Government & Gurukul High School

Government High School, Paradsinga, India

Gurukul High School, Paradsinga, India

I express my sincere gratitude to Lalit Vikamshi, Director - Alag Angle Studio, Nagpur, India, Shweta Bhattad, an acclaimed artist and philanthropist, initiator of I Have A Dream Project and Gram Art Project, and last but not the least Aditi Bhattad, art educator and artist, to allow and assist me in conducting art therapy workshop with Grade 6-9 students from Government and Gurukul High School, Paradsinga, India.

We gathered students from both the schools by having a total of 16, 8 boys and 8 girls from each group of Grade 6-9 students along with 2 teachers, one male and one female. Reason being was to eliminate the barriers of male-female divide that emerges as a blockade for child development.

Day 1 | Government & Gurukul High School

The first session concentrated on introducing rules for the class, all given out by the students themselves, exhibiting their understanding of what needs to be sorted out in the schools. Students are the best source of bringing change in any given group, hence extracting their understanding of knowledge and what they want is the key to open the doors of education for them.

Therefore, formulating rules and introducing themselves was the prime objective of the day. Some of the rules given put by the students were:

* Always have a smile on your face

* Trust each other

* Face difficulties and always have a happy face on

* Work together

Day 2 | Government & Gurukul High School

This day was a fun day!

We started off by writing our rules on a sheet of paper and putting them in the room on the wall. Then we worked on our next exercise where we made two queues, handed over a piece of paper and a pencil to each student and worked on our trust building exercise where each individual stands behind the other individual, puts the piece of paper on the back of the individual in front and visually represent what he/she feels about trust while being in that physical space.

It was exciting to see how the students responded to the exercise. After completion we sat down and each stood up to talk about their individual pieces. The most wonderful part of the reflective session was that students showed complete unconditional regard to the person demonstrating their feelings to the group.

The understanding of trust, unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence felt so powerful that my heart cried with joy!

We were one step closer to our goal; the wall of male/female divide was slowly and gradually diminishing as we moved on with our fun based activity where we all gathered as a group and followed the silly actions of the person in the center of the circle who led the session. What fun!!

Day 3 | Government & Gurukul High School

The third session was designed to work around collages. We sat in a circle, introduced the exercise, distributed colorful sheets of paper, scissors and some glue and asked the students to make a collage of what we had learnt in the previous sessions. It was an individual based exercise to notice the level of understanding of our main goal i.e. male/female divide.

Each student made highly impressive collages. We hung them on the pillars and posts of the space we were in.

Day 4 | Government & Gurukul High School

This day we had to dive down to the core of our workshop objective. We planned not to work on any material except we decided to use our body! Now that is where the session got interesting.

We initiated by making two mixed groups of boys and girls and handed over a stick to each group. They were asked to work collectively and develop an action plan to pass on the stick from one person to another without touching it with their hands. This became tricky for the group but amazingly they came up with several actions!

Both the teams won the trust building exercise! We checked up on their perception of working together. This was the start of our next exercise.

We then moved on with the complete the picture exercise where we all stood in a circle, one person came in the center and displayed an action or situation then randomly any person could come and join the person in the center to complete the displayed action. This became very entertaining and pleasant for all to witness and participate.

We then moved on by amalgamating two fun activities together and came up with our own game i.e. Dog and the Bone and Kabaddi. All the students enjoyed it very much and did not want to stop!

But we had to finish the session! It seemed like a never-ending day for all of us. We went home with happy faces and the aim of working with these age group students was tremendously productive. Their sense of togetherness without gender divide became stronger.