The initial idea came to me when we had dinner in a Polish restaurant with Chris's friend Aaron. As we walked toward the restaurant, Aaron told me about these scrolls he had seen in India and how the artists who made them wrote songs, then painted scrolls to illustrate the songs, then traveled from village to village singing and showing the scrolls. My research based on that conversation led me to the Patua of West Bengal. Looking around in the region and south, I found the Kondh tribe in Orissa, and I was introduced to the Bhopa of Rajastan by an article by William Dalrymple in the New Yorker last fall.
FELLOWSHIP RATIONALE AND PURPOSE:
As an eleventh grade English teacher, I trade in stories. Be it poems, short fiction, novels, plays or non-fiction, my students read about the world they live in and worlds they may never see. In response to our reading, traditional academic writing is one means by which my students present arguments about the ideas they see. But I also challenge students to craft their own creative work in response to what they encounter in reading. My students have written dramatic monologues, poetry, short-fiction and personal memoir for such assignments, and, because the study of film runs through my school’s curriculum, they also write and produce their own short films.
For my students, every step of the creative process can raise daunting questions such as: What story should I tell? How do I tell it? When is it done? Why does this matter? My students struggle to select a story from their experiences for these assignments, and also, in telling a story, they struggle to select details that will best bring it to life. They don’t yet know how to share what they observe in the world around them and they don’t yet see value in documenting their personal histories, or that such histories hold a community together.
Further challenges arise, particularly with film projects, because my students are so excited to get a camera in their hands, to get their friends into their places and to shoot a movie. These budding filmmakers often rush the difficult process of crafting a story, writing a script and planning a shoot through storyboarding. They are suspicious of the notion that a well-developed script and a well-planned shoot make for a better film, and they do not foresee the issues that will arise in filming and editing because of deficits in the early stages of creating a film.
To address these issues in my own teaching and in my students’ learning, I want to design a project that calls upon my students to tell their own stories on film, that also strengthens their sense of personal history, their sense of the value of storytelling in other cultures, their appreciation for the process of storytelling and the crafting of a story.
This summer, I want to travel to India to study and film the stories and storytelling of three groups: the Patua of West Bengal, the Kondh tribe in the neighboring state of Orissa and the Bhopa of Rajasthan. In different ways, each of these groups lives by the tradition of telling stories. I want to research these groups and their customs to help my students understand that the stories they know and tell about their own lives, families, communities and history are a part of the greater tradition of global story telling. I want my students to examine the unique sense of time and process that yields a very personal and panoramic view of a specific cultural history, first as observers of the Patua, Kondh and Bhopa, and, finally, as artists themselves.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The Patua’s Creed
To speak the truth is our vow.
Our work will be to establish the truth.
We shall follow the path trodden by great men and women.
We shall serve the poor and downtrodden.
That will be our religion.
With the help of FFT I would like to travel to India for three weeks to study the stories and scrolls of the Patua of West Bengal, the life and songs of the Kondh tribe of Orissa and, finally, the epic poems of the Bhopa of Rajasthan. To share this experience with the school community I plan to film and photograph the communities I visit, conduct interviews and keep a journal, as well as work with a translator to transfer the songs and conversations I will be having in Bengali to English. I will spend the rest of the summer editing my footage into a short film that explores the following key questions:
What is the process of crafting a story?
What makes a story important?
What happens to a culture when its stories are forgotten?
The journal I will keep of my observations and experiences in India will provide the text for a website to be used by students and the school community as we undertake this unit of study in the classroom.
I plan to begin my investigation in Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal. Here I will work with the Crafts Council of West Bengal (http://www.craftsbengal.org/ab_us.html), an organization whose main aim is to revive, preserve and support declining indigenous knowledge, resources and skills, and to ensure the continuity of cultural traditions.
With the council’s help I will begin my research into the practices and challenges of groups whose culture is clearly dependant on the sharing of stories, starting with the Patua.
The Patua compose stories as songs, paint them in storyboards on handmade scrolls called Pat, then set them to music. They sing about traditional tales from mythology as well as contemporary events, improvising new lyrics for rural audiences. As traveling showmen they are complete artists: painters, scriptwriters, singers, performers, all in one, who document not only the history that has been passed down to them but also the world they live in today. As I have never traveled to India and do not speak Bengali, the council has also agreed to help me secure a guide/translator to assist me in traveling to the village of Naya, where the largest number of Patua live, and where I will interview and film them making and presenting their songs and scrolls.
What is the process of crafting a story?
Upon arriving in the small West Bengal village of Naya, I will film and photograph the Patua, and document their process of conceiving a story, writing a song and painting the Patachitra scroll that brings it to life. The subjects of these songs and scrolls vary. Some are sacred, for example relaying the exploits of Ravana, the ten-headed demon who kidnaps Rama’s wife Sita in the epic Ramayana. Some scrolls recount current events and issues in India, such as conflict in Kashmir, the death of Mother Theresa, the Tsunami, warning about AIDS prevention and encouraging literacy. There are even scrolls commenting on world events, like the attack on the World Trade Center and the war in Afghanistan, with songs about George W. Bush. And some are more personal to the life of the Patua, such as “The Patua’s Creed”, quoted above. The Patua essentially serve as historians, newscasters, moral commentators and plain old entertainers. I am interested in learning how the Patuas are inspired to bring a story to life and the painstaking process by which they do this.
