The Percentages

Greetings from snowy Maine! Once again, I have timed it perfectly. I arrived home from The Merasi School at the IDEAL MOMENT for snow shoveling, sidewalk sanding and ice removal. Some of us, my dear friends, just have it made. But, in between hauling sky-high mounds of snow from this side of the driveway to the other, I'd like to offer a few post-trip reflections. And a particular favorite is one about percentages.

Co-founder Sarwar Khan and I often found ourselves chatting about what the necessary ingredients are for educational success in the Merasi community, what pieces of ideology and slices of belief need to go into our little cooker for a triumphant Merasi to emerge. While we certainly never landed on a definitive, Julia Child-eat-your-heart-out recipe, in part because our definition of success is fluid and ever-evolving, we inched just a bit closer to a formula I think is worth sharing.

Education, we came to agree, is 50% intellect, which our school is just brimming with, and 50% believing, which is a bit harder to unearth in many students. Most kids walk in the front door with more than enough ability to succeed in our classrooms, or really any classroom, for that matter. But it's the belief, the confidence that they can and will own this knowledge that's a bit tougher to find or cultivate.


Some of our students, like the Good (aspiring) Doctor Suriya Khan come into our lessons and classes with an innate confidence and we work to constructively build and grow that. Others, though, have a little less internal umph and one of our greatest academic challenges is to nourish and feed a sense of 'I can-itness' within our 41(!) students.

It's a tricky road to walk and one that we're just getting our footing on, but we're confident that our students' confidence and self-belief is within spitting distance. Now comes figuring out where, what and how great the distance is.

From all of us here at The Merasi School, have a merry, joyful and, of course, highly educational New Year!

A little something we like to say

There's a little something we like to say here at The Merasi School that goes to the tune of: Let unconquerable gladness dwell. It's a sentiment we stole right from FDR's Oval Office and transplanted into our desert classroom and the words echo through our hallways.

Now, if we are going to be total realists, my dear readers, what I just wrote was a boldfaced lie. For youngsters just wrapping their mouthes around 'red' and 'ball,' a multi-syllabic whopper like 'unconquerable' and the awkward consonants in 'dwell' are mish-mashed and pancaked smashed into all kinds of colorful variants. However, while the verbal packaging might be different, the contents are identical. Indefatigable joy resides at The Merasi School.

And there's nothing soft or gentle about this joy. It's a fierce current of energy that grows stronger and brighter with each student who joins our ranks and pours their young hearts and souls into developing core educational competencies to engage in a rapidly interdependent world. It's a joy that defies reason, because all reason says that these little ones --who are forced to drink from different water spouts than other castes and sit with the shoes in public places-- should lead joyless lives.

But if The Merasi School is anything, it is a small cluster of classrooms where possibility trumps reason and unconquerable gladness overpowers crippling reality. So as we charge through abc's and 123's with mighty merriment, we inch ever closer to the day when 'unconquerable gladness,' which is felt in so fiercely in the fibers of our little ones, can be just as fiercely verbalized.

Observing with the Ears

I have a wonderful friend who loves to go to the symphony. We went together once and he sat like Rodin's The Thinker the whole time, while I shifted from one side of the seat to the other, reached for popcorn that wasn't there and clapped at all the wrong times. A few days later over breakfast, I asked him what he was doing and he said, "It's the best way for me to really see the music."

Fast-forward three years and three million cultural miles and I'm at The Merasi School with Sarwar Khan. We were talking about the Merasi musical legacy, a precious stand of songs that could easily wash away with the desert sands as modernization charges across India. "The thing is," Sarwar said, sweeping his hands towards the classrooms. "The kids observe with their ears. If there's no music being played, there's nothing to observe."

And it makes sense. The Merasi say they cry, sleep and laugh in rhythm, little boys and girls are as comfortable with a drum as they are with holding their mothers' hands. Music seeps through wind and time with a powerful cultural osmosis that is vanishing rapidly. "So it seems like part of what we're tying to do here," I said, "is put a somewhat more formal shape and a form into a style of learning that had a much more informal means of transmission." "Sure," Sarwar said. "We're giving them classes." Which was, of course, an infinitely more concise way of saying what I'd been swinging at.

So at The Merasi School, we learn with all our senses in all different ways. We see the landscapes in sounds and hear the loudness in landscapes. Our learning styles are as different as our handwriting, as distinct as our thumbprint. Each child that walks in the door brings a toolbox of potential learning matches that can be ignited if we commit to not just learning the word or the book, but learning the world.

When the peanut gallery came center stage

Warmest and dustiest greetings from our desert classroom! I just touched down at The Merasi School a few days back and, save for the brief moment of disbelieving silence when a mouse the size of Toledo tottered arrogantly through our math class, all has been outside voices and unrestrained music-making ever since. While there have been many glorious moments that brought me to my knees, I'd like to share one with you about a little fellow named Swaroop.

Swaroop is about nine years old. He moves through space quietly and gently, with big brown eyes that sweep across the room before entering and then continue to observe and process as he adjusts into the space. I sat down with Swaroop the other day to conduct a baseline evaluation and see where he was at in terms of comfort and ability. We sat side by side on the green rug, going over abc's and 123's. When we got to the end of the baseline, I ask the question I always ask, which is, 'What do you want to be?'

