(04) Session 3 - Trying ‘out of the box’ thinking

The selected 10 students were asked to ‘think out of the box’ (and I am really thankful to Prashast for bringing this phrase into the discussion) and come up with new ideas keeping aside our earlier topics on usual social ‘ISSUES’ discussed in the community. It took half an hour for Anuradha & Lipika to get students in desired frame of mind to get some new ideas from them. Both teachers helped a lot in motivating students and facilitated them more as their friend than ‘teachers’ and this worked quite well. Students came up with exciting ideas like:
A day in the classroom; My home, My playground, Hills near my home, Children playing in rain; Students’ coming down from ramp after school is over; People/ events from school bus stand to their home; Reaction of students in front of different teacher, how they act & react!

Two most interesting topics that came up were:

1. Heavy Bags / Laptop schools.
   The discussion started with heavy bags, moved to less copies/ work books, turned towards thick books - more chapters, suggestion for one combined book, requesting a meeting with NCERT (National Institute for Education Research and Training, a body under govt. of India to create books for schools), raising issues on the relevance of content in the books and finally ended on having laptops in schools.
   
2. If a student from an underserved school got a chance to study in a big private/ elite English medium school, whether he would like to go or not! His experiences! His complexes! His identity! His achievements! and…

After the discussion, a two page questionnaire available in the training manual on developing the documentary topic were given to students for filling it up during their winter holidays. The questions are:

1. Of the topics brainstormed last class, which documentary topic do you like best?
2. What is your personal interest in this topic? In other words, how does it affects you personally?
3. What are some specific questions that you have about this topic that you would like to explore?
4. Who would be intersested in watching a documentary about this topic? Why would they be interested?
5. Who could you interview about their personal story related to this topic?
6. Who might be a good interviewee to give factual information about this topic? What organisation could you contact?
7. What or where could you videotape to get strong images to go with this topic?
8. Describe creative ideas that will express your ideas and feelings about this topic (for example: dramatizations, original poetry or images, etc).