What makes a story important?
From West Bengal, I plan to travel to Bhubaneswar in Orissa, where I will meet up with Kar Yugabrata who runs a tour company, HeritageTours (www.heritagetoursorissa.com), and was recommended to me as a reputable guide. From Bhubaneswar we will travel to Bissamcuttack and other points to witness the Rath Yatra festival and meet the Dunguria Kondh tribe. The Kondh are an indigenous tribal group of India who practice elaborate birth, marriage and death rituals. They compose their own songs on love, marriage ceremony, harvesting and nature and use this oral tradition to school each generation in the ways of their culture. For example, young women in the tribe are placed in what is essentially a maiden’s dormitory. In the dormitory, the maiden girls are trained about the tribe’s norms, values and taboos by a senior, often married, women who is the leader of the dormitory. The dormitory is the source of mostly cultural education orally transmitted for learning folklore, riddles, proverbs, legends, myths and songs. Young women stay there until they attain marriageable age and have acquired all the skills and knowledge that are expected from a good ideal wife/woman in their society. With the Kondh particularly, I am interested in discovering how the stories they tell are the fibers that weave together their daily lives, practices and traditions.
What happens to a culture when its stories are forgotten?
My final stop will be in the city of Jaipur and its surrounding area in the western state Rajasthan. There I will find the Bhopa, a nomadic community of storytellers who are considered to be priest singers, sometimes even credited with shamanistic powers. The Bhopas recite the great epics, some of them many thousands of stanzas long, from memory. They sing in front of an unfurled phad, a large, painted, rectangular canvas panel that depicts the life story of the fighter hero Pabuli and the neo-Hindu incarnation of Vishnu, Dev Narayan of Rajasthan. Unlike the Patua, the Bhopa themselves do not create their visual story aid. Rather, the phad is passed down from generation to generation, as are the long poems that the Bhopa commit to memory. The phad panels are rolled and carried around by the Bhopa and in this way are almost considered traveling temples. While the Patua carry on an old tradition, they often tell stories that deal with modern day life. The Bhopa, on the other hand, tell only the great epics, many of which have not been written down, and some of which have been lost with the passing of each generation of storytellers. Those stories that persist are remarkably unchanged, although it seems that as literacy among the Bhopa increases, their memory decreases. Thus progress has put the rich tradition of Bhopa in serious jeopardy. Finally, in the process of learning the history of how and why stories are important to these groups, I would like to also begin to assess what is lost if these stories and traditions die.
TEACHER GROWTH AND LEARNING:
Guiding Questions:
What is the process of crafting a story?
What makes a story important?
What happens when the stories of a culture are forgotten?
Stories and storytellers have always enchanted me. This is what propelled me into my life as an English teacher. I feel I have come to know the world and myself through stories. At the same time, while stories are all around us, I know as a teacher that telling them can be a difficult task. The first obstacle is perhaps deciding that a story deserves to be told. I hope that my research will illustrate that the importance of a story is not in its grandness or urgency, but in its ability to communicate and bring people together.
The next obstacle is having the commitment to develop a story. By observing storytellers for whom telling a story is a vocation, I’m hoping to gain insight for my instruction of writing beyond suggesting multiple drafts and added details to my students. I want to understand the crafting and telling of a story as an experience. I hope during my project to absorb the pacing of the Patua as they draft their songs and paint their scrolls; I hope to absorb the structure of the Kondh as they weave stories and traditions into every passage of daily life; I hope to absorb the discipline of the Bhopa as they memorize texts six times the length of the bible, twenty lines at a time. Further, in experiencing the stories of a culture so removed from the western tradition of storytelling I have always known, I hope to gain another point of reference to draw upon as a teacher.
Finally, receiving this grant from FFT will allow me to look closely at what happens to a country whose traditions are so threatened by the modern world we live in. What happens when a community no longer supports the artists who protect its history? I want observe this culture so rich in stories and see the risk of letting stories slip away to fuel my own passion as an English teacher and as a catalyst to spark my students to consider the value of their own personal histories.
STUDENT GROWTH AND LEARNING:
Guiding Questions:
What is the process of crafting a story?
What makes a story important?
What happens when the stories of a culture are forgotten?
I hope to show my eleventh grade English class the value of stories, not only as something we read to prepare for state exams and assessments or to hone our skills of analysis, but as a way to connect with people and experiences. To do this, the same questions that will guide my own inquiry will guide my students as they experience the rich story telling traditions of India and approach their own culminating project: To actively engage in the creative process to make a short film that tells a story that should not go untold.
By sharing my observations of India, I want to illustrate to my students that the stories they know and tell about their own lives, families, communities and history are a part of the greater tradition of global story telling. Hopefully the insight I gain as a result of this project, will help my students see that while the means of sharing information may evolve, the compulsion and necessity for doing so is ageless.
