Thursday 5/12- Pizza Box Circuits

Hello!

So I’d like to quickly share an epiphany to how summer in India differs quite drastically from a traditional summer in the Midwest. In Michigan if you are taking summer classes, students typically “bundle up” to go inside to the cold AC and then immediately “strip down” upon going outside into the heat in order to keep cool. The is the complete opposite of what we are doing here in India; we “bundle up” in order to go outside and school in the heat in order to ensure we are conservative and assimilate to cultural norms, and upon returning to our living quarters we immediately “strip down” in order to cool down faster in the AC area!

Today we started the day once again with a quick continuation of our yoga lessons followed by another full day of school. The activities of the day included a computer programming activity called “Scratch”, Lego Mindstorm robots, and Pizza Box Circuits. Gabi and I were leading the Pizza Box Circuit activity to teach about Electrical Engineering and employ the basic circuit elements into various designs that simulate real-world situations (like a light that needs to be able to be turned on from either of the two light switches at either end of the hallway). It was fun to see the students excel and not only create different circuits that ours, but also see the different ways students chose to use paperclips, brads, and LEDs to model their circuits.

While it was fun to see student thrive with an activity you had a hand in planning, I think my favorite part of the day was outside of the classroom activities. During today’s snack break, we went out and sat with groups of students to continue to talk to them and learn. It was really fun to sit with a group of girls because they were sweet and really wanted us to try various foods that they brought from home. It was fun to hear about their favorite dishes and what they typically have for meals. The girls asked us about our thoughts on the weather and were intrigued when we mentioned Michigan having snow. Ha luckily some of us had some perfect pictures to explain. After a little while, some of the trip participants started to take out Snapchat and show the various face-swap features and dog faces, etc. This was quite a fun snack break learning and laughing with each other. :) Today we also ended up having some extra time at the end of our activities and finally had more opportunities to speak with the students and teachers on a personal level and learn about their culture and lives.

In our afternoon teacher interaction we tried to implement “Lean In” Circles to have small group discussions and exchanges about Indian and US policies and practices for safety in schools and mental health. Our conversations veered quite soon as the teachers were very interested in hearing from us about if we’ve noticed over the last 3-5 years a large change in students as the “technology divide” has grown and changed the attention spans, lack of engagement of students, and the difficulty of teaching students around 6^th grade with the rebellious stage (various cross-cultural epidemics we have in common).

At the end of the teacher interactions we also learned how to do Rangoli (the beautiful temporary sidewalk artwork). Wow, the teachers make it look so easy and effortless to create beautiful artwork. A note to the wise: it’s never THAT easy! Haha, but Gabi and I did make a fairly pretty design. (Gabi has the picture and I'll try to find it shortly. For now I've uploaded other Rangoli)