The students become the masters...
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The students become the masters...

A bunch of Gurgaon teenagers decided to do something refreshingly different during the summer break — teach.

The students become the masters...

As the holiday season sets in, a bunch of teenagers from Gurgaon decided to do something refreshingly different during the summer break. No foreign trips. No lazing about in bed till noon. No month-long visit to grandma either! Instead, Sukanya Deb (Belvedere Park, DLF Phase 3), Mriggya Varma (Sushant Lok), Mridini Sahdev (The Belaire Condominiums, DLF Phase 5), Mansi Kankan (DLF Phase 2) and Aaryan Dhingra (Westend Heights, DLF Phase 5) have been spending their morning hours teaching spoken English to students of Class XI and XII at the Vidya School, DLF, Phase 3 – an endeavour to educate and empower the less privileged.  

What’s interesting about the classes is the fun element that cleverly weaves CBSE English core concepts into debates, group discussions, chats, quizzes, comprehensions and write-ups. Take for example the class Aaryan and Mansi had with the class XI on goal setting, where students vocalised their hobbies and goals in English sitting casually on the classroom floor, while “Sanjana crooned a romantic Bollywood number for us, and Vicky Thakur discussed his penchant for Versace boots,” smiles Aaryan, clearly enjoying his stint at Vidya. 

A Class XII group selfie

Sukanya, Mriggya and Mridini, who interacted with the class XII students, got a chance to share their life experiences with them in one of the classes based on inspirational teenage stories straight out of the Chicken Soup series. “Like my feelings at the time I joined the University of Buckingham in England as a wide-eyed 16-year-old, just out of Sriram School,” says Deb, “or my reasons for choosing to pursue Art History for higher studies.” Ananya Yadav from Lotus Valley School and Mriggya Varma from DPS, also talked about the struggles in their lives and how they cope with real life situations as teens on the threshold of opportunities. “An exercise on similar lines was given to the eleventhers, where they were asked to come up with 2-minute skits on various topics such as a regular day in Gurgaon and a king with bizarre demands,” Vidya School student Sunaina tells City Spidey.

Group song at the Vidya's Got Talent show

Among all this, however, the inevitable “daily word bank, including words such as discrimination, liberty, gender equality, stereotypes and essay, Q&A, sentence formation and comprehension made sure the students brushed up their academics as well,” explains Nidhi Kankan from DLF Phase 2, Prerna Oberoi from Vidya School and Anna Raheja from Magnolias, the coordinators of the pilot project to “let students from various English-medium schools of Gurgaon sit with students of Vidya School and share knowledge.”

Naturally, the all round youthful exuberance was palpable at the “Vidya’s Got Talent” variety show that was held on June 15 at the Khula Rang Manch where Sunil shared jokes, Anisha and Richa quizzed the audience, Sachin made funny eye-brow faces, Prashant sang Arijit Singh’s Muskurane, Manish hip-hopped and just for kicks, 5 of the boys decided to have a “push-ups” competition much to the amusement of the rapt audience.

 

Sonia with her poem

The event that stole the show, however, was a heart-warming poem by Sonia, titled English Classes, ending on a beautiful note –

…. these days I will never forget

Where I fought with my shyness

And showed them what I can do

For the English classes, thank you.”

A sentiment echoed by each and every Gurgaoniite involved in the unique summer project!