The Side-Effects of Research

This is a story that began in July 2016, when Dr. Balachandran came to conduct a session on how children can do research in Geography. Read more about it in our earlier post, ‘The joy of research’.

I clearly remember Mahima (a student) standing up in the introductory session and saying, “I have a topic, I care about but even if do the research, what will happen? How can I alone change the garbage situation in my area?” Similar sentiments could be sensed on many faces in the room. I remember telling these 9^th graders that if they are passionate about solving these issues, they would definitely succeed in making a change. Like the thousand things that we speak of and hope for, but move on, I moved on; fortunately, Mahima and her friends didn’t.

In the International Geography Youth Summit (IGYS), a total of 9 students presented their primary research. They had gone and studied people’s belief systems regarding the issue and also how people thought it affected them. They spoke to experts to find out their opinions on the situation and what can be done about it. They also managed to inspire the community in their own way to act on the situation. All these groups received huge appreciation and applause from the panelists for their honest efforts and passion.

But the story didn’t end there. The exciting part, what I call as the side-effects of research, is here.

These students continue to work on their respective research topics even today. Mahima and her team continue to practice waste segregation at home and try to recycle as many things as possible – keeps them creatively happy as well. The team that studied the ‘drainage system’ have taken it a step ahead by spreading awareness among community members. Together, these students convinced the school management to try out methods of reducing and managing waste at their own school. After already impacting many families and inspiring a few more, Mahima and her friends now believe that they have the power and will to positively impact their surroundings. I see many strong leaders in the making.

The whole experience of doing the research and participating in IGYS has had many such interesting side-effects. The confidence level of these students has shot up immensely; they show initiative; the clear edge these students had over their classmates in presentation skills became evident during several classroom presentations- they knew exactly how many slides to use, how to engage the audience, how to use effective body language etc. They volunteered to mentor the next batch of students for the IGYS projects. Such amazing enthusiasm… and if one thinks about it, this life-changing journey began with a request to think beyond textbooks and to do original research.

One simple looking exercise had such long lasting impact. What else could be more motivating..!

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Shikha Bohra, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change. 

The Joy of Research

‘Yesterday, my view of geography and how to teach it changed. It is actually so interesting and relevant every day.’ 

Imagine the goose-bumps you would get when a social sciences teacher comes up to tell you this..! When a teacher’s view of the subject improvises, the impact can be seen on literally hundreds of students in the years to come. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Chandra Shekhar Balachandran (Founder & Director, TIGS) for conducting a workshop on ‘How to Conduct Research in Geography’ at one of our partner schools. Though the target audience for the workshop was the students and the idea was to present them with the opportunity of “International Geography Youth Summit” (IGYS), this is the mindset shift that happened in one of the four teachers, who attended. 

Moving on to the students now, during the workshop itself, I witnessed the passion for research shine into students’ eyes. They were seeing what they could do, the things they could find; more importantly it was one of the rare occasions when they were told to put efforts in things that really mattered to them. I clearly remember Sai Mahima from that day and how she spoke about the problem of garbage in her community. She saw it everywhere, she said. She actually went ahead to think if her research could create an impact.  When 15 year olds of a community start thinking this way, something good is bound to happen there.

A few days later, students started coming to me with the general problem of being unable to ‘choose their topics’. These extremely bright and interested students were genuinely struggling with choosing what they wanted to study. I feel, in our Indian Education System, the liberty to choose comes too late. Even when it comes, the impact of the decision is usually huge due to a plethora of ‘reasons’ like the economic condition etc. and hence, students don’t end up being the completely independent decision makers. Hence, it wasn’t exactly surprising when the students struggled at this point. We had a discussion and a round of elimination of topics with the teams and viola, there has been no looking back. 

One team has chosen to study the drainage system in their team mate’s community. There are open drains in Headmaster’s Layout and he faces frequent problems; another decided to study how an industry is interacting with the environment in the Bommasandra Industrial area and Sai Mahima’s group is obviously working on the effects that garbage has on the people in her community.

Each day these 9 students (from the 3 teams) come to me with new findings, struggles and ideas. Their resolve to conduct and find solutions to their research problems is intensifying with each passing day. Sometimes, their faces now reflect the ‘joy of finding things out’. After all, it is the insatiable curiosity that bells the learning cat. I feel extremely privileged to be able to witness this in these nine souls. As for the teacher, I can only imagine the magnitude of positive impact that she is now going to create for generations of students to come.

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Shikha Bohra, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change.