My time in India is coming to a close. As one might expect, I’m feeling mixed about this — so excited to see my people back at home and simultaneously sad to part with an experience that has been so meaningful. Yesterday, on one of our final excursions as a group, we woke up early to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. Agra is about a three hour drive from Delhi (give or take), so we set off the evening before and spent the night in order to get to the Taj before sunrise. It was so worth it. The beauty of the place was as one might expect — it is called a wonder for a reason. Our pass gave us 3 hours to walk around and explore and we were able to make good use of that time. From every angle of the grounds you see something striking and want to take in everything from that one space for as long as you can. I hope to return one day with Micah and Garrett.

Before arriving at the hotel that evening, Rajesh decided we needed to be treated to a cultural music show, which he himself helped to organize along with some friends of his who are mostly teachers. We pulled into a hotel, a little confused, but open to whatever Rajesh had planned, and entered an event space room with a full buffet and a number of performances — a classical Indian music performance, a saxophone performance (we have a music teacher in our group who plays sax, so this seemed fitting), and two incredible dance performances by troupes from University of Delhi who specialize in Punjabi dances. The energy of the performances helped to rouse us from whatever weariness we felt after many hours on a bus and eventually we all got up to dance, as our hosts insisted that we learn the moves. This whole event was a fitting and energetic end to our time here and helped us feel more bonded. Our group really was great, with no drama, and positive energy at each juncture. I’ll miss this crew.

And, lastly, I thought I’d note down some final thoughts/takeaways before departing. These are a mix of things that have been on my mind throughout and things I just want to make sure I remember. In no particular order:

