Process and products

This past week of Art Detectives encouraged participants to examine an artifact and consider, “How was this made? Where was this made? When was this made? Why was it made? What does it tell you about the people and culture who produced it?”

As we spent the past few days presenting the children’s process and products at Open House, scavenging tourist-hungry avenues for souvenirs, rejiggering next week’s curriculum, and visiting ancient temples, the significance of these questions loomed large…

How does a well-to-do Indian parent discern the magnitude and value of a child’s learning from a: (hieroglyphically) carved bar of soap, (rose petal and) watercolored picture, (papyrus-inspired) weaving of paper bag strips, (ancient Greek-inspired) painted clay pot, (Roman mosaic-inspired) arrangement of construction paper pieces? Our EMP Art Gallery offered parents a chance to explore the means of production, experimenting with the materials that made each piece. And the sheer quantity of *stuff* was convincing for this audience.

So how does a well-to-do Indian parent discern the magnitude and value of a child’s learning from: a child-invented toy pieced together from recycle materials? What if this artifact looks unpolished? What if this is the only tangible product of the week? How does this parent see the process, and how worthwhile is the process if the product fails to impress? Our teaching team hatched schemes to unveil process and multiply products, but it was somewhat of a struggle. Were we hired to: a) deliver process to privileged children; b) deliver process and teach their well-to-do Indian parents about the value of process; or c) deliver process, teach about process, and still deliver product? C, I think, is the correct answer. And is that bad? Are progressive Americans too prone to err on the other side, saying that incorrect information and/or poor quality output is okay if someone was “trying their best” or “expressing themself”? Where do we draw the line?

Haggling over products — dime-a-dozen knickknacks clogging Colaba Causeway, I thought about process. How were these scarves and nesting dolls and wall hangings and sandals and bindis and bangles and everything made, in terms of quality and labor conditions? Why were they made? To what extent do they express anything genuine about the culture, save its need to satisfy tourists? On my travels, I’ve often wondered whether the products hawkers vend embody caricaturized versions of their own culture, manufactured to reify foreigners’ (mis)conceptions of their temporary hosts… After all, how many French people wear berets? And yet, how many embroidered berets are sold at gift shops facing the Louvre? How many Senegalese people own carved giraffes? How many Indians carry elephant-mirrored handbags? And yet, back in the States, what joy will these representations of the fantastical Other bring?

Exploring product — the cavernous temples on Elephanta Island, rock-cut shrines to Shiva dating back to the 5th-8th century, I wondered about the who in the process. Who were the people involved in the construction of this work — the visionaries, the models, the carvers, the apprentices, the clergy, the worshippers? I’ve had the privilege of touching ancient stone all over the world, from Jerusalem to Tours, Athens to Bergen. I used to wonder about the hustle and bustle of long-gone marketplaces, wished I could touch the remnant and be hurtled magically back through time. On Sunday, though, despite my recent engagements with commerce, I didn’t think about marketplaces. I thought about women. What role(s), if any, were women given back then? Were they allowed to touch tools, carve stone, pray in the holy of holies? Did they collude in art and religion’s exaltation of the phallus? Outside the temple, two nursing mothers — monkey and dog — tended to their clingy young. Was that the lot of ancient women as well, kept from the high-profile artistic and spiritual by the down-to-earth artistic and spiritual — child-rearing?

This week of EMP is dedicated to toys — creating new products from recycled products (e.g., used waterbottles and containers, bottle caps and bits of fabric and packing foam, etc). So much stuff. Our objective is to focus on the process, the development of ideas, blueprints, and prototypes, the iterative processes of building, testing, and modifying constructions and blueprints… And yet, our questions were about the product children love best — “What is your favorite toy?”, and our process includes selling the product — writing promotional copy, designing a graphic, even shooting a commercial for the ambitious elders. Consumerism. Of course, creating one’s own advertisement raises consciousness to the constructed nature of advertisements in general, their objectives and methods, and so a case can be made for its immunizing, media literate influence upon consumerism… It’s complicated, especially since we’re beholden to pleasing our cultural community by delivering a certain quantity of product that boasts a certain quality.

