Tuesday, December 30, 2008

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!

Monday, December 15, 2008

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.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

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.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

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.