A young girl joins a new school and remains unfriendly with her classmates. The other students are unable to understand her behaviour and try various ways to befriend her. When it doesn’t work, they gift her a lamp telling her about its magical powers. She is asked to tell the lamp one good deed she does every day and at the end of 30 days a genie would appear to fulfil her wishes.
The girl changes her attitude and turns helpful towards others. But when the genie doesn’t appear, she is told by her classmates that it was only a story they made up. It does not anger the newcomer because she realises how many new friends she made in a month and how helping others made her feel good. And, ‘The Magical Lamp’ ensures a happy ending.
This could be a story of any classroom, only that we saw it being enacted on the big screen. “We actually had a student like that in our class and got the idea from her to write the script for a short film,” says Devika.V, a IX grader. She is one of the five members of a team that walked away with the first prize in a surprise contest at Adhyapana School, Madurai, as part of English Week celebrations.
Like this there were five other shortlisted films, all made by the middle and high school students. Each of them highlighted some social skills and values and brought out the creative innovator hidden inside each child. “We wanted to see what our children can do with what they know,” says Adhyapana’s Senior Principal, Aruna M.Visvessvar.
When the school curriculum is jampacked, why would a teacher want to add one more activity? “We are constantly trying to fill our children with knowledge instead of focussing on their innovation skills and the motivation to succeed,” says Aruna. “This fun-filled exercise was aimed at driving them to think out-of-the-box, teach them discipline and team work.”
So when the school reopened after the summer holidays, she sprang a surprise asking students of classes VI to XI to make short films on human values. If the children thought it was going to be only fun and no studies they were wrong. Instead they were given a schedule to be strictly followed so as not to compromise on their study time and as well finish the project within the given deadline of 40 days.
There was a ripple of enthusiasm among the students,” says Ms.Rajani Balasubramaniam, Principal and English teacher. Within two days of the announcement, 80 teams registered to produce their own films. The idea was to band the children together and they had complete freedom to choose their team members, conceive the story, write the script, act, direct, edit in whichever way they thought it best.
“It was a tremendous learning experience for them. They were encouraged to talk, write and plan, explore their imaginations and express emotions and relationships through words and visuals,” says Hilarie Balachandran, the senior Headmistress.
The skill and will of the children finally resulted in 71 films of five minutes duration each. After two rounds of selection, the top six were shortlisted.
“But every film,” says Rajani, “demonstrated the effort of the children and how their minds think and work.” “Each of them was compelling, provocative and inspiring and for judging we looked at the story line, vocabulary of the children, pronunciation and the values they chose to highlight.”
That the entire exercise would be converted into a competition was kept a secret till the end. Only last week, a chief guest was called to choose the best three from the shortlisted ones. That is when the excitement soared as the entire school sat together to first watch the six best films.
“It was a real surprise when we found our film “The Magic Lamp” in the shortlist, says Devika who wrote the story for her team. “We wanted to show that nobody is and should feel useless. And after winning we now realise if you work hard, you can be an achiever,” says Srishti Sinha. “This experience and motivation will always drive us in future,” adds her friend P.Lakshitha. G.Darshini points out how the story was built to show the transformation in a girl who from being very rude and brusque becomes helpful and friendly as her friends make her realise the importance of self-worth in helping others.
“People think that you can’t make an impact when you are young. But our film about friendship stole the hearts of all,” notes G.Vaishali.
In fact, even as the parents helped their children with outdoor shooting, narration and editing during the weekends, everybody involved gained a new perspective on their own education. The experiment yielded thought provoking results and demonstrated it doesn’t take much for the children to make a difference or change the world.
