lesson plans created) were broken into smaller fragments to ensure less burden on the students. The initial weeks of the sessions were more technical in terms of creating an understanding of the structure of story-telling. Though the classes were accompanied by visual presentations, it was important to ensure that students had a way to go back to the various concepts taught in class. For this, recorded presentations were created and sent after each class.
EXPLORATION OF VARIOUS MEDIUMS
The students explored various mediums of telling their stories. It ranged from audios to writings to doodling to video stories. One of the key takeaways was that the decision was taken by the students on what they wanted to do, and how they wanted to tell their story. With constant feedback, students were able to explore the different ways that made them feel comfortable to talk about their stories. Below are examples from some of the assignments of the students.
Audio story created by Mahi from Ahmedabad
Video story created by Ridakshi from DIS
Visual Story created by Aasra from DIS
Audio story created by Manya from Ahmedabad
thE CHALLENGES
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The online medium of teaching: There is enough literature and research that points at the importance of a physical setting in a child’s learning growth. The Covid-19 pandemic forced teaching into the online space. In the context of my elective, technical difficulties in terms of connectivity, especially for students of DIS as they have access to only 2G bandwidth, were a challenge. From a facilitation point of view, the screens made it difficult to understand whether students were able to grasp what was being taught to them. As planned sessions had to broken down further, a lot of time was consumed in the back-and-forth process of providing feedback on email or whatsapp. Hence, the challenge of completing all the tasks as initially planned was not possible.
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Low attendance of students: As students are forced to learn in the isolation of their homes, there are chances of low levels of motivation to engage in the class. In the case of DIS, existing political conflict and low accessibility to the internet were major factors in the low level of attendance of the students. In the case of students from Ahmedabad, burden of their schoolwork and less motivation from their parents were impacting their levels of motivation, which eventually resulted in abruptly ending the elective classes mid-way of the internship.
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Logistics of the exchange: As mentioned above, as students from Ahmedabad were unable to continue their classes, the premise of the exchange was then under re-consideration. The initial idea was to create a space wherein students could exchange each other’s stories and talk about their experiences. However, without one side of the exchange, other efforts to create some way of conducting an exchange did not work out. Another reason was the difficulty in setting up the logistics of the Ahmedabad side of the exchange as many students had already begun classes at their schools and couldn’t join the elective even at a later stage.
METHODS TO OVERCOME THE CHALLENGE OF LOW ATTENDANCE
DESIGNING A WHATSAPP GAME FOR DIS
A consultation with other facilitators taking an elective at DIS provided an opportunity to create other ways to create curiosity amongst students in order to motivate them to join classes. All of us decided to use whatsapp as a medium to create a game as students were being informed about class through their respective whatsapp groups. The essence of the game for all was to create a sense of validation that the students would receive for their participation. Their participation would be a key indicator for the success or failure of the methodology. The process of the engagement specific to my elective was as follows –
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Students would be asked to describe themselves in one word.
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Those who provide those words would receive a ‘gift’ from their facilitator
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The gift was a dedication of a story or poem based on that word
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The facilitator would then ask all the students to come to class to discuss what they felt about the dedications and engage with their respective stories or poems
Out of the 22 students in the DIS elective class, 11 students engaged in the game. Each student was dedicated a poem or a story along with a small letter about why that particular story or poem was chosen for them. The feedback received from the students was positive, as they enjoyed reading their dedication. Some screenshots of the feedback are been shared below.
Although more students engaged with the game, the desired impact on the overall attendance was low. 2-3 new students joined in the class after the game, despite 11 students engaging with game.
INTRODUCING PUPPETRY FOR AHMEDABAD STUDENTS
For the students in Ahmedabad, I decided to introduce the medium of puppetry for story-telling to create curiosity and a sense of fun. We used one method of creating different animals for the puppets. Sharing a screenshot of both the students trying their hand at the puppet that they created.
Although the students had come up with a fun video idea for their story, they were unable to complete it due to existing pressures from their school classes. Eventually, we were unable to complete this assignment.
LEARNING
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The challenge of the online medium pushed me to think of different ways and methods of engaging with the students. It made me reflect on the struggles that teachers all over the world must be facing, and on ways of re-designing the idea of teaching if this is a foreseeable future (at least for a few years).
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The students’ responsiveness and enthusiasm pushed to give them more knowledge than what I had initially planned. That encouraged me to explore the many stories that I had read as a child, and many that I wish to read as an adult. Story-telling as a medium is powerful and has the capacity to provide a voice to children. This small engagement was enough for me to continue on exploring more ways to introduce story-telling in our education pedagogy.
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Sensitivity towards one’s abilities is a key takeaway for me while working with students of both the cities. The various parameters of ‘achievement’ being set by the facilitator would impact the learning environment of the students. For this elective, even though I had a particular output in mind, I focused on creating an inclusive environment for all the students (since not everyone is able to speak in class). What I received as a result at the end of the internship was fulfilling as a facilitator. Eventually some of the students began taking initiative of exploring stories and story-telling, and even after the completion of the classes, they are in touch.
FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THIS PROJECT
There is a lot of scope of developing this elective - be it in the online medium or in a physical classroom environment. After the covid-19 pandemic has eased, I would like to explore the possibilities that this project has presented.