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• It is so helpful when traveling to have a good travel partner(s). But on this trip, and group trips generally, one is given little choice in these matters. This is why I was so thankful to be paired with Davie during our week together in Pune. This portion of the trip is known to be the most intense — you may be asked to spontaneously teach classes, you may find yourself in tricky cross-cultural situations where you don’t know what to do or what to say, you might feel tired and worn out after super scheduled days, or you might feel sick after eating unfamiliar foods and eating a lot of them. You want to have someone who is empathetic and understanding and funny and real with you, and I did! Davie and I were an ideal pair. Neither of us tried to outdo the other when asked to present or perform at the school–we let each other do our things and speak to our own realities. We worked collaboratively and made sure to check in with each other to gauge our energy levels before agreeing to things. We had similar senses of humor, which was probably the most important piece– this allowed us to be real about indigestion and other less-than-savory, but ever so important, indignities that happen on trips like this. (We both have a fairly healthy appetite for toilet humor, so this served us well.) Lastly, and maybe most critically, we have similar views about, though different lenses through which we see, social and political issues back at home and that translated into being able to be incredibly reflective about some of what we saw and experienced in India and how structural issues we saw connected to those back home. I’m thankful that we got to spend a full week together on top of the group time on both ends of the trip.
• Group travel has its pros and cons.
  • Pros
    • Most of the stresses of logistics and planning are left to other people, which makes your life easier.
    • If you’re traveling as part of a grant, as we were, you pay for very little and that saves you a lot of money. For the teachers out there: Apply for travel grants or programs that pay for your travel; there are lots of opportunities for this kind of travel.
    • You get access to people and places that you likely wouldn’t if you were traveling on your own, without local connections. We got to visit schools, eat meals at people’s houses, and ask questions of Rajesh and our other Indian hosts whenever we had them. This gave us more of an inside view.
    • You can make new friends and connections, which is fun.
  • Cons
    • Your schedule is pretty controlled and you may not have the opportunity to do or see as much as you’d like had you planned the trip yourself.
    • Being driven around everywhere is convenient and more comfortable at times, but it doesn’t allow you to see and experience as much on the ground. The few times we were able to venture out and explore felt liberating in a way. I would like to come back to India under different circumstances to see more on my own and to use public transportation more to get around.
    • Traveling with a group of Americans makes it difficult at times to step out to talk more with people in India. It can also be difficult when you do have opportunities to have discussions with people you meet in the country to have meaningful conversations when there are several other people in the group who would also like to have these types of meaningful conversations. You’re sort of jockeying for attention, which can be tricky.
• It’s important to remember “The Danger of a Single Story” when traveling, especially when traveling in a so-called developing country. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Chimamanda Adichie, famed Nigerian-American writer, gave a TED Talk in 2009 called “The Danger of a Single Story” where she spoke about the importance of recognizing the dangers that come when we build our understanding about others or places unknown to us on single narratives. These singular narratives are particularly problematic when we speak about people and places that historically have less power and agency to determine and shape their own narratives. India is a country that I think many in the West have preconceived notions about. It is a country of extremes, we’re told. The wealth that is continuing to expand to the upper classes in the country is striking, as are the continuing signs of poverty. But it is the poverty that tends to capture more attention from visitors I think, and this focus, while understandable can also distract from a more complete story. For many, especially those who haven’t traveled to a developing nation before, the signs of this poverty are overwhelming and often distressing. However, I think we need to remember Adichie’s message when processing these scenes. One small example of how important it is to call on her message is when observing the tremendous amounts of refuse piles that build up in parts of cities in India. While it is true that trash heaps in cities here are unsightly, unsanitary, unsafe, and unsustainable in the long run, to think that people do this simply because “it is the norm” or that “they just know no other way of doing things” is incomplete in its understanding of the problem. It is easy for us to look at some of these scenes and decide that what is missing is simply education, but this misses a few deeper understandings.
  1. The Indian government and its people are not unaware of the pressing environmental problems facing the country. India is a country with 1.3+ billion people, and within that 1.3+ billion are experts in all fields who are working to mitigate climate change and working to enact policies that will help India grow more sustainably in the midst of climate catastrophe. One of the best things we as Americans can do (I think) when we witness distressing scenes that compel us to want to act, is to first find out what efforts are happening to combat the issue in-country and then to consider what we can do in our own communities to work toward change. The U.S. has major environmental issues, too. What can we do at home?
  2. India is industrializing and growing at an incredibly rapid pace and at a time when the world is more aware of the environmental dangers that result from this growth. In contrast, Europe and the United States saw its own industrial and post industrial growth much earlier, at a time when the world was far less aware of the dangers this growth posed to the environment. In other words, the U.S. and the West bear a lot of responsibility for the crisis we’re seeing today around climate change. The trash heaps (as an example) are a symptom of something much deeper and in some ways pale in comparison to the chronic consumption of resources by the West. By only pinpointing how developing nations with overstretched infrastructures are managing their environmental issues neglects to recognize the bigger story here. It doesn’t mean we ignore the problem these countries face, it just means the solutions are more complicated than getting people to stop throwing trash on the ground.
  3. We need to recognize our own “situatedness” when we process what we see when we travel. We all speak from a particular set of lenses, which determines how we understand the world. It’s important to recognize this when we draw conclusions about we see. AND, it’s also important to always ask questions. Why are there trash heaps? Why are there people begging on the street? Why do I see children working? Why am I bothered by this? What are people locally doing to address these issues? Is this the experience of the majority of people here? What are some similarities we see between here and at home that can help us connect on a more human level? What troubling issues face us in the U.S.? How often do we step outside our comfort zones in the U.S. to confront systemic issues facing communities at home? If we don’t do this, could this in part contribute to why we’re so taken aback by what we see here? What seems normal or acceptable (or has become normalized) at home that people from outside our country might see and be shocked by? What can we do locally to make change in a way that will contribute to a healthier and a more empathetic world? (This last one feels more important than ever.)

To wrap things up: thank you for taking the time to go on this journey with me. I have had a really wonderful time during my stays in and around Delhi and Pune. While I am ready to return home, I am also leaving with the desire to see so much more in India. I would love to travel to Kerala in the South, the Himalayas in the Northeast, and the Thar Desert in the Northwest. I’d love to visit more schools and spend time chatting with students and professors in universities about how to make history education more dynamic and the role that religion plays in the country’s schools and curricula. I am hopeful that I will be able to do at least some of these things at another point in the future. xo

