Of rare smiles : Classroom tales

Interacting with children and understanding how they learn is very important for us at Nayi Disha. When we conduct a session with kids in a classroom, most of them get really excited to play and learn with Kaju! Some of them are able to express their happiness really well (by shouting a loud ‘YES’ or by jumping, clapping and doing the Kaju moves while we say Bye to them!), while some would just smile or nod to our questions. One thing’s for sure, the kindergartners do not want the session to end and are constantly learning through our movement based learning modules!

In this post, Kartik, Nayi Disha’s Co Founder shares one of his early experiences with a young girl at Ahlcon International School, New Delhi.

The story is about how one small girl and we interacted over several months. During one of the earliest testing sessions she started crying because we (were about to) wrap up without giving her a turn. Of course, we gave her a chance then – but when we went back home to review the footage from the day, we found her to be really upset before, during and after the session.

I went back to the school the following week, and asked her teacher if everything was alright. She said that it was, and that this was how she always was in the classroom. I then went upto the girl, and asked her if she remembered me – she nodded. I asked her if she liked Kaju – she nodded again. I asked her if she would like to play with him again – she nodded yet again. I asked her if I should inform Kaju that she will come to play with him, and she gave me a final nod before leaving for her bus.

After this, I arranged for a 1-hour session where she could play any of our games that she liked. For some reason, I was always curious about how she was doing… but could only meet her again after a few weeks. Like I said earlier, there is no dramatic climax to this story, but only that she was smiling when she saw me that day, and greeted me very happily – and has been ever since.