Swaroop stared at me intently for a moment. The initial look in his eyes was one of total confusion. He was a boy who spent his days on the sidelines, not welcomed into the playing field and certainly never asked to take center stage. I thought, for a moment, that he wouldn't answer, but steadily, as he is with most things, Swaroop's eyes began to assert themselves and he said firmly, 'A doctor.' As I wrote it down, he said it again, quietly to himself. 'A doctor. Doctor Swaroop.'

And it was one of those rare moments when you are struck by what an amazing privilege it is to witness internal transformation on an external compass, like those beautiful brown eyes. So, amdist the raucous classes and energized music lessons, my great hope is that moments like this are quietly exploding inside students, little shifts in perspective and possibility where a child begins to see themselves as welcomed into a great whole.

All-weather gratitude

My father and I talk baseball a fair amount. While my father churns out the facts, I fancy myself more of a color commentator, likening the field to a finely manicured chia pet or drawing powerful comparisons between the shape of a hot dog and the curve of the pitcher's wily smile. One foggy afternoon, my father and I were at the ballpark, watching intently as the clouds closed in at the top of the third. "DON'T let it rain," I declared. "In my book, this is not a day for rain." To which my father, rascal that he is, decided that today, he'd be adding the color to the commentary. "Satchel Paige used to say that if you pray when it rains, you'd better pray when it's sunny, too."

Thanks to Mr Paige and a few afternoon clouds, I've taken to a bit of all-weather prayer, which has opened up into all-weather gratitude. But, in truth, I've got it easy. Because in my line of work, it's folks like you, our Team Merasi members (you big-hearted studmuffins, you) who extend a hand when forecasts are gorgeous and lousy, who make me a continually appreciative soul. We hatch plans and cook up ideas, but each one of you provides the support needed to translate thoughts in our minds to actions in our hands. I, Caitie Whelan, am headed back to our desert classroom in just a few days and look forward to reporting from The Merasi School where a little rain and wind never gets in the way of a great day at school.

From our doorstep to yours, we send our heartiest and merriest thanks!

The Question that Keeps Coming

If we were to create a visual representation of The Merasi School, it would look something like so many Jackson Pollock's piece collaged together. Not because we're in a perpetual state of chaos, but because the most constant pattern in our work is unpredictability and the Great Unknown. While many painters gave us predictable scenes of cheery fruit and stoic portraits, Pollock produced works of unsettling beauty. And that's the most common pattern at The Merasi School. While poverty creates time structures with no rhyme or reason, our fierce little students' determination and grit make beautiful perseverance the foundation of our work.

So, the question that pops up all the time, over dinner and at coffee, among new friends and old ones, is almost always: "Why do you bother? What's the point? The situation is so bleak, the need is so high. How effective (and this part is always said very gently) do you hope one school to really be?"

And they're right...in some ways. Oftentimes, it seems as though the size of our solutions is dwarfed by the size of the problems. But you can't just walk away from that. There's an excellent Fitzgerald quote that goes something to the tune of "One should be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise." We can hold two opposing realities in our hands: the bitter caste system and the tremendous hope of education and while the world may suggest that one is more important than another, it is our prerogative as thinking, acting beings to constantly reshape the value of realities towards the realization of justice.

Now have we fully realized that at The Merasi School? Absolutely not. Far from it. We are a perpetual work in progress. But we know that at least part of our effectiveness is embedded in the fact that we'll get up everyday with these two opposing realities in front of us and commit to making more space for the unsettling beauty that lies before us.

Remixing the Hash

Birds of a feather is a dangerous little axiom. Like a bee to honey, I gravitate towards those trains of thought, newspapers, radio shows and organizations that support my own thinking. They are wonderful little reinforcers, serving to give me a big, hearty slap on the back and say, 'Way to go, Tiger! Once again, you've proven yourself to be a towering interpreter of our times." And it feels terrific to be so right so much of the time.

But the curtain came crashing down on that little Utopian play right around the time I turned seven and, after many retreats to the time-out corner, realized that not everyone enjoyed listening to my OUTSIDE VOICE as much as I did. Fast forwarding to this moment in time, no matter how tremendous my ideas might be, there will always be better ones and there will always be dissenters. And, it's pretty stunning, but those dissenters can often be the bridge needed to get you from where you are with a half-baked idea to an explosive launching pad.

History's painted with examples of it: In the Vatican, they called it the Devil's Advocate, an individual who was supposed to shake up the conversation by interjecting the devil's prospective. Eisenhower made up a cabinet of yes AND no men who shoved and tugged at his perspective. The UN has released several compelling arguments for the accelerated inclusion of women in political discourse, stating that a female, relational perspective is a powerful counterbalance to the male, tactical perspective. And what shakes out from inviting in the other opinions? Well, if you can really listen, I think an awful lot.

At The Merasi School, I call problem solving Hashing. But, oftentimes, my Hash muscle digs itself into a mono-focus rut where it spits out the same uniform approach to every issue that comes barreling down the pipeline. If you think about an approach like a tool box and all you've got is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. It could be perfect for one problem, but have all the utility of hot fudge in the operating room for another. But, if you begin to fill it up with wrenches and drill bits and sandpaper, problems start to take on a different appearance.

So, I think the Hash needs to be remixed. Regularly. It insures that at any point in time, you have access to a veritable arsenal of approaches to address a given issue. Here are a few that get regular airtime at The Merasi School: a brilliant buddy of mine named Steve once said that play is the foremost metaphor for problem-solving. How would you play and tease your way through a problem of epic scale? Try digging a bit deeper into your analysis: the author Calvin Trillin once said that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter. Does that mean it weighs as much as two dimes and a nickel, too? Ask why: There is this great Clara Barton quote that goes something to the tune of 'I defy the tyranny of precedence.'

