Teaching peace in the wake of the blasts

Now that I have had time to begin getting my mind around what happened in New Delhi yesterday, and has been happening all over the country and world for a long time, I have started thinking about tomorrow's workshop. I'm smack in the middle of my "Writing for Change" workshop series, and tomorrow we were supposed to talk about storybook characters, identities, and stereotypes, apart from workshopping stories of learning moments. We just finished brainstorming about it all on Friday, and lots of students were excited about the stories they would bring to the table (well, the floor; we don't have tables in our workshop space!).

Then, the bomb blasts happened.

I cannot go back tomorrow and act if nothing changed. I cannot resume workshop as normal. I cannot even just do the symbolic moment of silence and then move on with the preset design.

At the end of James' "Cultures of learning" class in my last semester at SUA, I wrote a short essay about including children's lives in the classroom, about letting the world in. I wrote it from the points of view of many different themes we touched, and I do not remember very much about the essay except that it convinced me that any successful, meaningful classroom has to let the world in. I have to let the world in.

Of course, i try to do that anyway. The workshops are structured so as to include students' lives as much as possible, to use a discussion abotu characters to talk about stereotypes, to use a discussion abotu point of view to talk about opression and marginalization. Stuff like that. The world is definitely a part of this writing workshop.

But, right now, I'm talking about a more urgent sense of letting the world in. I'm talking about processing and dealing with what happened this weekend.

After hearin the news yesterday, I messaged several of my colleagues and friends, asking after their families, and sending them love. With only one exception, everyone who replied said, "Everything's fine!" and asking me about mine. My family is OK too but I couldn't say "Everything's fine!". Because, of course, it isn't.

I am guessing that will be the overwhelming mood in the workshop tomorrow as well... unless someone there lost someone they know in the blasts, many will respond that everything's fine, that they were not affected by these blasts. But if I leave it at that, I will defeat the whole purpose of the intervention-- showing them that we are all affected, that these common spaces are our spaces too, and that we cannot isolate ourselves from one another's pain (incidentally, the only person who replied to yesterday's message saying "I can't talk right now, it's all too depressing" was the woman who founded the organization I work for).

So I'm now struggling to redesign tomorrow's workshop. I think of writing and drama as uniquely placed to build empathy... I need to draw upon that power now. I think of writing as uniquely placed to process emotions and regain a sense of control... I need to draw upon that as well. I've spent all morning reading about how different educators in the USA responded to September 11 in their classrooms. I can't find any Indian resources on responding to such incidents (ironic, given that we have experienced terrorism for decades befroe the average American heard of it... why have we not worked enough on building capacities for peace?). I don't know how, exactly, to design an adequate workshop session for tomorrow, but I will do something towards that end, even if it keeps me up all of tonight.

It is a little scary though. What if there emerge emotions and ideas that I am not equipped to deal with? What if I am unable to come up with something that works, and thereby end up cuasing more harm than good... getting them all upset about the blasts but not in any way empowering them to speak out for peace? What if they simply get irritated that I am not sticking to the syllabus I had promised them and I lose the ability to carry the group along?

I don't know.

But here's what I do know: I can live with having worked really hard on this fresh workshop design structure and failing to deliver it well enough. I cannot live with not even having tried.

So, kids, tomorrow we'll still talk about "point of view" in our writing, but I'm afraid you are in for a surprise in terms of what we actually talk about!