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Today was our last day in Pune and our last day at KHS. We were lucky to be in town for a special occasion — the annual ceremony for standard 10 students (10th graders) who have taken and passed their big exams and who will now move on to Junior College (grades 11/12 in the U.S.). To mark the occasion, Davie and I were told that we would don saris and give a big speech to the crowd of students, their parents, and all the teachers at the school! Manisha, an English and Geography teacher who has accompanied us on a few field trips, kindly brought some saris for us to choose from and then helped us get dressed. It was quite a process, but she made us look good. Everyone was so impressed by how well we cleaned up and just generally happy to see us wearing saris. It was fun for us, too. We then made our way to the auditorium where we were given gifts from the school, watched the students receive their awards, and then gave our own speech on the importance of working hard academically while also remembering that there is more to each of us than the college we attend or the job we secure. The teachers, especially, were pleased with the message. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to these incredible teachers today. They were so kind throughout our visit, welcoming us into their spaces, chatting with us over home-cooked meals they cooked for us, and visiting historic and educational sites with us throughout the week. We felt welcomed and loved from beginning to end and I really look forward to finding ways for us to stay in touch so that our students can benefit also from this connection.

Tonight for our final outing we will head to a theater production (I guess Pune is known for excellent theater) with Pallavi and a friend before flying out early tomorrow to get back to Delhi.

Pallavi, our host principal, has been wonderful about exposing us to opportunities and people in Pune outside of the school day experience. Over the last several days we have met dozens of people doing interesting things in education, the arts, and children’s literature. Tonight we met Neeta Deshpande, who started a natural fabrics store in the early 1990s when buying natural, Indian-made cotton textiles was not in high demand. Not only did we get a chance to visit the store and shop, Pallavi arranged for a full on tutorial about natural fabrics. Neeta was so passionate about her work and feels strongly about the importance of sourcing the materials directly from the weavers, dyers, painters, and sewers she buys directly from. She has traveled all over India to live with the artisans and learn more about their processes. She was able to explain to us differences between patterns and techniques in over 20 states in India and kept imploring that everything she was telling us was just the simplified version because it was obviously way more complicated than she could capture in an hour. Bottom line — the artistry and skill involved in producing these textiles was way beyond what I imagined. I have enjoyed buying textiles for years, and while I am drawn to hand crafted pieces, I never really knew the intensity of the process of production; one embroidered silk piece we looked at took about 5-6 weeks for one person to put together. The whole experience underlined the importance of being deliberate about what you purchase if you can — textiles and otherwise — and it was a reminder of how important it is to support these types of businesses here and at home in the interest of economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

KHS

It is likely no surprise that there are discrepancies between private and government (public) schools in India. Anyone familiar with education understands that a basic, but important, difference between a private school and a public one is that students pay fees to attend private schools while they don’t to attend public schools. This week in Pune, we are spending most of our time at our host school, KHS, which is part of a network of private schools managed by a governing board. The school has a long track record of high test scores, professionally and economically successful graduates, and opportunities for students to think critically and work collaboratively with their peers. The school draws mostly on middle/middle-upper income students and the vast majority of these students are Hindu (though, this isn’t something that anyone would offer up, necessarily — I just asked). Similar to the United States, private schools have more autonomy, though here in India they generally follow the same schedule in terms of holidays and vacations and exam times. Also similar, private schools tend to be regarded more highly, though there are exceptions where we see government schools that have a niche or a funding source that enables them to be more competitive (we visited a school like this in Delhi). Class sizes, while still big by American standards, are generally smaller than in public schools, and private schools tend to be more highly resourced with technology and electives and other programs (the ThinQ curriculum, a gifted and talented program, a Tinkering Lab, etc.) In fact, one person told us that in Pune (and I imagine this extends to other metropolitan areas in the country, too) nearly 80% of students go to private schools. This is a difference between India and the U.S., and says a lot about how despite major differences in elite private schools and public schools in the U.S., the U.S. public education system in general is serving more students and is, on the whole, more functional.

