{"id":3638,"date":"2019-03-05T06:16:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T06:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/0318da2.netsolhost.com\/pwarchive\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2019-03-18T07:11:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T07:11:00","slug":"anne-frank-a-history-for-today-in-delhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/0318da2.netsolhost.com\/pwarchive\/?p=3638","title":{"rendered":"Anne Frank- A History for Today in Delhi"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the past, I had often wondered how schoolteachers teach the same subject, the same syllabus, the same topics out of the same textbooks\u2014year in and year out! It must take great ingenuity and creativity to not fall into the trap of monotony.<\/p>\n

cccc<\/span>The understanding of how this works has come to me through the Anne Frank \u2013 A History for Today project. Six years, 19 destinations and interacting with over 500 students through the peer guide training workshop has grounded me in the belief that working with the young can be many different things, but it can never ever be monotonous\u2014whether you are dealing with the same subject or not.<\/p>\n

cccc<\/span>On the cold Delhi morning of 25 February 2019 I headed to the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise Gallery, all set confidently to spend a day and a half engaging with a group of 30 students in order to train them to become peer guides for the Anne Frank exhibition. The participants were to be from Pathways(Gurgaon), Pathways(Noida) and Amity International School. Moments after reaching the destination my confidence was blown to smithereens, leaving me on the brink of panic.<\/p>\n

cccc<\/span>The group of students was there\u2014waiting, chattering away excitedly, eager. But out of the group of 30, 18 were 10 and 12 year olds! The rest were from high school, so 15-16 year olds, the age group we normally work with for this training. I felt at a complete loss. How was I to conduct a workshop meant to train students to become guides to an exhibition that depicts Anne\u2019s tragic life story in the backdrop of all the evils of the Holocaust, with 10 and 12 year olds? How much would they comprehend, how much would they understand, how much would they be able to deal with, how much do they know\u2014these were the questions I was grappling with.<\/p>\n

cccc<\/span>Nonetheless, we began, with an ice breaking exercise where all participants were to introduce themselves with their name and one thing they like and one thing they do not like. This worked well with some of the participants being funny, some being candid, some shy\u2014all enthusiastic about sharing their one like and one dislike. Five students in the group said \u2018I hate<\/strong> . . .\u2019 instead of \u2018I don\u2019t like . . .\u2019. I flagged this in my head to come back to in the course of discussions as soon as the opportunity came up.<\/p>\n

cccc<\/span>Introductions done, we moved to Circle Time to discover how much knowledge the group possessed in relation to The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>, the Second World War and the Holocaust. There was much sharing of responses to Anne\u2019s diary, which more than half the group had read. The icebreaker had laid the ground for a discussion on Identity\u2014the various aspects that constitute \u2018identity\u2019, which very naturally flowed towards a debate on the importance of race, community and religious identity.<\/p>\n

ccc<\/span>Having established the context and the concepts, it was time to begin the physical work of setting up the exhibition. When I first discovered the age of the participants, I was only concerned about the level at which the discussions and training could happen. As it turned out, that was the easy part. With the younger ones I focused on Anne\u2019s life, her story, which they could connect to by the fact of being nearly the same age. With the older students I covered everything from the causes leading up to the Second World War to the rise of Hitler to the events that unfolded to concepts of justice, violations, evil, the capacity of the human mind to go to unimaginable lengths in support of their ideology. The real difficulties were with the actual setting up of the panels\u2014this requires a certain degree of physical strength, which was unreasonable to expect from the younger lot. Hence this part of the workshop took much longer than expected and by the time we had set all the panels up and in place, it was time to end the workshop for the day.<\/p>\n\n\t\t