Melani Kekulawala is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied Biomolecular Science and Linguistics with a minor in Community Action and Social Change. She will be returning to the University of Michigan this fall to pursue a Masters in Public Health focusing on Health Behavior and Health Informatics. Her focus has been on women’s health both in America and Sri Lanka, and she hopes to one day become a doctor. You can watch Melani read the first paragraph of her dispatch by clicking here.
Becoming Trees of our Communities
Charles Hugo was a wonderful experience for me. We were warmly welcomed by Shavani Naidoo, one of the primary school teachers, who I found to be immediately inspirational and the school principle. I immediately fell in love with all the children. They were innocent, cute, humble, and funny.
This is the first time that I have taught the module to children. I soon realized that teaching the module to children was very different than teaching to adults. We changed the module in many ways that allowed for more movement and interaction in order to keep their attention. For example, we pretended to drive around, picking up different yummy foods to mimic taxi cabs, or red blood cells. Moreover, we would act out being “the big bad germ” and playfully push against the children who we asked to be the soldiers (i.e the white blood cells). I felt like I was more energetic and enthusiastic when teaching the children because I was nervous that I would loose their attention, especially when we were presenting the module to them for the third or fourth time. The children learned the module extremely quickly after we worked with them individually for some time, and added several of their own actions. I noticed that the children were attached to different parts of the module and I wondered if their experiences played a large role in how they explained the behavioral parts of the module.
Sitting with the children during lunch was my favorite part of the day. The flood of kids through the door, scrambling to do their homework, eat, and play- sometimes all at once- made me chuckle and think about my own middle school experience. At lunch, I met several new faces as it seemed that everyone there desired to meet us and give us hugs.
These amazing children seem to be the product of amazing teachers. I walked passed a classroom and saw one of the math teachers literally running from one end of the room to the other, possibly to explain a mathematical principle. Regardless of what he was trying to do, he had fully captured the eyes and attention of all his students. The person who had created the largest impression on my heart at Charles Hugo was Shavani. Listening to her speak about “her kids” was a joy; I could feel the amount of love and care she had for her students. I listened to her tell her students several times that they were the most important part of the school and that they were the reason that she had a job which she loved. In my experience, even this simple statement is rarely said to students. Shavani said that she thought of herself as a tree- she planted her roots, learned about the needs of the school, and grew branches and leaves in order to provide shade for the children. I think she inspired us all to be the “trees” of our communities.
