7: Mapping your School

June 23, 2018

Talking about Heroes

Today I confirmed that some of my students are only 6 years old!! Wow.  

First we experimented with a mapping exercise directly extracted from the DFC website. (Many thanks to Asma Hussein for the advice!) We asked the kids who their favorite superheroes were and then asked if they thought they can be superheroes too. We then showed two videos (Chennai, Israel based) where schoolchildren assessed opportunities for change within the school and implemented it themselves.  One was in Tamil, so most kids understood it and were able to translate it to each other. We talked about the videos, and tried to distinguish who the ‘superheroes’ were in these contexts. Some children exclaimed ‘The superheroes are us!’  

Introduction to Maps

Soon after, we talked about maps. I passed around a map of Colombo and we tried to distinguish where the roads, trees, water and parks were. We then tried to draw them on the whiteboard. Each student came up and drew the roundabout, the tree (that was mostly elevation) a pond etc. I asked them if we were to draw the Children’s center on the map what were the things we’d consider?  

What about the gate? 

The climbing frame?  

The driveway?  

What would the basketball court look like when viewed from above?  

Then they were all sent outside to investigate and map the center. We asked them while they are observing, to ‘keep in mind the places that make you happy, or sad, and mark it out on your map with a happy or sad face’. In a sense, this was the first time a conversation was to be a deliberate part of the syllabus. These were their initial sketches:  

This drawing was made by one of the older kids, thus the clarity of the ‘plan’ and birds-eye view elements

The very notable ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ places

Later, we mapped it out onto a group map. Prior to moving onto this, we asked them:  

Why does this place make you happy? Why don’t you like this place? Can we all think of ways to make the sad places happy again?  

Most children drew very few sad faces on their maps- and often had no opinion on why they drew a sad face there in the first place. As an example: when I asked, a student responded, 

‘oh! That was a mistake’  He pulls out his eraser and says,

‘It’s actually a happy place now, because I like it’ 

I got the feeling that it was because he did not want to discuss why.  

The end result: a large map that everyone contributed to. This was the first ‘conversation’ class that alerted me to the fact that: we need to have more conversation!

I also kept this note to myself: The Children’s center is a remarkable luxury when related to the domestic environment of most of these kids. Lots of space to run around in, clean bathrooms, and above all, a safe space. There’s probably not much to complain.