Musings on environment education programme ~ 1.

Interactions with Students.

Taking a break from the traps and snares of the last few days and coming back to the programme on conservation education and awareness that has had me involved and invigorated over the past months I share some of the experiences over interactions in course of the programme.

While talking to, or rather, interacting with students I realized that when putting across a novel idea or concept or even a name of a wildlife species comparisons are a great helping hand. While talking of serow (Naemorhedus sumatraensis), the state animal, we discussed how its ears resembled that of a donkey while its body was larger than that of a goad (kel). While discussing the same module “Mizoram State Wildlife” where we talked of National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Important Bird Areas, State Bird & State Animal with a youth association at Phura, to put across the concept of state bird and state animal as being species that were relatively more charismatic than other species, we discussed how select political leaders were more charismatic than their counterparts!

In tune with this during interactions with the youth association, focusing on National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, as a part of the very module mentioned above, to share with the participants that these were not necessarily “large areas of forests away from towns and full of wild animals” we gave examples with photographs making attempts to restrict the examples to the “seven sisters” so as to enable the participants to relate better to the examples. We talked of the Nokrek National Park (West Garo Hills ~ Meghalaya) that has primarily been created to preserve the citrus species occurring in wild in the landscape and the Pitcher Plant Sanctuary (South Garo Hills ~ Meghalaya) that is less than 1 sq km in area and has been created with a view to protect primarily one species – the pitcher plant (Nepenthis khasiana).

Another major issue during these interactions has been pace. Couple of months down the line we realized that pace of our “implementing” modules with students needs to vary depending on factors ranging from the location of school (a remotely located school in an small village was different from the Don Bosco School at district headquarters) to the familiarity of the topic to the students (Palak lake of the myths and folklores was different from the Palak lake that was an Important Bird Area). At Kaisih (near Phura) during interactions on the module “Wildlife in Saiha” during the initial 15 minutes I discovered (not without sadness) new levels of lack of interest with only 1 student out of 14 coming up with any kind of responses! We took an unplanned “water break”. As the students returned we began to discuss issues on their village that they possessed proficiency on and got them talking and involved and then got them one by one to read the slides that we had prepared.

On similar lines during a session on the module “Hoolock Gibbons” at Donbosco School Saiha I figured in the initial stages that on account of our familiarity with the topic we were rushing away without forging the desired level of connect with the students (read failing in our efforts). Changing gears we slowed down the pace by talking one after another in Mizo and English in lieu of only one language ~ Mizo and also got on to lengthier interactions on local names of wild species by asking students to come and write the respective names in Mizo, Mara or Lai on the board.

These and such other adaptations I understand have had significant role in our programme (and with the programme we as individuals) evolving over the last year.

I shall be glad to receive suggestions on further names in languages native to Mizoram as also to discuss the learning from and short comings of our programme ~ nimesh.ved@gmail.com or 91 94361 56458.