Kilbil High School

Today we had the opportunity to visit a public school in a different part of Pune. This school has about 1800 students, K-10, and serves mostly low income students. We really enjoyed speaking with a group of students who asked fun questions like, “Does it snow where you live? Are the pineapples really tasty in Hawaii? (Davie teaches in Hawaii.) What is your native tongue?” We also enjoyed a presentation by some older students about India’s “culture.” Not surprisingly, their presentation focused on India’s “secularism” a.k.a. India’s religious diversity. If there is anything I’m taking from this trip, it is that everyone I’ve met and talked with takes pride in this pluralism. What is also interesting is that many of the people whom I’ve talked with about religion, most of them Hindu, have maintained that issues between religious groups are overstated. This in spite of the rise of the BJP (India’s leading party and one that is regarded by many, including the Prime Minister himself, as a Hindu-nationalist party). I think that conflict between religious groups in India, namely Muslims and Hindus, is probably less frequent than we might believe from news reports, but I couldn’t help but notice that Kilbil has far more Muslim students and teachers, which seems to underline the persistent systemic inequities between communities in India that often track along religious lines, though not exclusively. There is class and caste and urban v rural too, but that is a story for another day. Feel free to ask me about it–I had some interesting conversations that I’m too tired to write about right now!

Anyway, back to Kilbil Public School and the differences we noticed between it and KHS, just a few miles away. Kilbil is more cramped, it is a little rougher around the edges, the classrooms are smaller, and the set up less conducive to student-centered learning. Students with learning disabilities generally learn in a separate classroom, though the teachers we asked did say that the goal is to include them in the general education classes eventually. Still, the bigger takeaway for me was that the staff was equally as committed to teaching as the staff at KHS. Teachers were generous with their time with us and we had excellent conversations about how schools are funded in the U.S., how we teach history and emphasize multiple perspectives, and how it is difficult to ensure that students who come from family backgrounds where resources are scarce get what they need. If anything, these conversations felt more meaty and intimate than others we’ve had and I would have loved to have spent more time in classrooms and talking with kids. Both schools are doing their level best to educate the students in front of them, and what we all believe needs more attention–both here and in the U.S.–is a shift in government policies around school funding, a shift in mindset that would regard teaching as a more highly respected profession, and the need to provide support for students outside of school to enable all students to live and operate in circumstances that allow them to thrive.

Day 1 at KSHS! It was no surprise at all that Davie and I were greeted with a warm welcome and treated like honored guests throughout our first day at school. The Dr. Kalmadi Shamarao High School is a private school in Pune, which hosts about 1600, mostly middle-upper income students, grades 5-10. The principal, Pallavi Naik is our host and has been working at the school for 27+ years. She leads a dynamic, engaged, and motivated crew of students and teachers. Here are some highlights from the day:

• We learned from the Student Government ambassadors that Punekars, as they call residents of Pune, are very proud and very direct and that they take a lot of pride in their festivals, their education system, and their food.
• We learned a bit more about the role of religion at this and other schools in India. The question/topic I’m examining while in India is the role that religion plays in schools. At nearly every school we have attended there have been spiritual and religious elements infused throughout our visits. From the tilaka greetings and marigold leis we receive upon arriving, to lighting oil lamps at altars, to listening to religious songs or the recitation of prayers, religion is deeply embedded in the education system–especially Hindu religious traditions. That said, everyone you speak with will say unequivocally that India is a secular country, and proudly so. So, what does this actually mean? Well, to those we’ve spoken to in India, it means that India celebrates many different religious traditions and takes great pride in its religious diversity. I told them that the general American conception of secularism as it relates to school is that religion and the state are often separate, which is why in most public schools you will not hear prayer or sing religious songs. The reason we started chatting about this is because they were proud of the fact that the school had made a deliberate decision to shift away from ONLY reading Hindu prayers over the PA system every Friday to reading various religious groups’ prayers over the PA system every Friday. Now, in order to promote the idea of “secularism” or what I would call religious pluralism, each month prayers of a particular religious tradition are recited each Friday before shifting to a different religion the next month. Totally fascinated by this and excited to dig into it a little more.
• We visited a grade 9 elective class called ThinQ, which emphasizes critical thinking and inquiry skills. All 6th grade students are required to take this class but by 9th grade it’s optional. The students in the class are truly committed and love the chance to discuss and debate and wrestle with ethical and philosophical topics and concepts. They all said that it provides them with the most opportunity during the day to think outside the box, talk more freely, and hone their thinking and argumentative skills. Today’s topic was identity and nationalism. It was fun to watch them challenge each other’s thinking.
• One of the highlights of the day was attending a session of “Know and Grow”, the school’s sex and gender education course. The instructor works at a local theater company and does this work with students as a visiting faculty member. Hina Siddique was one of the most animated, down to earth, and unabashedly straight forward teachers I have seen deliver this type of content. I was so blown away by the progressive nature of the curriculum, her ability to connect with kids and be relatable, and her willingness to address ANY question that came her way with humor and candor. She talked a lot about the importance of consent, about the importance of accepting rejection, about why people have sex, about porn addiction and being properly educated, and about the importance of understanding the spectrum of gender identity, and the differences between sex, gender, and orientation. (See the chalkboard behind her in the picture above.) The whole thing was masterful and the students are so lucky to be going into the world more informed about their fellow humans. The sessions will continue for the rest of the week and Davie will get to assist her on Thursday in a lesson about body shaming. Oh, how I wish I had had such comprehensive and forward thinking information at their age.
• Lastly, we ate delicious food (AGAIN) from the school’s cafeteria and enjoyed talking with administrators and board members about the founding of the school. And now we’re off to dinner…because we never stop eating.

