'Not to rely on stereotypes and labels'

Freedom to ask any question, to move and sit freely, to come and go as they please have added to the joy of learning for my students at Dharavi Diary's one-room outpost. When I paid attention to their questions, behaviour and attitudes, my students made me think about my approach to teaching and learning. Here's a sample of what I've learned from my students:

After a unit test at school, one student, let's call her Shweta, looked rather dejected. When I asked her what was wrong, she replied: "I know a lot about this topic, but the teacher asked the wrong questions." That stopped me in my tracks. I started to engage with her way of learning and asked what should have been the questions on the test. She told me what she knew about the topic from working on projects, visiting museums, reading books and watching TV programs — all the things we do at our informal learning center at Dharavi Diary. She had a point — Shewta's school teacher had not asked enough of the 'right' kind of questions. It was thought provoking to discover what students found interesting enough to remember, and to explore how they could supplement the lesson objectives with their own knowledge. And in this manner, Shweta taught me the value of providing a ways for students to share what they know. For instance, at the end of the unit tests, there should be an optional item: "Tell me about what you know about this topic that was not asked in this test."

The entire exercise taught me that as human beings, we are innately curious but the ecosystem in which we are growing, and institutional learning makes a fool out of us. I decided that I will be no more a fool nor let my students suffer because of my conditioning. I started to engage with my students using different problem statements when they learnt about different concepts using our STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) hands-on leaning program. Thus, learning takes place by doing, and doing adds a higher level of creative confidence and joy in my students.

This is how my learning curve has expanded with my students. I have found them to be genuinely curious and they respond well to class discussions and activities. I noticed how their confidence gradually increased manifold. From them, I've learnt to rely on my own observations and judgment about students, rather than relying on stereotypes and labels. During a unit on insects, I noticed another student, Sheeba, taking copious notes. I glanced to see that she had a page of arthropod names and their origins in mythology, such as the Luna moth, nymphs, arachnids, the Cyclops copepod and so on. I asked her if this was an assignment for her English class, which included a unit on mythology, and she looked at me as if I had the head of a Medusa. "No, I just think this is really interesting." So thanks to Sheeba, I learnt how to help students make connections between science and literature and social studies and the arts. I learnt how an inter-disciplinary approach can be introduced in the classroom setting. That's when the horizon of learning started to expand and it became more engaging for them and for me as their facilitator.

(Author is a documentary filmmaker, and has been the facilitator of Dharavi Diary: A Slum Innovation Project, for the last three years.)