Ushodaya School, Hyderabad 15th to 17th October 2019
Romila Gillella was one of the participants in the workshop. She worked with teach for India and now she is an Ed-Consultant. Below are her reflection from the three days workshop.
(If you want to read the details of the workshop click on Day1, Day2, and Day3)
Reflection by Romila.
Yet, another pilot I am venturing into after exploring Koodam for a limited time yet achieving greater depths. It was surely a time spent more on exploring individual consciousness in a collective.
I entered the room a bit nervous about the new experiment we were going to embark on. The room typically was set in “banking style” with two chairs on a raised platform and the rest in rows of three. I suddenly felt quite uncomfortable knowing the irony of what we will do.
All of us were a part of the “Identity Activity”. While I was doing this, it was a funny activity. I was unable to gauge why it was being conducted. But then, I was also not feeling sad or happy about losing identity. I was just following what is being told. Later on, when we reflected, I got a thought that its weird that sometimes we take on things which are not ours and show it as ours, Losing our actual self.
Later on, I realized that the activity was trying to lose the individual consciousness to a collective consciousness.
Then we explored the experiences as a child that influenced us. I have seen elements of discrimination coming out — elements of gender inequality etc. I felt pain and anger in our discussions. When the large group sharing was happening, I was not very happy to see that people were sharing one line stories as their feelings were not coming out explicitly. But over the end of it, two teachers were showing intense anger and pain in their dialogue. It was beautiful! There was the spark.
We started the day off and some people came late. We started off the discussion on a very interesting note that when mercy mam asked the question, “What is the purpose of what we have done the day before?” Then the question was posed to all of them in the group. People shared about how this will help them in the classroom. Then, some people shared about their feelings — how then took them home and shared them with others.
Post this activity was the art activity were I was asked to draw all the major experiences from childhood. It was too intense that I started crying. After the much-difficult left — handed drawing I had to share with the aayamma and listen to her story. She has written telugu letters on her chart and all she repeated was that she was not educated. This was quite an intense thing to hear. I can feel her tears from her eyes. I stopped asking questions in between as she turned to one side and she didn’t turn back for a while. With tears in my eyes I have to turn away and bear the discomfort. The reflection was again touched with different sets of feelings.
This day I particularly felt quite proud of Abhijit. He started talking about triangle and power structures. Mercy mam, was bugging for a while to take the lead of the whole group. She has become the voice of the group. And also certain people were late and some people in the group wanted a leader to inform them about who comes late and who questions the late-comers. It was quite an interesting discussion. After discussion, all the people who would ask a question to late-comer were asked to come to the center. I think around 8 of us came to the center to stand.
After chai, we went back to the artistic drawing again to share our stories. And this time, I have a lot more insight into the aayamma’s story. I understood why she is the way she is. She is apparently struggling with schizophrenia where she actually sees imaginary figures and talk to them. This was heart-breaking to hear from her. I am also at the same time happy to hear from her that she is able to deal with her issues on her own.
In the final reflection, I am was built with a lot of hope on the progress we have made so far as a collective conscious and the spark of feeling that I was able to feel from the group. I think we already have a set of changemakers in our group.
Romila Gillella
Regards,
Abhijit Biswas
abhijit.biswas2019@teachforindia.org