I remember this time when posh girls I used to teach would roll their eyes every time I spoke about Elena Ferrante in class. It made me wonder if I should talk less about the writers I love and more about writers that were dead.
But my way was the only way I knew how to teach which was to take my fears, curiosities, love, and immense love into the classroom with me. It was only after I realised that rolling eyes was their standard response to anything that I learnt to laugh about it.
It taught me that teaching does come from a position of fandom. Franny’s exquisite writing captures this sentiment more efficiently than anything else can. Read her essay here. It’s a testimony to what’s possible when we open our minds a little more and remove ourselves from our heads when we read.
It reminds me that what we do in the classrooms must continue – despite eye rolls, the great shakespearean sighs of boy babies, and general intellectual/political snobbery.
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In other news, fother was reading Udayavani and laughing loudly this morning. It was a news article about a young boy in Patna who went to write an exam and fainted. Why did he faint? He found out that he was the only boy in the exam hall with 500 girls. When he regained consciousness, he had also developed high fever and shivers it seems. Fother, mother, and I sat together on their bed and laughed.
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I must remember to write about the Social Justice Film Festival we organised last week. Watched some super documentaries and now I have a slow itch to make one small kutti video.
Speaking of which, Meta prep is in full swing. My baady is sometimes dying sometimes ok sometimes alive. Last evening we made reels for JAM promos. Just A Minute is fun to watch and now perhaps funner to play. I made only 11 seconds but I laughed a lot.
All my stoods are mad. Reels will be available here.
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Rum Lola Rum 