And there are heaps more, oddles of other tools to give your perspective the necessary jitters to open up a bit more. Our students learn in different ways, digest information and ideas through different processing mechanisms, it's only fitting that we approach the conflicts they face with as much respect for differentiation as possible.

Wrapping dead fish

A hearty chunk of the work that Pamela (our gorgeous new development director) and I do here in the land of red, white and blue is plan. We love to plan, to chip away at bold, foolish, pie-in-the-sky ideas until they've been hashed into fully articulated, achievable action maps. In our last conference, we planned fundraising initiatives and website pages, newsletter templates and Rajasthani education databases. Then, before signing off, we planned when and what we'd plan for our next planning meeting.

The toughest, tenderest slice of our planning pie is the on-the-ground material -- the new math curricula, the teacher training modules, the student assessment evaluations. This piece of programmatic forecasting is particularly tricky to navigate because our planning context could not be further removed from the implementation context. We dream and scheme and formulate ideas at dining room tables, in libraries exploding with books, over $3 coffees, or lying in comfy, warm beds. Our programs are implemented in a pocket of the world where meals are eaten on the floor, there are no libraries, $3 could feed a large family for three days, and beds are blankets spread across concrete or sand. Our planning is thousands of geographic and cultural miles away from our programming.

Every single plan we implement has at least 15 hitches, 11 provisions, and more often than not, a total overhaul. When theory hits the blacktop, the complexity of culture, poverty, and human existence spills and slops all over neatly categorized charts and lists. Which sometimes leaves us feeling like our plans would be best used to wrap dead fish. And maybe they are.

But, just as our students are constantly learning and engaging, as our we in our knowledge of what works and what does not. With each plan, we inch (sometimes at what feels like a molasses pace) ever closer to crafting programs that hold water, can withstand the barrage of learning styles and cultural and human nuances that hit it the moment it walks through the classroom door. When we close the book and wipe the dust off our hands after wrapping up a planning session, we know that we have poured the best of what we have to offer into that particular piece of programming. And, inevitably, it will crash and burn or crash, dust itself off, and figure out how to stand. But it will never be as flawless as we feel it is when we complete it in the US.

So what does it all mean? That we are perpetually naive or culturally incapable of creating ABC classes in a cozy corner of the world for a tough, rough corner of the world? I don't think so. I think it means that our best has to keep on getting better, grittier, tighter, more honed and toned, sensitive and aware. It means that we have to be a learning organization, able to take unexpected, perhaps less-than-ideal outcomes and translate them into lessons learned for the next round. And our planning sessions are where we realize how much we've learned. Of course, our implementation is when we realize how much further we have to go.

But we know that with The Merasi School, we're drawing a drawing that hasn't been drawn. So some plans are tossed to the dead fish, but others are packed with enough risk, passion, and durability that they might be able to contribute to etching out the picture of educational equality.

Today's the day!

VOTE!
To find your polling place, click here.

Planes, Tranes and Cognitive Wheels

In this line of work, I tend to log a fare amount of transit hours. There's an equation with certain variables I tend to use when figuring out how to get from point A to point B. For me, I plug least expensive and most efficient into the route calculation. I used to go solely by least expensive, which saw me going from Portland, Maine to Providence, Rhode Island via Cincinnati, Ohio and New York City to London via Louisville. As the hours piled up at lovely, albeit out-of-the-way airports, train stations, and bus depots, I began to thinking about bumping efficiency up the traveling priority list.

This past September, I spent a travel-heavy day on a string of different trains headed down the northeast coast. I'd long since finished my travel work and was simultaneously dozing and eavesdropping on a cluster of older ladies discussing crab shelling. At some mildly lucid point, it occurred to me that my little travel equation was focused entirely on the solution, my final destination. All my eggs were unquestionably placed in the where and what basket, where I was going and for what purpose. I placed zero value on the how of the trip, how or by what means I got from DC to New York. Which, in a larger sense, was downright hypocritical.

At The Merasi School, the focus above all else is how. We're not that impressed with what kids know. Plenty of little ones are bursting at the seams with abc's, ancient desert rhythms, and 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples. And that's terrific, but that's just part one of our work. What blows us away, humbles our teachers, and makes our students a bit bolder is part two: that breathtaking moment when students can retrace the steps and demonstrate how they know what they know.

Because, in many ways, the what of learning is easy. It doesn't take too much brainpower for Akram to memorize the spelling of 'India.' But if he can reflect and tell you how he knows the word order, that's a whole lot more powerful. Then he's tapping into his learning process and blossoming an awareness of how he digests knowledge. And (this is the money in the bank slice of the pie) that's when you have a translatable skill that shoots like an electrical current far out beyond the classroom walls.

If Akram says that he's able to remember the spelling of 'India' because the word shape reminds him of a one-humped camel, then we can see that he's a visual learner and begin to work on strengthening those visualization muscles, which have far more expansive, generous and useful application than knowing the spelling of 'India.'

