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Ready to take on the world!
Photo: R.V. Moorthy.
STARTING YOUNG... Jenny Mosley hosting an interactive session with students at The Hindu workshop in New Delhi.
SHE CAME to New Delhi just when the students were ready to pack up their bags for summer vacations. She still managed to catch their attention, hold their interest, make them smile, laugh, talk. Never mind if the little kids from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Masjid Moth and Pragyan School, Greater Noida, initially struggled to follow her accent. An assistant, equally at ease with English and Hindi took care of that. And Jenny Mosley, who had held workshops aimed at educating the educator and the little ones in Bangalore earlier, faced no problems in interacting with kids.
Following in the footsteps of these children were the students of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pragati Vihar and Harvard Academy, East Delhi. The three-day workshop was a huge success with kids from four-five years and up to 12-plus enjoying greatly the interaction with Mosley, they started shy and reserved, ended up more confident, active and self-assured.
And therein lay the success of Mosley who was interacting with children as part of The Teacher Foundation-hosted workshop organised by The Hindu.
"Shy kids use a puppet to relate to others," was Mosley's advice to teachers who had assembled, seated neatly behind the little ones. "Touch is a basic human need... children open up with a hug," she said.
"Never tease your friends in the class if they are not able to answer a question. Help them know the right answer. Laugh at your mistakes, not those of others and don't name friends if they cannot do a specific thing, say some people are unable to do so... ," she advised the students.
Later, she undertook a participative exercise with them on the third day, having earlier limited herself to puppets and a bit of drama. In one such exercise, each participant began a sentence with the words "I felt left out when... " and recalled a lonely experience. It was significant how many mentioned low examination marks or lack of fluency in English as reasons for feeling left out.
The next stage of the game was "I need help with... " in which quick tempers and shyness were mainly cited. Then the children suggested remedies to each other. Mosley rightly remarked on the innate wisdom of these adolescents. Their collective sincerity and compassionate acceptance of each other's differences were remarkable. At times it seemed her words of encouragement like "Who's feeling brave" in the context of sharing a problem might have the opposite effect, as it had clearly not dawned on these youngsters that emotions are sometimes locked up in the name of privacy, perhaps because in Indian society the stiff upper lip is not compulsory even for men, and those united by a bond not deeper than being fellow commuters can share their day-to-day trials and tribulations.
And, no there were no problems of cultural relativity for Mosley. "It is fascinating to interact with kids. They are so unpredictable. There is tenacity in children but the language of theatre, songs and puppets is universal," she summed up her experience of The Hindu workshop.
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