The Two-Week-Iversary

Hello readers, I am a new addition to the ITSA travellog! My name is Sadie, and I am a rising senior at Bard High School Early College. I'm excited to be working with ITSA this summer!

Today is the two week anniversary of arriving in India! It is crazy to think that it has only been two weeks—it feels like it has been so much longer. My first impression of India is that it is a vibrant culture, with the old traditions mixed right in with the new. This was exemplified when I went to the Ghandi ashram and saw business men walking around Ghandi’s house, talking on their cellphones. Or to see some women dressed in shorts, while others are wearing full saris. Also, as an outsider, you simply have to surrender to the culture of India. An example of this has been eating with no utensils. At first, I was a bit squeamish about eating with my hands. It wasn’t that I was grossed out by it, but I was just a bit confused. Will I pick up my cup with my dirty hand, or with the clean one? Can I lick my fingers, or is that rude? During my first real Indian tiffen meal, I finally just gave up on trying to keep my fingers somewhat clean. I surrendered into eating with my hands, and now enjoy stuffing my mouth with delicious pahi pouris in one huge bite!

We’ve been exploring the city as much as possible. We went on the beautiful Heritage Walk through the old city of Ahmedabad. I thought that it was a wandering walk through a beautiful neighborhood that otherwise would have gone unseen by those who are interested. We’ve gone shopping, getting some beautiful pants with crazy prints. We’ve been eating ice cream (I highly recommend Almond Carnival at Havmur), and enough lychees to feed a village. We’ve been watching hilarious Bollywood movies that are over 3 hours long. We have funny, and sometimes exasperating, rickshaw stories to tell. Now, we have more than enough inside jokes to keep us laughing for a looong time.

It’s been great to go through training with the other ITSA interns, and getting to know each other. Personally, it was comforting to go through some aspects of a Bard Thinking & Writing Workshop. The free writes are a time to just let the mind wander, and it really helps me organize my thoughts and to get them down on paper. Once they are there, it makes it so much easier to sift through them. I associate these free writes so closely to BHSEC, and to home, it felt like I brought a part of by daily New York City right into India. Also I highlight for me was getting an in depth lecture on the Indian education system. Honestly, I had no idea how it worked. After getting a lecture from an English teacher from Anand Niketan Silaj school, I had a much better perspective on what ITSA was trying to change, and had a betunderstood the kind of pressure students my age are under to perform well on the Board Exams.

Some of the best moments that have happened these past two weeks were during the discussions that have happened when the whole group was together. We got into some deep topics like violence, safety, and a multitude of others that I can’t remember anymore. It was gratifying to be in a space where everyone is bright, and excited to talk about social issues. The discussions were a great pre-cursor to starting the workshops, and brainstorming ideas to talk about with the students. I feel like everyone is happy to be here, and pumped to facilitate with the students.

Now it is time to get down to business! Putting training to the test, the workshop leaders are beginning to develop their curriculum. It’s going well, and from what I am eavesdropping from the meetings going on around me, they will be thought provoking, inspiring, and fun! There are some field trips in the works, and some mural painting as well. We can’t wait to meet the students this Friday!

Heritage Walk: First Experience of Old Ahmedabad for ITSA's International Interns

Team Member Natalia Choi reflects on her day:

It was an especially hot day today in Ahmedabad. I mean everyday is hot, but today we didn’t have as much air conditioning since we were out and about the city unlike the past few days when we mostly stayed indoors resting and preparing for our workshops).

Guide, Nirav Patel, explaining the history of the Jumma Masjid
(Mosque) on the Heritage Walk in Ahmedabad

The day started out early at 6am because we wanted to avoid some heat and crowd for our Heritage walk through the old city of Ahmedabad. [We avoided neither the heat nor crowd…] As we waited for Aiyub, our driver to come pick us up, we spotted several monkeys on the roof of a building nearby. They were huge! I expected to see the little monkeys like Abu from Aladdin, but they were close to human-size (maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but they were not small cute creatures). Then came my turn for the rickshaw ride! Karen, Pavithra and I loaded up in this yellow-green rickshaw and our rickshaw weaved and honked our way through bikes, motorcycles, and cows toward the Old City of Ahmedabad. Because I didn’t have a layer of glass separating me from the outside, I felt that everything was even closer. I must say I am amazed that I have not been in or seen an accident yet given the chaotic nature of the streets. The cars seem to build their own system as they go. There seems to be no marked lanes, and rarely do we run into traffic lights. Here, our tour guide told us that to drive, one needs three things: good breaks, a good honk, and good luck. And from what I’ve seen, that seems to be true.

Though it was before 8am when we arrived at the temple (the starting point of our walk), there was no time for the morning calm. The place was packed with vendors selling their fresh produce, women in their beautiful saris, men biking through the crowded street. I had expected to encounter more tourists in this historic attraction, but soon realized that we were the only ones. We had become the focus of attention and many curious gazes followed our group.

