Day Seven- Montessori Wall Mural Project

Day 7- July 13, 2010

Today was our first day at Al Ishraq without Aerian, who left last night to join her daughter who is graduating from Medical School. We were a little nervous of how we would get on without Fearless Aerian, but we ploughed forward as we had planned. As discussed with Aerian, we extended Sports Day for another day to include grades 3, 4 and 5. Just like yesterday, the buzz among the students and the teachers assisting was at an all time high. Mr. Farzan and Mr. Ansar were impressed that such simple activities could stir up so much excitement! As a result, we decided that we would organize a Sports Day for the little ones in Grades 1 & 2 tomorrow. Ideas are forming as we are writing this blog. Our Sports Day activities will undoubtedly involve the tires we saw lying around in the Assembly Hall…

We started a new project today, one that has been developing in our minds before Aerian left. Principal Rafeek has expressed dismay at their ‘Montessori School’ and has wanted to do something about the sad environment that surrounds these adorable kindergarten children. Luckily, in anticipation of organizing a school-wide project, we brought multiple paint colours from Colombo for a large mural project. Stars aligned, we were excited that our gift of paints to the Principal could be used to revv up the ‘Montessori’ section of the school. During a meeting with Principal Rafeek and the English teachers, we presented the idea of sectioning off the wall into 4 sections that would cover 4 different themes (the English teachers thought of using the English curriculum for themes). They are: Sri Lankan Beach/Underwater Life, Sri Lankan Animals (land and air), Environment (rainforest) and Family. In order to generate art ideas/items for these sections, we proposed a drawing competition for grades 8-11, where each student from each grade would draw mural items from the themes assigned to them. We only got drawings for Grades 8 & 9 today but we were really impressed with some of the drawings we saw. Principal Rafeek in particular was amazed- almost as if he couldn’t believe he had artists in his student body. It made sense considering the school has not had an art teacher at all this year.

For many reasons such as encouraging autonomy (from the likes of us!), independent creative thinking, community building etc… we requested a meeting of all of the teachers tomorrow to assemble a Montessori Wall Project Committee. It will be up to the Committee to select the winning student art, students who will paint on the wall and the management of the entire project. This is very exciting for us to fade out so early in a project.

Our last order of business today was to have a meeting with a carpenter who would quote the making of 2 classroom doors for the classrooms that we are fixing. The price seems a bit steep but when given the choice between 2 new doors or 2 more fans, Principal Rafeek quickly made the choice of 2 new doors. So, 2 new doors it will be and our budget will be exhausted.