This morning we visited an incredible center — the Amar Jyoti (“Eternal Light”) Rehabilitation and Research Center. Very few places like this exist in the world and to describe it fully would take awhile. Briefly (or, semi briefly), this is a multi-purpose organization that was founded by an incredible woman, Dr. Uma Tuli. What began as a school under a tree for students with disabilities who were under-served has transformed, after 38 years, into a K-8 school for 500 children, half of whom have disabilities and half of whom do not. They all take classes together out of a belief in truly inclusive education, which is still a fairly new concept in Indian schools. Dr. Tuli’s work has become a model not only in India but worldwide, and while there are few centers like it and still much work to be done to educate and advocate for a more inclusive model for teaching students with disabilities in India, her work is being recognized nationally and internationally. In addition to the school, there is a medical facility on campus that caters to both students and adults in the area. Services include physical and occupational therapy, mental health services and testing, prosthetic facilities, and primary care services. Beyond that, there is a robust vocational training center for students and some adults to help augment academic studies. The students who go to this school are lucky to be in such capable hands. The principal of the school, in her presentation, noted that her belief is that “We must not focus on what a child cannot do, but rather on what a child can do.” The leadership at the school is visionary and they work tirelessly to meet students where they are and then push them to grow.

Old Delhi

In one of the few chunks of free time we had, four of us decided to venture into a part of the city called Old Delhi. As the name suggests, this part of the city is older than other parts (ya know, New Delhi). It was founded as a walled city in the 17th century during the rule of the Mughals and it’s marked by the famous Red Fort on one end and the Jama Masjid (Mosque) on the other. According to Wikipedia, Old Delhi “was once filled with mansions of nobles and members of the royal court, along with elegant mosques and gardens. Today, despite having become extremely crowded and inundated, it still serves as the symbolic heart of metropolitan Delhi.” This description and the pictures above can do most of the explaining, so I’ll leave it at that. I’m glad we journeyed in. Tomorrow, the group is off to six different cities in India for our week at a host school. Davie and I are on our way to Pune!

Delhi! It’s big. Real big. With lots of people. And lots of traffic. During our time here thus far we have been traveling via van/bus to various sites across the city. This affords us lots of opportunities to take in the scenery and while I haven’t taken a ton of pictures, you can trust me that the views are never dull. Like all cities, what you see on the road often depends on what kind of neighborhood you’re in. In a wealthy neighborhood here you’ll see more trees, grander buildings, wider boulevards, and more passenger cars. In a poorer neighborhood you’ll see more tangled electrical wires, more vendors on the side of the road, more garbage, more dogs (and sometimes a stray elephant and camel (really!), and more rickshaws. While this is likely no surprise, it still can overwhelm the senses. While I have been enjoying the rides and have appreciated not completely sweating through my clothes, I also know that I’m missing a lot by not walking on Delhi’s streets.