We waited for our tour to begin upstairs where we had some distance to look at the site from a birds-eye view. It was nice to see and taken in everything and not be seen. Our tour guide arrived with a huge eager smile and began a presentation introducing Ahmedabad’s history dating back to the 15^th century. He was proud of the city’s smart planning (ex. buildings made of stone-wood walls which survived major earthquakes; doors leading to secret passages that only locals would know) and peaceful state (there are no “defensive” architecture). It was interesting to learn about how commerce and business helped maintain peace in the region because they formed business partners. For example, because the British relied on Ahmedabad’s textile industry, they developed and maintained a friendly relation. The Old City was divided in “pols” which are little neighborhoods that was originally organized based on profession/religion but later came to be based on class. Each pol has a gate, a public board, a temple, and a bird feeding tower. I was impressed by how people were sensitive enough to build these bird feeding structures to compensate for the birds losing their homes as the city expanded and cut down trees. Our walk took about 2-3 hours and we saw temples, a plethora of stray dogs, beautifully colored walls (very pastel-ly I thought), and then ended our tour at a mosque.

The rest of the day was spent viewing some Indian paintings and sculptures at the Institute of Indology, eating a scrumptious lunch at Havmor, a nicely air-conditioned restaurant, and resting at Riana’s great aunt’s house. Then we headed back to Riana’s apartment and dinner (a salty popped rice dish called bhel and sev puri, a taco-like dish) and returned to our prospective homes (for some, their host family’s house, for others, the ITSA apartment or Riana’s place) afterwards. Whew, what a full, wonderful day!  

Thoughts from ITSA 2012 team members on the “Institute of Writing & Thinking” workshop & "Training For Change"

May 18^th – May 21^st was a busy weekend for ITSA team members. Congregating in New York, the team took part in a “Training for Trainers” workshop, taught by veteran educators Betsy Raasch Gilman and Diana Gonzales from the Philadelphia-based organization Training for Change, a leading name in educating for democratic, nonviolent social change. Participants gained valuable skills in the areas of facilitation, teambuilding, teaching and communication. Julia Meyer was there for the ride:

“After months of anticipation, on Saturday, May 11^th, training finally began. Indu Chugani, one of the co-founders of Educators for Teaching India, led a creative thinking workshop at Bard College. As a student at Bard, I was already familiarized with the atmosphere and teaching style – classes went for the entire day and were intellectually challenging. However, the format was different from the typical discussion-based classroom. Instead of having an open discourse, students responded in writing to what they had read.  Then, in no particular order, everyone shared what they had written. While there was an assortment of exercises, some more complicated than others, they mostly followed this format: reading, thinking, writing and speaking. While all my courses at Bard had required active participation, critical analysis, and creative thought, none of them had been structured quite like the experience of L&T. I remember a couple of L&T exercises, but one in particular that I’ve enjoyed both times: Poetry Explosion.  (…) Its conclusion resembled a cubist painting: rather than simply seeing the poem from our own perspective, the various viewpoints layered on top of one another.  The subject was no longer clearly identifiable. It became both an amalgamation of thought and a divergence of ideas, taking the poem into new, uncharted territory. (…)

By the end of the workshop I was completely rejuvenated. In school I can feel my mind stretching, bending, and twisting in every direction until there’s no where else to go. It’s satisfying, illuminating, and I love it, but it can also be an exhausting, even painful experience. The workshop reminded me that intellectual thought doesn’t have to be this taxing. By the end of Indu’s workshop I felt as though my entire mind had been reopened. Strain was replaced by freedom. I had the understanding that nothing I wrote could be wrong; I simply responded with my first thought, an idea that I would normally dismiss, and explored where it could take me. (…) Indu reminded me that thinking doesn’t have to be exhaustive, but can be quite energizing. We are always thinking something; it is just a matter of freely accessing these thoughts. Any idea that is seemingly simple or dry can open a window into an entirely new mental landscape.  And with that, there is always another place to go.”

Intern Reflections - Summer 2011

Here is an article that our intern Emma wrote about her ITSA Internship experience in the Bard High School Early College's Student Newspaper:

Intern Emma participating in the ITSA workshop writing a focused free with ITSA participants.  

This summer, I went to India. It was not, however, a vacation or a spiritual quest for enlightenment: I went as one of five interns for ITSA. 

ITSA, which stands for Independent Thought and Social Action, is a social action organization co-founded by Jwalin Patel and recent BHSEC alum, Riana Shah.  Centered in the city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat ITSA aims to help Indian students attain the critical thinking and analytic skills they need to become independent, emancipated and capable global citizens.   

The education system in India is rote, dogmatic, and limiting - students often simply are not given the opportunity or the tools they need to think critically.  In response to the rigidity of the system, which was founded during the industrial revolution and aims at creating capable workers, Riana and Jwalin decided to create a program, based on the Writing and Thinking workshop, which would help Indian students to break free and think independently.  

This is where I come in. This summer was the second year of ITSA workshops, and the first with interns.  The interns (myself, Ana Powell, Max Baird, Mariah Widman, and Juliana Gutierrez) were brought to Ahmedabad, via a seventeen hour flight, to pursue individual internship projects, stay with incredible host families, encounter Indian culture up close and personal and, above all, help to fully establish ITSA and to help it to flourish. 