Still I mull which god to worship, the god of process or the god of product… and I wonder to what extent they’re both false idols. Or vessels…

I’ve decided that I want the theme for this upcoming year to be Joy. So maybe we shouldn’t fixate on the how or the what, the process or the product, but how they make us feel. Isn’t that largely what motivates creation and acquisition — a deep-seated craving for satisfaction? So whatever floats your boat, perhaps…

To hedonism?

Voice

I sang, cajoled, and commented myself hoarse.

The children were busy in the block area and summoned me to see their structures. Approvingly, I listened to their narratives of each creation. Together, we counted how many blocks. When conflicts arose, I spun them like a seasoned politician, reframing destruction as addition (the Hindu god Shiva’s many arms would have given us thumbs up) and half-hearted check-ins and apologies as very friendly fixes. The children smiled. So did I. And took a deep breath.

I sang our way through transitions with rounds of “If you’re ready and you know it, come over here” (hooray for literalism!), “My name’s Tyrannosaurus Rex” (actually, rather than obsessing over dinosaurs, these kids rattle off the name of Beyblades — hello, media), and “Miss Laurel Says,” (yes, they call me Miss, as in “Your shirt is wet, Miss.” “Yes,” I replied, acknowledging my omnipresent pit soak. “Yes it is.”). At Snack, we again played The Name Game. At the end of the day, we sang Jambo and Paw Paw Patch. The classroom was alive with the sound of — music? Whatever you call my singing.

At lunchtime, I found my voice in a different way — as a teacher of older children and writing coach. I dove into commenting on the stories and observations they’d recorded in their Art Detective Notebooks, praising their process, thinking, creativity, and detail. I loved it.

And when these big kids joined us for their 4-7 pm session, I came alive with casual chat (topics ranging from end of the world, medical emergencies, and math) and a rocking session of Big Booty. I’m not sure that they’ve ever seen a damp-browed, 31-year-old American woman shake her groove thang in a rhythm-based call-and-response game with a very silly title, but by the end, they didn’t want to leave.

Sweat-soaked, I waved them goodbye. My voice was spent. But I hope it reverberated that evening, in one way or another.
Continue reading

Stepping out

Delivering and demonstrating unambiguous benefits — cognitive, social and emotional, physical, etc — had been our emphatic charge since way back when. But today our boss declared that she’d figured out what was missing: fun.

“Oh,” said Emily and I, turning to each other and nodding. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

In the morning with the younger children:

I welcomed some girls’ entry into the block area, encouraging them as they delightedly built complex towers. We read the kids’ wiggles and switched up our schedule, seguing from Arrival straight into Snack, singing them the silly Name Game to their giggly delight. We kicked off Meeting with “Jambo,” and they leapt from carpet, one by one, to show off their jumping skills as we sang them hello in Swahili…

At lunchtime, we teachers made a beeline for Colaba Causeway, managing to add a few more garments to our meager wardrobes, grab a quick bite in a cafe, and make it back to work in time for the second shift. Success! THAT’s how you maximize three hours.

In the evening with the older children:

We laughed and joked more than we ever had, for each day we keep getting to know one another better. I shared with one information-appreciative child a math cheer I learned back in junior high (“Secant, tangent, cosine, sine, 3.14159!”). Running ahead of schedule, we cooked up an activity on the fly, incorporating our art detective ways into a version of hit improv game “What are you doing?”

In the morning, when I asked children at Wrap-up about their favorite part of the day, several children enthused “everything!” In the afternoon, when I mentioned that the week’s workshop was more than half over, a sweet-natured boy observed, “Time goes fast.”

