Having only substituted in the temporary absence of interns under the Human Rights Defenders Programme before, Akshar—among Kolkata’s best known integrated schools, would technically be ‘my first’ school and class. Forty-five students in a post-lunch (read: siesta time) session—I had my fair share of doubts regarding how the first class would go. A few minutes…
The advantages of having the scope to teach the same set of students over successive months under the Human Rights Defenders Programme, are manifold. Covering the geographically expansive range of genocides that the module does, any shorter an engagement would leave little room for the thought generation and discussions essential to developing a critical, sensitive…
For the Human Rights Defenders class on February 12th, I chose to address the topic of Liberia’s civil wars. I began the session showing the students the image of the Liberian flag—did they recognize it? One conjectured that it was the American flag but quickly realised that it wasn’t, because it had only one star…
For the session on 29th January, Samya and I decided to stir up our usual routine. Instead of talking about a particular incident of genocide, we chose to discuss ‘power’ and the many ways in which it functions in society, with the students. Our objective was to work towards sensitizing them to the larger structures…
In the past, I had often wondered how schoolteachers teach the same subject, the same syllabus, the same topics out of the same textbooks—year in and year out! It must take great ingenuity and creativity to not fall into the trap of monotony. ccccThe understanding of how this works has come to me through the…