Let's take another example. Our aspiring doctor in residence, Ms Suriya Khan, is an absolute whippersnapper at math. She can crank out double digit problems in nanoseconds, which we're thrilled about. But what will accelerate her learning curve is if she can try to explain how she's able to total 43 and 38 so quickly. Because that how muscle will not only serve her very well as she tackles trickier, more complex problems, but also enable our teachers to work on building up and strengthening her particular learning style.

We focus on identifying and oiling those cognitive wheels so students are able to get from point A, where an unknown or problem is presented, to point B, the resolution, with as much speed, confidence, and constructive compassion as possible, regardless of whether or not the setting is our desert classroom, a vegetable salesmen, or the bank teller.

So, as I hash through Expedia and Orbitz, trying to find the least expensive, most efficient way to get from where I am to where I want to be, I've begun to think just a bit more about what happens along the way. It's not a flight to be gotten over with or a bus ride to slog through, it's valuable hours of our lives that won't be coming back to us anytime soon. And who knows what kind of mountains we can scale, wonders we can work, or riddles we can resolve in those collective minutes, hours, and days?

Even the Best Laid Plans...

When it comes to trip planning, all my ducks are in a row. The piper has been paid and every single one of my eggs is nestled in diversified baskets. So when I got the email saying my flight had been changed, I was somewhat taken aback. Lumbering structural pieces of trips to India, like Health Insurance, Luggage Tags, and even occasionally Baggage Claim, were typically smooth sailing for me, clearing the way for the day to day mayhem and merriment of The Merasi School to confidently stride to center stage.

But this trip, I paid the price for three years of airlines never cashing in on my decidedly less pricey standby ticket. So, the last few days in the desert classroom were a phenomenal swirl of writing lesson plans, teacher meetings, rewriting lesson plans, and digging fiercely through the mighty To Do list with the ever-patient Sarwar Khan. And, as I wiped the dust from my palms and high-fived Fridah and Fridah, our two most dedicated students/floor washers (in truth, first we needed to have a short demo lesson on high-fives, underscoring the point that one doesn't move one's hand away when the high-five offer comes to town, but rather waits or even moves into the shared gesture of accomplishment), I was once again thoroughly blown away at the many different paces of change.

At times, change seems to bop along at the reckless pace of molasses mixed with maple syrup. Days, weeks, months go by and there is little indication of a shift in the scenery. Then some days, the garden shoots into full bloom, that little rascal Asif learns all of his ABCs and the ceiling fan you thought would come around the same time of the Apocalypse arrives, is installed, and shows signs of working. I think in the US, I've acclimated to a steady, constant, or at least predictable mph for change. But in that lovely little desert classroom of ours, change operates at about 15 different rates and, what I'm slowly beginning to appreciate is that no one is more valuable than another.

So, I'm back in the Red, White, and Blue, hashing through work from the trip, throwing my hands in the air for the Phillies and Notre Dame, and plastering my lawn with political signs. I will gleefully and merrily keep you posted this month on all that transpires on both sides of the ocean with our desert classroom. But only if you promise to do me one thing: VOTE on NOVEMBER 4th. At The Merasi School, we're big believers in little acts wielding big power. The Merasi are a population that has no access to political representation and we're working our hardest on changing that. So for now, take that beautiful right that you have and march to those polling booths in a few short days to show this world what you're made of. Because who knows? Perhaps the pace of change is about to take a step in your direction...

Eating Humble Pie

When it comes to immediate deliverables, education yields few of those satisfying visual markers of accomplishment found in bridge building or tinker toy assemblage. There isn't a whole lot you can point to with education and say, "Look at them apples, buddy. That kid's got EDUCATION. Plain as daylight. No ifs, ands or buts about it." Sure, there are benchmarks of information accumulation: Mr Akram Khan, a little lad who can't walk by a bucket without putting it on his head, now can recite the English letter names and sounds from A to Z. Suriya, a fierce gal with a big, bold voice that is only rivaled by the size of her big, bold heart, now can fire up a computer and type a flawless document about her favorite animals.

But what they know, a to z, computer literacy, is almost tangential to how they know it. In the process of learning C for cat and cream and 'caps locks' means ALL BIG, ALL THE TIME, what Sarwar and I really want to sink into Akram and Suriya's brilliant minds is the process of learning, of fostering translatable skills of constructive reasoning, critical analysis and creative problem-solving that have expansive value far beyond our little classroom. G for gorilla and learning the destructive power of the 'delete' button are finite chunks of information vehicles for developing these infinite skills of knowledge possibility.

But, as is an all too common occurrence at The Merasi School, I'm forced to sit back and eat a hearty meal of my own words. Last Saturday night, I was drinking an exceptionally sweet cup of chai and talking with Sarwar about our glorious little school. "The kicker, my friend," I said vehemently, "is that 99% of the time, I don't have a CLUE what's working and what's not."
"Well, kids still come to school, right?" he said, the telltale signs of his co-founder ascending the Whelan Soapbox of Righteous Indignation.
"YES, they still COME, Mr Khan. But what does THAT say? Do you want to know what I'd like to know? I'd like to know HOW their lives are different since they started thinking of themselves as STUDENTS, along with sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, caretakers and chai-makers. Is that SO much to ask?"
"Perhaps, Ms Whelan, they've told you ."
"TRUST ME, sir, they have not said a WORD. I'd notice. I'm very good about noticing these kinds of things. People often remark about what an excellent noticer I am. And this noticer would notice something like that. In fact, it's the main thing I'd like to notice right now." Sarwar nodded and the conversation slipped into other avenues.

