Assorted Reflections from India

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am in India for two weeks with students from the US. The students arrived a week before I did, and have completed their second week here. This past week, we spent about three days in Ahmedabad at the Environmental Sanitation Institute, a Gandhi-inspired organization designed to promote health literacy in urban and rural India. After that we departed for Mumbai (where I’m writing this post), the Indian city of dreams, home to some 20 million people from all over India (and, of course, the world).

I don’t have a single theme or thread to explore here – and, sadly, no pictures at the moment, as internet connections are unreliable and slow – but I did want to share some moments that have stuck out.

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Off to India!

static.squarespaceI’m composing my first blog post from an airport! I’m on my way to Ahmedabad, Gujarat to join students from Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy on a program called Niswarth.

Lots of links above. Niswarth is an opportunity for students and faculty to learn with each other and peers from Indian schools. We will learn about modern India — politics, religion, culture, history, educational system — while also grappling with questions of privilege, inequality, social change, moral agency, and justice. I’ve been on this trip twice before (in 2008 and 2011) and am delighted to be a part of it once more.

A couple years ago I wrote about the pedagogy of this program for Independent Teacher, an online magazine published by NAIS. You can read that article here.

More interesting, however, is the blog that is being updated regularly by student participants from this year’s trip. It’s well worth a read! (I’ll also try to share thoughts and reflections when I can.)