This evening, for a brief two hour period, this changed! We made a stop at India Gate, a memorial to Indian soldiers who died fighting for the British Empire during World War I and then continued to walk through a market and a few of us even took a brief trip through some narrow streets to a tiny synagogue to help David celebrate Shabbat. While our time walking in Delhi was brief this evening, we were able to experience the pulse of the city in new ways. For one, we interacted far more with people (surprise!), which meant smiling and greeting people more. It also meant confronting some tough realities. There are often poor children hawking wares on the streets in Delhi, especially near commercial and tourist attractions. Similar to the feelings that seeing homeless people or tent villages in American cities can provoke, facing the reality that there are people in India who desperately struggle is…uncomfortable, and it is hard to feel uncomfortable. There are also stray dogs everywhere, many of them looking sick, which has been particularly difficult for animal lovers and anyone unaccustomed to traveling in countries where this is a fairly common feature. Scenes like this can overwhelm and should overwhelm, and hopefully prompt reflection about the circumstances and structures that enable these realities to exist. At the same time, walking around allowed us to chat and pause to take in our surroundings. Exchanging pleasantries with some men getting their haircut at a sidewalk barber shop was fun. Pausing to read signs and glance into windows helped to paint a more complex view of some people’s daily lives here.

As for the other parts of the day, here’s an overview of the highlights:

• We visited a Delhi District teacher training school in the morning, where we learned more about the process of becoming a K-12 teacher in government schools. A bit different from the U.S., to become a primary school teacher in a government school you have to complete 12th grade and pass board exams with high marks (if you want to earn a spot in a competitive program). Upon doing so, you spend two years learning how to teach. (To become a secondary school teacher, you have to earn a bachelor’s degree in addition to completing a teacher training program.) This particular institute was proud of its sterling record of training highly qualified primary school teachers and was especially eager to tell us more about Delhi’s Happiness Curriculum, which I wrote about in yesterday’s blog post. We were able to tour different classrooms and talk with instructors, who were all rightly proud of the work they do. It was encouraging to see such a humanistic approach to becoming a teacher.
• Our second education-related trip of the day was to the United States-India Educational Foundation, which works closely with Indian teachers completing Fulbright projects in the U.S. and American Fulbright teachers studying and teaching in India. What was different about this visit was the more nuanced picture of India’s education system we received. While our previous school visits/presentations by teachers here have emphasized strongly all of the positive features of these schools and programs, what has been missing is a larger narrative about what India continues to struggle with structurally, as it relates to education. What the two speakers today helped to illustrate is that while the government, particularly the city government in Delhi, is working to make big, bold, progressive changes, there are still major stumbling blocks. Professor Sharma talked candidly about the huge gaps between government schools and private schools, schools in rural areas v. schools in cities, and the opportunity and achievement gaps (to use U.S. terms) between tribal children (children who are not part of a major ethnic or linguistic group), Muslim children, and poor, rural children and children who are in the majority religiously and who live in more well resourced areas. Finally, somebody named what I had assumed anyway — while there are amazing initiatives happening in India’s schools, and we’ve seen these, there are still deep, structural issues that will not be fixed overnight, but need to be confronted all the same. Of course what many of us were thinking is that this is not dissimilar to a country we’re all more familiar with.

Our first school visit of our trip took us to the Khichripur School of Excellence in Delhi, a government school (read: public school). There are five such schools in the city at this point, the brain child of wonderfully progressive education officials in Delhi, one of whom we met–Deputy Education Minister Mr. Manish Sisodia. These schools serve mostly low income students and each school draws on kids from nursery school – 12th grade living within 3km of the school. The students represent a diverse cross section of Indian society — linguistically, socio-economically, and religiously — and all students wear uniforms and have access to technology in their classrooms. What is most notable about this school is its embrace of the “Happiness Curriculum” — a curriculum piloted in 2018 in Delhi schools that emphasizes a more holistic set of educational values and mindsets beyond pure academics. In the U.S. this is similar to social-emotional education initiatives that are increasingly being rolled out in K-12 schools. At this school, for a 45 minute period each day, students from K-12 have a “happiness” period, which will look different depending on the age level. But for all students, the goal is to help to encourage physical and emotional well being. If our visit today was any indication of the program’s success, it is clearly going well! The students in their classes were engaged and attentive and eager to participate. Many of the students wanted to have one-on-one conversations with us and individually asked us really thoughtful questions about schooling in the U.S., our thoughts about their school, and what we will take away from the experience. Their poise and comfort with engaging with adults really impressed us. Beyond the personal interactions, the school put on an impressive assembly where students danced, sang, performed a really incisive pantomime about climate change and water conservation, and asked us really inquisitive questions in front of dozens of their peers and teachers. The questions revealed a lot about their perceptions of the U.S. — namely a very tough and powerful question about what we and our schools are doing about “gun culture” in the United States in light of school shootings. Clearly, they’re paying attention to the world beyond their own personal realities and are incredibly curious to know more about issues we face in our country. The visit also made a lot of us ponder questions around student engagement (How/why is it so high in this school and what can we do in our classrooms and schools to encourage this on a broader scale?), school pride (How can we motivate our schools/students to tap into what makes our schools special and important, especially since we believe that our schools share some of the same goals as their school? These kids are tremendously proud to attend a school that is pushing them to succeed in multiple forms regardless of social markers. CRLS pushes for this, too but isn’t successfully reaching all of its students. What can we learn from the leaders at this school?), and encouraging our students to be healthy and successful in body and in mind (Would adopting the language Delhi schools use help? How can we more effectively and systematically integrate the ideas that fuel the “Happiness Curriculum” in our schools?) I will visit many more classrooms and schools next week during my week in Pune and hope to explore these and other questions in more depth.