Well, the next day, the Old Noticer took a big cream pie to the face. The pie came in the form of young Hayad Khan, a little fellow I've mentioned before, who shattered history when he walked in the door of The Merasi School and broke a 36 generation old trend in his family of life without education. But, that day, Hayad demonstrated that that alone wasn't good enough. Because, trailing shyly behind Hayad were two of his closest buddies who had never walked inside a schoolhouse before.
"They're my friends," Hayad said, his arms wrapping around the necks of the two little boys. "I wanted them to come with me to my school. I think they'll like it." So, for Hayad, it was not enough to rewrite history. He was going to spit in its face, then rewire the future's narrative as he saw fit.

The Old Noticer probably could have noticed signs of this along the way -- Hayad's increasing punctuality, the gradual improvement of his hygiene, the evaporation of cherry bombs in his chest pocket. But I was too busy looking for what I thought were signs that I totally missed what the students put forth as signs. And so, I happily went home that night and ate pan upon pan of humble pie.

The liceman cometh

There are a few things that make every trip to The Merasi School complete: a knock-down, dragout bout of food poisoning, an unanticipated interaction with a curious cow, and becoming the landlord to a rapidly proliferating community of lice. The first two I proudly checked off my list the other week, leaving the last and final lingering quietly in the shadows, waiting to pounce. And pounce it did, today at about 2pm.

Let me set the scene: I'm sitting in the classroom for Very Little Class, the youngsters still learning about ABCs and the importance of relieving yourself anywhere but on the rug. As is usually the case, the school house is jumping with kids cleaning slates, kids scrubbing walls, kids writing on walls, and the occasional roving dog. Fridah, a big-hearted girl from a small village outside Jaisalmer wandered into the classroom and began to play with my hair, a somewhat vicious activity not for the faint of heart, entailing grabbing, tugging, digging, and then, unsatisfied with the result, repeating.

After a few blissful seconds of having my scalp massaged with the caressing touch of a steampump, Fridah gleefully exclaimed, "Lice, Caitie! Big, BIG lice!" she held her hands about four feet apart to demonstrate the size of my new not-so-little tenants. Not wanting to comprimise a real time learing opportunity, I grabbed the chalkboard and began an impromptu lesson with Fridah on the Silent E, as manifested in lice, nice, twice, and splice, as several young girls combed through my once lusterous locks.

Lice is on the kinder spectrum of health issues facing our young ones at The Merasi School. Dehydration, malnutrition, and starvation are the fiercer evils that challenge that possibility and scope of Fridah and so many others' lives. As Sarwar and I look to expand and enrich our curriculum, relevant health education appears on the forefront of our priorities. Without basic knowledge about your body, a common cold can be as terrifying and feel as threatening as malaria. But knowledge comes in many forms, not only edification. We want a proactive kind of knowledge that instills in kids the tools to create environments and atmospheres where these health issues are a thing of the past.

So my lice and I sign off with a renewed commitment to the importance of education in all its forms for not just preventing disease and illness, but blowing the roof off the constrictive social casing that created these contexts in the first place.

The idea of pizza

At The Merasi School, we snap at any opportunity to talk about food. It would be a total anomaly in our desert classroom if a day passed without someone indulging in a bit of heartfelt praise of Good Day Biscuits, Chocolately Cake, or Mango Juice. In English Class, we are at our grammatically sharpest, linguistical best when discussing the color, shape, and price of our favorite vegetables. In computer class, the fewest mistakes are made when typing "I like yellow bananas" or "The orange carrot is big."

So the other day, young Rojieela, an aspiring teacher with a knack for turning any gesture into the beginning of an elaborate dance move, did not exactly stop traffic when she said that her favorite food was pizza. By and large, our little lads and lasses subsist on very modest, inexpensive diets of chai, rice, lentils, and flat bread with vegetables. Cheese would be an absolute delicacy because it requies refridgeration and is quite pricey. So the comment was a bit of a blip on the radar, but nothing that brought the class to a halt. However, when Akram stated that his favorite drink was coffee, I began to get a little suspect. But the cherry bomb that exploded it all was when Seema said her favorite person in the whole world was Hannah Montana.

So, we began to retrace our steps. I asked Rojieela what was in pizza and, upon reflection, she realized she'd never had it. I probed Akram about the taste of coffee and he said it tasted like Thumbs Up (if I may subjectively interject, it is a foul soda that would be much more productive if used to remove lead from all Chevy trucks). When we approached Seema about the color of Hannah Montana's hair, she said it was a blue-green-black kind of hue.

I think we're talking about ideas, here. The idea of pizza, coffee, and Hannah Montana has some decidedly American cache, which is powerful verbal loot to be lugging around. It's something of a social currency, in the same way that wearing Nike sneaks and reading Kant in the park is in the US. Generally, it's stuff we do out in the broad light of day to influence others' opinions of who we are. The red, white, and blue has brilliantly packaged and exported the idea of America through cheesy pizza, coffee, and that excellent cultural ambassador, Hannah Montana. But can you fault these little ones for wanting to buy in?

The idea of America, I believe somewhat rosily, is one of public libraries and government subsidized education, making gold from dust, and shattering molds of poverty and discrimination. Sure, we're loaded with heaps of less attractive, poetic ideals, but America, I have come to believe, is also an idea of hope, opportunity, possibility, and choice.

