Grade 6 Excursion

The third term presents itself as the excursion term at school. All through January and mid February, children across grades travel to different places, the point of these trips being that it exposes the children to realities different than their own. 

The children of grade 6 visited Infinite Soul Farm and Artist Retreat, run by artist couple Kirtana Kumar and Konarak Reddy. Over the course of their four day trip, the children did a lot of theatre, devising their own pieces with the help of the facilitators. The themes that loomed large in the rehearsal room were those of bullying, exclusion and loneliness. Kirtana and — introduced a series of exercises through which the children could explore ideas around this theme. 

For instance, she gave the children a prompt - ‘I feel lonely when –.’ Each child added a phrase to this prompt and this resulted in a 38 line chorus, each beginning with ‘I feel lonely when –.’ Here is a small excerpt:

I feel lonely when I am not around pets and animals. 

I feel lonely when my friends don’t want to sit with me. 

I feel lonely when there is no one at home because my parents are busy working. 

This was accompanied by a walking exercise, which had its own set of prompts. For instance, one child desperately tries to make eye contact with the others while the rest ignore her/him. This creation of material, both physical and textual, allowed for what was truly living with the children to emerge. The children brought back these ideas with them and are currently working on a theatre piece that reflects the themes they engaged with during their excursion, but that is another blog post altogether. For now, here is a poem written by a student from grade 6 on the ideas of bullying and exclusion - the true power of art from deepest recesses of a sixth grader. 

            I feel that i am judged about how I'm looking

but no one knows the pain of that

i have been teased about how I look

but I look good for myself.

i have been called names

but no one knows the pain of that.

if someone goes through what I go through,

they won't be able to manage the pain of that.

i don't go and tell the adults about this,

because I don't want my friends to be caught.

but I ask, are they my friends when they never act like one?