This morning we left at 4:30AM to drive to Rajesh’s (our group leader’s) family village, Pachayara, which is about a 45 minute drive from Delhi. We will spend most of our time in India in urban areas, so Rajesh thought our first full day here should begin in a rural setting so we could get a view of life beyond the cities. The 3+ hours we spent in Pachayara were special. Despite all of us operating on too few hours of sleep, we were all blown away by the hospitality of everyone we met in the village. In a few short hours I learned how to make chapati (or studied carefully how someone else made it), visited a local Hindu temple, dined on delicious snacks, sweets, and fresh milk steamed to perfection, and learned about how self sustaining many of the local farming methods are. Most memorable, though, were the truly wonderful people we met. As our leaders last night noted in our cultural introduction session, an important value in India is the concept that “guest is God”, or Atithi Devo Bhava in Sanskrit, and I think all of us can vouch for how much love we felt here. Our hosts were clearly experts at welcoming outsiders, and while I didn’t take literal notes at the time on how to improve my own hosting skills, upon reflection I can now offer up a list of takeaways as a result of being on the receiving end of this hospitality. The next time I host a group of strangers in my home, namely those from another country, I will be sure to: 1) offer food and drink frequently, and maybe don’t take no for an answer because I know my food is so good they’d be crazy not to try it, 2) introduce myself to everyone and ask questions to get to know them better even if I’m not 100% fluent in their language–making the effort is generous of spirit and time and helps people connect, even if it’s hard at first, 3) take lots of group selfies because it says to guests, “You’re special and this is fun, right?!”, 4) show off aspects of my home and life that I think my guests would be interested in and allow them to participate in activities that may be unfamiliar to them — it helps to encourage cross cultural and personal connections, and 5) make sure there are kids around because they are often the most fearless and fun, have the fewest inhibitions, and help to bring positive energy to the party.

This evening we had the honor of visiting a beautiful Sikh temple in Delhi. One of our first cultural site visits, we toured the worship space, visited the museum that detailed the history of the Sikh religion from its founding to today, and then helped make dinner and ate together in the Langar (the community kitchen in the temple). While I knew a bit about Sikhism, mainly in the context of India’s colonial history, I did not know a ton about its spiritual tenants or general beliefs about how the religion operates and is situated in society more broadly. I have a LOT more reading to do, but I was struck by the warm embrace Sikhism offers to all people (both to the temple and in general). What our guide, the museum literature, and the exhibits emphasized repeatedly was the deep seated Sikh belief in egalitarianism for all, regardless of societally-imposed divisions. Women AND men were expected to cover their heads upon entering sacred space, everyone worshiped together, and all visitors and worshipers who ate, did so together on the floor, regardless of class, caste, or other distinctions. Throughout Sikh history in the Indian subcontinent, you see Gurus who fought for the belief that all people, regardless of who or what they worship, are deserving of dignity and respect. The museum exhibits that highlight the lengths to which Gurus went to protect these rights not only for Sikh believers, but others as well, were particularly moving. It was striking to me the degree of selflessness in the pursuit of these values. I was humbled and moved by the whole experience here and look forward to thinking more about how to incorporate what I learned into my teaching of religion and religious literacy with my students.