I think part of our work here at The Merasi School is to shake loose the good stuff from this idea of America, the glorious, generous notion of expansive possibility that sends folks up to the moon, down to the bottom of the sea, and around the earth on a sailboats and bicycles and determined feet. If we can squeeze out these thought patterns, these electical currents that charge kids with the very real idea that they could write their name, they could go to college, they could be a doctor, then perhaps it's an idea worth spreading.

If I could just add, though, Neil Diamond would be a far superior cultural ambassador of hope and opportunity than Hannah Montana .

You're the cream in my coffee

You'd be hard pressed to find a cup of coffee in Jaisalmer. Not to be misleading, there are plenty of menus with 'coffee' on them and drink stalls that boldly advertise 'Hot American Coffee.' But do not be deceived, dear friends. It would be roughly the same as calling an archaic can of peaches 'Fresh Off the Tree! Organic and All Natural!' The coffee is a rather fascinating swirl of hot water, whole milk, heaps of sugar, and a powdery brown substance called Nescafe Cafe.

But here's the kicker: If I weren't looking for coffee, if I weren't expecting a specific French Roast brew, I might rather enjoy this steaming cup of enigma. But my expectations are framed by a finite definition of the taste, aroma, and atmosphere of coffee. So I position myself for crushing disappointment with each sip.

So as my wilting hour of 4pm in the afternoon creeps up, I often wonder if I'd be just a bit more content if I expanded out my cramped little definition towards a palette that is a tad more inclusive than the snotty little coffee club. And it's not too far from what frames our assessments and evaluations of The Merasi School.

I trot into class with crisp, parametered expectations of what 'learning' is. Everything that spills out of those walls couldn't be quite significant enough because it exceeds my categorization. But, what I am learning in fits and starts, is that learning happens, education occurs, and knowledge is created, developed, contributed to and challenged in all shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes. And it grows, digests, and ripens under a big, generous tent that puts my neat, prim little assessment rubrics to shame.

Suriya, Synah, Asif, and Sanwar continually remind me to check my sack of expectations at the door and open my eyes a bit wider to something a bit larger and more significant that I could even conceive of. And, the more that I do that, the more that I see that what lies outside the framework of definition holds a much more elegant, beautiful possibility than what lies within.

This is not to say that I've renounced fine French Roasts for cups of water and brown powder. But I'm trying, with minimal grace, mind you, to stretch around the edges a bit more and acknowledge that unmet expectations can be quaint, convenient excuses for sidestepping the surprising beauty and glorious complexity of what lies directly infront of us.

Margins of Error

Yesterday evening, I was walking down the narrow, cobbled street to the Merasi School. My traveling companion was a three foot tall stick of dynamite named Hayad who wore no shoes and had a chest pocket filled with little firecrackers. ABCs had not been sticking with Hayad, so we were going back to school to burn a bit of mental midnight oil before the test the next day. We walked side by side along the narrow road lined with rusty motorcycles, empty biscuit packets, and lethargic cows, talking about his favorite candy, a heavenly little chocolate concoction called Five Star bars.

All of a sudden, a green and yellow auto-rickshaw whizzed around the corner and Hayad instinctively turned his body towards mine. The rickshaw missed him by about three inches and continued to zip on into the night. Hayad resumed walking normally, not skipping a conversational beat. I, however, did not spring back to chitchat with the same ease. My little man had just missed severe injury by a finger's length. In my book, that was way too close for comfort.

Later that night, I sat eating an apple and trying to hash through what had rattled me so much. I'd seen much worse, heard stories that left your heart in wet, crumpled up pieces, and watched women return to husbands who burned and beat them. But this little rickshaw run-in had dug in deep under my skin and I think it has something to do with the fact that Hayad's existence has so little margin for error. His precious life is positioned on a delicate tightrope, where three inches can mean the difference between safety and destruction. Society has stingily given him next to no space for mistakes; there is no generosity or forgiveness towards Merasi who fumble. Bandaids, safety nets and cushioning to ease the fall are reserved for somewhat more privileged folks. If Hayad missteps, he tumbles heavily and fast.

Merasi School co-founder Sarwar Khan and I talk about education as nothing more and nothing less than nurturing the skills to create opportunity. And built into that is an expanded margin of error -- we are, as humans, expected and entitled to fall to our knees. Education strengthens the muscles that bounce you back, re-aligning your spine with a bit more ummmph and know-how than the last time your nose kissed the pavement.So, Hayad and I worked on abc's well into the night, with each letter, pushing to fiercely, constructively, and compassionately widen that tiny pocket of grace he' s been granted.

All the comforts of home

There is an excellent passage from 'Nicholas Nickleby' that has been running through my mind these sweaty, dusty desert days. Nicholas, the gritty, big-hearted protagonist, has reached a lull in his adventures and so turns to his traveling companion, a young cripple named Smike and says, 'We're going to take you home now.' Smike looks at him and says plainly, 'But you are my home.' It was the first time for me that I became aware of home as not a physical location, but an idea of comfort, safety, warmth, and security.

If you trace the migratory patterns of college kids from bedrooms to dorm rooms to shoe box apartments, with each new location, few are trying to recreate the physical space of home, the flowered wall paper and patterned bathroom tiles, but rather the feeling, the essence, that indescribable x-factor that makes a cluster of rooms a space you want to return to after a trying day.