Prior to our workday, Emily and I had stopped at Cafe Coffee Day rather than wait until the coffee/chai-wallah brought us a beverage mid-morning. After our workday, Emily and I took on the town — first time we’d done that, first time our bodies felt equal to the task. We climbed into a cab we had flagged down ourselves, rumbled down to the Woodside Inn, and sipped on a coconut mango martini (me) and Indian white wine (Emily). Before returning to our abode, we bargained on the street for a few shirts whose price, at last, was closer to the “dirt cheap” description we’d been anticipating all along.

Cumulatively, I’m not sure if all of this represents stepping out of our comfort zone or stepping back in. At heart, all of these activities better represent me than their alternative:

I am a silly singer who digs a good improv game — playing it serious and schooling with a straight face just isn’t my style;
I am one to jam several activities into a too-short day — taking in a two-hour lunch and skipping out on the scenery doesn’t sit right; and
I am an adult well-accustomed to independence and personal negotiation — letting someone else dictate my itinerary and speak on my behalf is altogether foreign.

In escaping the routine we’d somewhat established during this first week in India, we actually returned to our old ways.

Welcome home.

Jobs

Revised Day One when we felt we had given too many “jobs” to kids: putting away bag + placing shoes + making nametag + coloring attendance picture was enough for the younger kids. Forget about a pretest.

For the older kids, we trod warily… And they filled out pretest page after pretest page for… how long? At least 30 minutes, probably 45. By this time, Emily and I had bought our watches but my sense of time and ability to keep straight my trampolining thoughts was somewhat compromised.

On Day Two, we scaled back. We divided up curriculum setup responsibilities deliberately; we accepted the assistance of program helpers; we rotated in teachers for end-of-the-day meeting leading; we even excused little old me for the older kids’ arrival + snack + meeting period so that I could address the writing of our newsletters. Some kids announced they were done with mural painting and asked to play. “You have one more job,” one of us would say, and challenge them to paint a figure or hieroglyph they’d never taken on before, or dab their hieroglyphic carved soap bar with brown paint. Where is the limit between order and imposition? Should we be giving them these jobs? Like the question of whether to call this school, is “job” the correct appelation?

On Day Three, I hope we’ll continue finding our rhythm. We learned all of the children’s names. The newsletter templates are written. The system for recording kids’ quotes is established. And my five-year hiatus from early childhood teaching has been broken… and I’m getting broken in… and my broken body is coming back, again, like the persistent zombie from many a horror film.

I’ve got a job to do.

Sense and sensorability

Unsuspectingly, got hit by a hurricane. Then, uber-prepared, the hurricane never came — more like impossibly clear skies sprinkled by flash lightning storms.

Welcome to the first day of school. (“It’s not school!” six-year-old Vihan impatiently informed me this morning. “You’re right,” I agreed hastily, worrying that the school moniker would conjure negative predispositions. “What do you think we should call it?” “The Expanding Minds Program,” he replied, straight-faced. That… happens to be the exact name of the program. “All right,” I consented. While it may not be “school,” Vihan just schooled me.)

Today was about students and teachers getting a sense of our space and each other — characteristics, limits, resources, values. It was also chockful of sensory experiences: the chaos of 15 five- to seven-year-olds; the eerie silence of 9 seven- to nine-year-olds; sticky fingers from floam play and glue shmearing; the squishiness of mashing flower petal pulp and sliding barefoot on poster paint; tongue-twisting names (mine for them, Adit and Sidanthika for me); limb-constraining contexts (sitting on the carpet for meeting isn’t easy for anybody); light shifts, from the darkness of our simulated cave to the brightness of our clear-windowed/chandelier-rocking/riotously colorful decor; auditory challenges (can you hear the clap/chimes above the din? can you detect the subtle th embezzled in the t of Adit?); et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…*

When it comes to sense-making, rolling up your sleeves and getting hands-on is arguably the way to go. In terms of my own cultural education, that… happens to be the exact nature of the program. No better way to learn about a people’s particularities and all people’s similarities than being there.

How will our sense of it all shift over time, and what new capacities will we develop by engaging our bodies, ourselves in contexts of novelty and risk?
Continue reading