Over the three weeks that we had in India, we  (though I can only really speak for myself) were given the opportunity to have an overwhelming number of incredible experiences, the opportunity to meet and stay with amazing people -- Ana and I became very close to our host family and we miss our host sister, Deeksha, immensely -- and to grow in profound ways.   Everything felt like an adventure, from stepping out of the airport into the thick, sweet smelling air, to eating unfamiliar and deliciously opulent meals, to exploring the narrow, woven streets of the old city, to visiting an endless series of gorgeous temples and interacting the people on the roads, to seeing the Taj Mahal; even driving down the street in cars and rickshaws, listening to a symphony of horns was exhilarating, especially since the commuters Ahmedabad tended to ignore basic drivers’ safety. Everything felt novel and interesting.  I could go on forever, but luckily, I don't have to: each experience was recorded in a blog kept by the interns (check it out at www.itsatravellog.blogspot.com).   

But even the hoards of freely roaming cows couldn’t surpass meeting and getting to know the young students who participated in the workshops.  These were motivated students, determined and willing to push themselves far beyond their established comfort zones.  Watching them struggle to adapt, learn, find ways to describe their thought processes and to substantiate their identities was, in itself, one of the most intoxicatingly exciting experiences of the trip.  In just two workshops, the participants were already exploding into their full potential, grabbing for each novel experience with an enthusiasm that was, in many ways, inspirational.   Years of mechanically ossified beliefs were debated,  boundaries were demolished, and as the workshops flew by, the students truly changed - as did I.

When I returned to America, it was made clear to me that my global perspective was forever altered.  I had confronted beauty and incredible ugliness, wealth and utter poverty, remarkable awareness and determined apathy: it was inspiring and overwhelming. The paradoxes of India remain pertinent and poignant, even now, months after I returned. Quite frankly, there is more to say about this trip and about ITSA than could ever fit into a (relatively) short article. Choosing to send in an application to become an intern was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I cannot sum up its worth and importance so neatly.  Thus, I conclude on this note: going to India and being an intern for ITSA affects me still, every day, and I am in all respects continuously thankful for the opportunity.  

"We must keep the 150 kg, he is most certainly a wrestler!"

Hello bloggers!
        
So far, I have just posted blogs about the sightseeing that the ITSA interns have done in
Ahmedabad, but, as Emma already said, our reason for being here is not merely to explore the country, but to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the Indian education system. Before actually arriving here and participating in the workshops, Riana Shah & Jwalin Patel (the 19 year old co-founders and co-director of ITSA) had described the Indian educational system as extremely strict and rigid. The reason for this, she explained (I am going to give some brief history now, so stay with me), was that the Indian education system was set up under British Rule during the industrial revolution, and as a result was aimed at creating technicians, not independent thinkers. Consequently, the Indian education system involves a lot of rote memorization and teaching directly from textbooks, as opposed to discussion based, seminar style classes. However, not until I actually got a chance to participate in the workshops and talk with the students did this become evident. 

Above is Rajvi (right) and Paranshi (left), laughing while playing The Boat Game. They were, no doubt, laughing about the fact that another participant, Nishant, had just said, "we must keep the 150 kg man. He's most certainly a wrestler."

On the first day, every student was asked to describe themselves in one word (the workshop's theme was identity), and most of the kids described themselves as "obedient" or "tactful", or, most popularly, "disciplined", as opposed to what you might hear at Bard (to name a few: creative, independent, or a learner for the sake of learning). Afterwards, when we moved on to open-class discussion, most of the interns (myself included) felt that the students responded in a way that they thought we would approve of, instead of responding openly and self-critically. Riana & Jwalin explained this by saying that these kids had been hand-selected by their teachers to participate in the ITSA workshops, which means they already knew how to effectively promote themselves and give their teachers exactly what was expected of them. 


In yesterday's workshop, which was the fourth, we did a very provocative exercise called "The boat game." In the boat game, you have 15 people who are described in only a couple of words, like a sikh man in the army, a beggar woman, a muslim mother, a 10 year old maid, etc. The world is undergoing some sort of epidemic, like a flood, and only 10 out of the 15 can fit on the boat, based solely on their few word descriptions. What this exercise aimed at doing was to explicate the point that you cannot define, or stereotype, a person based on only thing. The man who was described as 150kg, might be a genius, for example, or the smoker--an engineer. However, interestingly we found that the students had many pre-concieved notions, no doubt propagated by their society, their parents, and their educational system. For example, all of the groups eliminated the beggar woman without much hesitation pretty early on, and seemed to have no concept that certain social structures might change once only 10 people were left on Earth. 


What this exercise, and the workshops as a whole, made clear to me is just how stifled these kids are when it comes to independent thought, and when it comes to doubting the structure of the world around them. In light of this, ITSA is like a breath of fresh air. In a set of interviews which we conducted yesterday (led by intern Mariah Widman), one of the participants, Paranshi, said, "every week I can't wait for Friday's and Sunday's to come, so I can go to the ITSA workshops! It's what I look forward to during the school week." And considering that sunday is the only day these kids have off, that's saying a lot.

~ Ana, Intern 2011

Bard High School Early College