The majority of our students are born without a complete notion of home. Many of their parents and siblings create relationships of unconditional warmth and provide the utmost level of protection that they can afford, but large, hulking social factors of caste and economic marginalization that lurk in the shadows always pinch and pull and tug at the edges, oftentimes creeping into the heartbeat of these students' lives and robbing them of that feeling of total security, of purpose and belonging and being unconditionally wanted.

So we try to foster the tools necessary for students to be their own architects of home, to build and fortify the idea of place and safety. It happens slowly on an ever zig-zagging path, but we can begin to see little twinkles of foundations being laid. Akram bellowing 'Name 'a' sound 'ahhhhh,' while reading a sign that said 'Apples,' Suriya correcting a vistor that her name was not 'Suriya' but 'DOCTOR Suriya,' Frida yelling across the street to her mother that she'd written her name for the first time in her life.

And gradually, the wheelbarrows are being emptied, the cement is being laid, and the beams are lumbering into place. We're all set with Webster's for now; today, at the Merasi School, as with tomorrow and the day after, the definition of home is being written by Akram, Suriya and Niwab.

Red Herrings and Paper Tigers

A hale, hearty archaeologist friend once told me that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In essence, our reality is a bit holier than just the top soil would allow; only through excavation into layers of soot, undergrowth, and roots can we begin to get glimpses into the elegant complexity of human existence. There are times here in our desert classroom when I've been guilty of top soil evaluation. The other day, young Asif Khan stuck two cherry bombs between my toes and began to dance and jump around the room. My knee jerk reaction was to stick the cherry bombs between his toes and tell him he could enjoy the view from the inside of my suitcase. But, as I walked past a band of roving cows that night, I realized that if I dug in past the aesethic of Asif's action, the cherry bombs were nothing more than a red herring for the fact that he's starved for attention that his overworked mother and absent father can never give him. He'd do just about anything for acknowledgement of his existence, even if it means setting my toes on fire.

Every so week or so, we have a student who boldly declares, "I don't need The Merasi School. I can do just fine without it." This is never said quietly, in a corner, with venom coating every word. It is always loudly shouted with eyes darting between our teachers, looking for a reaction. In our teacher meetings, we've come to view these declarations as paper tigers, perhaps masking a desire to have influence on the world around him/her, to somehow, with their presence and actions, be able to shape or control the course of events. And, really, how can you fault the students? They came out of the womb being told they were of negative value, unable to contribute at all, let alone constructively.

Each of these actions is not evidence of an absence of ability or capacity in these students. If anything, I believe, it's an acutely felt absence in their own lives of evidence of their own worth. And that's our primary job here at The Merasi School. Through our presence, our actions, and our words, to provide constant and generous evidence of the tremendous worth and purpose of each student.

Five Minutes in India

I like lists, charts, and maps. This collection of little organizational passions takes a mighty step towards the back burner just about the minute I set foot inside The Merasi School. It is not that all is complete chaos and pandimonium, with students hanging from the rafters and drums flying through the air at all hours of the day. But the order and patterns here are a bit more subtle than my linear chronology would allow. And I think a lot of it can be traced back to that ever finite, but always constant resource of time.

It wasn't until I came to India that I realized I was the primary master of my time. By and large, I decide when I'm going to have a peanut butter sandwich, where I'll have it, what kind of bread to use, and who I'd like to share it with. Then I get to choose if I'll go to the bakery down the street for a cookie afterwards or head to the library to do the crossword. Implicit in each one of these decisions is an amazing privilege of choice that I didn't acknowledge until I saw (and felt just a bit) what it was like to go without.

For most of our students in The Merasi School, their time is not something they have control over. Schedules are dictated by familial needs -- if Iyeenah's father works from 7am to 8pm and her mother cannot look after her six sisters, Iyeenah's time will be spent making chai for her siblings, keeping them away from motorcyles and speedy rickshaw taxis, and scrounging together enough rice to provide an afternoon meal of some kind. Children are pulled in one direction or another depending on cultural forces: their family is called to perform at a wedding in a remote village, they need to help their overburdened mother support the family in the face of an alcoholic father, they have to spend an hour buying milk because the most direct path to the store takes them through an upper caste neighborhood where they are subject to physical and verbal violence.

So what is, say, five minutes in India? The literalist in me, which disembarks from the plane starry-eyed and hopeful would tell you it's five consecutive sixty-second chunks or the time it takes me to find all the countries beginning with 'A' on a map or the amount of time it used to take my dog Bozeman to process the command. 'Sit.' But, if you think of five minutes as a puppet, here in India at The Merasi School, this five minute puppet have about sixteen different puppeteers, from parents and siblings, to upper caste members and goverment restrictions, pulling and tugging the little figure in often contradictory directions. Kids are veritable contortionists with their time. So, when Seema tells me, "Caitie, no problem, I'll be back in five minutes," I could see her in 10 minutes or I could see her in five hours.

What we try to do at The Merasi School is instill in kids the fundamental skills to have more say over their time. If you can do basic math, you can make sure you're getting the right change when you buy milk. If you can read simple English and Hindi, you can tell if the expiration date on the milk has passed or not, preventing a store owner from getting a child to waste precious rupees on rotten products. Each one of these capacities builds up to give individuals more and more agency in the arc of an ordinary day and, incrementally, in the arc of their extraordinary lives. The cumulative impact, co-founder Sarwar Khan and I believe and hope, is that students are developing the skills to control, manage, and shape their time towards a day patterend with choice and opportunity.

