Deep Thoughts on Homework by James and Ashram


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Farmhouse Retreat

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My class on Education Policy and Decentralisation took a field trip to a village. One of the students, Sanjeet, was kind enough to offer his farmhouse for all of us to stay at the night before. Sanjeet has an amazing story which I will save for another post. Briefly though, for 20 years or so he worked in the corporate world and decided to leave his job and enter in the MA program at Azim Premji University. His family runs a school in a village outside Bangalore and he wanted to learn more about education in India and put his talents to good use in the social sector. There was about 15 of us including my Professor, Dr. Paik. This class is more like a community and how they interact with each other, with me, and our Professor is a case study in itself. Right from day 1 of the class, I felt the warmth, kindness, and enthusiasm from each one of them. The farmhouse adventure is a testament to their true generosity and compassion. We left the campus around 5:30pm on this bus th...
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Assimilate or Salad Bowl?

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Many of you are familiar with the debate as to whether people from another country should assimilate to the place they are living or continue with their own habits from home creating a salad bowl--different vegetables in the same bowl--. John and I had a very rich discussion about whether we are trying to assimilate or retain some of our "American" habits. Through the course of our day, we were able to come to some conclusions about our choices as we "live" in India for 6 months. This morning I wanted to make pancakes for JJ and Ash, something we do on Saturdays or Sundays when we have time in the States. Finding all purpose flour is not easy in India. We could have bought King Arthur flour on Amazon India for $84 (I am not joking) (btw Amazon India has 1 day delivery and Prime is only $15) We opted for the Indian version of all purpose flour entitled Self Raising Superfine Flour (less than $1) .   And I ventured into making pancakes with John's guidance of...
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My Fulbright Conference Panel Presentation

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Educators on Fulbrights really know how to present and make it interactive. Each one of us had a unique way of presenting that was engaging more so than any other panel presentation I attended. All of the other panel presenters, got up spoke about their presentation and used the 15 minutes to run through a powerpoint. Ok not all, but most. And then there was the panel I was on. Truth be told, I thought I was going to be the show stopper with my interactive plan for 15 minutes, but I was wrong. Others on the panel were interactive as well. I am not just saying this because it was the panel I was on, it truly was great to see all the different interactive styles and to know that there are many educators like myself who care deeply about engaging students in their education. I wish that our panel could have met for 30-40 minutes before our presentation and worked together to come up with a unified workshop that explored all of our projects. The presenters on my panel were...
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