Third CASW session - Presenter: Joel Kribairaj

After the initial tech hiccups the session took off with Tara Kini facilitating and Satish Jayarajan as observer along with Arun from the P.E. Department.
Joel was able to put across his key questions with such conviction that we were convinced both of the necessity for the children to partcipate more actively and regularly in athletics and for there to be a democratization of such participation without bringing in the element of competition at all.
As Bala said Joel's philosophy of education shone through brightly throughout.
Joel's key questions were
Why do students in our school have immense interest in foorball and basketball?
How to create an equal interest in athletics?

During the productive discussion that followed rich strategies and perspectives emerged.
I was of the opinion that the interest in football and basketball had to do with the school's own culture, subculture and game- history and also something to with the prominence of these two games in Europe and in America, especially basketball's status as black American subculture's game. Bala opined that athletes were usually in " touch with the soil. "
Regarding equalization of interest several strategies were suggested including showing films like Iqbal and Chariots of Fire , bringing in selectors and role models , using the need for peer acceptance as a means to raise motivation through competitions, training for competitions, using an interdisciplinary method etc.
my suggestion was simulating a computer game which was like a quest for teams and weaving in things like javelin etc to make it exciting and colourful so that they would learn these sports without actually realising they were learning it first.
The question of what we took away from the session was a good one.
I personally took away the desire to motivate my students so they have equal interst in different things I teach and don't love only some of the things.
Though Joel had titled his presetation the losing battle we felt that the fight should go on and some things may have to be a choiceless entity....
The debriefing session -
I felt this session, more than the ones before , should have been video'd.....
It was the best of the three so far.
As usual, to write everything down would make it too long but there were tonnes of interesting things happening there....

Thanks to the team for another memorable experience which will feed into my teaching practice.

...and thanks to Tara for the snacks I and Anu went and had in her room at the end.