This could, very well, take at least five minutes...

The skunks at the garden party

Greetings!

Caitie Whelan, here, writing from the Great State of Maine, where fall has brought out the finest and, dare I say, classiest side of the natives. Pumpkins are out and two foot tall illuminated skulls are in. Grocery stores are chock-a-block with plastic witches and bed-sheet ghost costumes and, in a brilliant slice of marketing, all the candy is in the exact same aisle as the back-to-school supplies.

But I must bid farewell to this ghoul's paradise and trot off, once again, to the toasty warm sands of our lovely desert classroom in the northwest nook of India. But how, you might ask, can you do this after having launched what critics are calling 'The most provocative, arresting website of our time' (www.merasischool.org)? The answer, my dear friends, is simple and an alliteration (as all great answers are): Pamela Pelizzari.

Ms Pamela is our PREMIERE Development Director. Since Pamela would shatter (in a controlled and graceful way, as most of her actions are) just about any nutshell we try to put her in, let me just say this: Were I stranded in a remote land and had one SOS phonecall, I'd ring Neil Diamond. But, contrary to popular belief, Neil's number is not 1-800-Sweet-Caroline and all his crooning, while legendary and profound, would do little to transport me home. So I'd call Pamela and know that she could problem-solve our way home. We're just thrilled to have her onboard; she injects an refreshing element of ease into our work. We hope everyone is fortunate enough to have a Pamela in their offices and, even better, in their lives.

Fall at The Merasi School is ripe with plans. But, as an excellent mentor of mine once said, when theory hits the blacktop anything is fair game. Especially in the context within which the mighty Merasi exist. Poverty is a fickle master and can oftentimes become the dominant architect of an individual's daily life. Plans and schedule dissolve in the face of empty stomachs and ruthless caste discrimination. But I am regularly brought to my knees by how this emptiness of opportunity is challenged by an abundance of intellect, creativity, and soul.

Caste has a multiplicity of diverse and complex iterations through out India. In Rajasthan, big chunks of the population benefit from this overtly hierarchical social organization. A gross societal imbalance has shaped into business as usual. And it would be just that, were it in not for the fierce, big-hearted gang of under 13-years-olds who have come to upset this unjust status quo. Aligning with the mighty efforts of Folk Arts Rajasthan, our parent nonprofit, The Merasi School is just delighted to be a bull in a china shop that's long overdue for renovation.

So this Halloween, in the days before and the days after, I'll happily put on my skunk costume and join all the other little skunks at The Merasi School as we constructively, tenaciously stink up the garden party.

More en route...

One lamp to light the whole room

Well hello there!

It's been a full week here at The Merasi School! Our two classes, Little Class (made up of kids roughly between the ages of 5-7) and Big Class (made up of kids roughly between the ages of 8-11) are plowing through learning body parts and basic health and hygiene. We are bringing a new teacher on board this week, a young Merasi woman named Arunah, who will work on a trial period until we can ascertain if she's a good fit for us and we're a good fit for her.

Arunah, unlike the sweeping majority of Merasi, espescially Merasi women, has been to school and finished 7th grade, which gives her the academic capacities to be a dynamo teacher. What she and I work on in our teacher training sessions focuses less on the what of teaching (the content) and more on the how (the delivery). The Indian education system leans towards memorization over comprehension and what we're working on is not developing little information recepticals, but training teachers. The time constraints of these childrens' lives makes it such that they are often the only kids from their family to attend school, so it becomes vital that they pay forward the knowledge they're acquiring and be, as our onsite Director Sarwar Khan put it, the one lamp that can light the whole room.

For this to sustainably transpire, we're working on these students understanding themselves as teachers with the capacity to shift and shape the world around them. And slowly, in little moments, signs of this are beginning to show, from Big Class' Suriya Khan demanding that everyone now call her 'Doctor Suriya' to Seema, a rather fiesty Little Classer, bellowing English body part names at her younger brother as they ate rice, then demanding, 'WHERE is your nose, brother?'

A bit of business: if you've donated to or are planning to donate to The Merasi School with a check between 12/31-2/23/08, your check will not be cashed until after 2/23/08. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience so very much.

All the best from me to you,

Caitie!

The Ugly Face

Biggest hellos from dusty Jaisalmer!

This will be short and sweet, as the internet connection appears to be a bit fickle. I am delighted to report that The Merasi School is filled with a super smart, boisterous gang that shows up early, leaves late, and enjoys, like yours truly, speaking exclusively in their outsides voices. The biggest hang-up hus far is that my skin is having an adverse response to the desert climate, which has led many a student to ask why I brought my 'ugly face' to Jaisalmer and what did I do with the not ugly face? However, barring my show-stealing epidermus, the kids are focused and committed to school.

After its first hour of use, The Merasi School Book is already showing significant signs of wear and tear, but appears to be an effective means of linking what students are working on in the classroom with what they need outside the classroom to reshape the dramatically slopped playing field they exist in.

On the horizon are plans to hire a woman up the street from us who has finished 7th grade (pretty tremendous for a Merasi lady), put together a community board of directors and identify what support they need to make informed decisions, and begin to hash out our next stages of development. Stay posted for more stories from the classroom!

And, once again, my tendency for being long-winded gets the better of my attempt to keep it short and sweet. Ah, what's that sound? Oh, of course, it's another New Year's Resolution crashing to the floor.

Much warmth from here to there,

Caitie!