While addressing the value of telling stories, I want my students to gain a window into the process of taking a story and making an experience out of it. In previous film projects, students have become so caught up in learning the language of film, the how-to’s of camera handling and the basic steps of editing, that they have glossed over the first initial steps of conceiving a compelling story, scripting it an a well-thought out way, and carefully planning the film they will make through storyboarding. This deficit in their process is one of the first things that drew me to the Patua and their scrolls. In many ways the stories, songs and scrolls of the Patua mirror the first, important steps of the filmmaking process. As such, it is my hope that examining the life and work of the Patua will inform my own students in their scripting and planning process.
Finally, in asking students to select and invest themselves in sharing stories of their own, I hope that their experience of studying the endangered storytelling traditions of India will help them to see the importance of this process. In this way they might see that it is stories that are the fibers that hold their lives, experiences and communities together.
BENEFITS TO SCHOOL COMMUNITY:
My project will benefit the school community in three ways. First, prior to leaving I will meet with other teachers in my school to identify ways in which my research in India could support learning across content areas. In this way, I may learn about specific questions I should ask or places I could document that might assist other teachers in their instruction.
Second, upon my return, I will edit the film of my project and make it available to the school community on a website that chronicles my trip and my findings. Further, upon completion of my students’ film projects, I will work with the administration and student government of my school to invite the community to a screening of our work and a cultural celebration of story.
Finally, should I receive funding from FFT for the project I have described, I expect my experience to create a dialogue among teachers about more innovative ways to instruct and engage students.
DOCUMENTATION OF LEARNING:
Drawing from the methods of the research I have studied in planning my project, I will document my learning and experience in India through journals, photographs, film and interviews with Indians. With their permission, interview subjects will include the Patua, Kondh, and Bhopa, representatives of the Crafts Council of West Bengal, my guides and translators, as well as people I encounter in my travels. Upon my return, I hope to edit the footage I have captured to create a film that chronicles my project and poses the three questions that I have set forth in this proposal:
What is the process of crafting a story?
What makes a story important?
What happens when the stories of a culture are forgotten?
This film will be posted to a website I will create to share my experience through photos, journal entries and web links.
Further documentation of learning will be provided by student film projects created in response to the same three questions listed above. These films as well as mine will be presented in a screening for the school and community.
BUDGET NARRATIVE:
The total projected budget for my project is $5,108 based largely on Internet research. To document the Patua, Kondh and Bhopa, I anticipate the trip will take about three weeks. This allows time with each group and time to travel between the three locations they live in. I anticipate that the trip will take place during the month of July, leaving August to edit the footage I’ve captured into a film and to put the finishing touches on the unit I will undertake with my students.
The bulk of my budget will go toward round trip airfare to Kolkata, which I estimate will cost roughly $2,000.
I have budgeted $50 a night for 21 nights of lodging, for a total of $1,050 and $25 dollars a day for 22 days of meals, for a total of $550.
I will travel between cities by train and bus and will buy a 21-day Indrail Pass for $198.00.
Based on research and estimates from the Craft Council of West Bengal and HeritageTours Orissa that guides will cost about $40-50 a day, I am budgeting $600 for these services.
I am budgeting $200 for incidental bus and taxi transportation.
A travel visa will cost $60 and necessary immunizations will cost $350.
I am budgeting $100 dollars for mini-dv tapes to document my trip.
CURRICULUM UNIT:
Learning To Sing Our Songs
Essential Questions:
What is the process of crafting a story?
What makes a story important?
What happens when the stories of a culture are forgotten?
New York State ELA Standard #4
Language for Social Interaction: Students will listen, speak, read, and write for social interaction. Students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language for effective social communication with a wide variety of people. As readers and listeners, they will use the social communications of others to enrich their understanding of people and their views.
In this unit we will discover the oral traditions of India by looking closely at three distinct groups of storytellers: The Patua of West Bengal, the Kondh of Orissa and the Bhopa of Rajasthan. Each group occupies a distinctly different niche in India’s caste system and tells its unique stories in its own way. As we look at each group, students will learn why they tell the stories they do and how they craft their stories into an experience for the audience. Finally students will consider the consequences of the challenges that these storytellers face and whether or not a traditional culture can continue to exist in a modern world.
In response to their learning, students will work collaboratively in groups to select and record their own significant stories, stories that they do not want to see forgotten, to be used as the voiceover for a short film not to exceed three minutes in length.
The stories students select must be somehow relate to the their lives, but they may not necessarily be the students’ stories to tell. For example, a piece for the project might be a parent’s narration of the day their child was born or a brother’s narration of walking to school with his sister everyday. It might be someone’s personal observations of a historical event, like the blackout of 2003 or the reports of Hurricane Katrina.
Once a story has been chosen, students must carefully develop it as a script and then record the narrator reading it. In doing this, students should consider the storytelling traditions we have studied and how the groups they have learned about develop a story. Once students have scripted a voiceover track, they must devise and storyboard a short film to support the voiceover. The film may have actors that act out the story but have no dialogue or may be a series of shots and images that support the filmmaker’s vision. After planning the scenes of the film, students will cast, shoot, record and edit.
Final projects will be graded on: story development, visual impact, technical artistry, and collaboration. Students will also be required to submit a series of written journals responding to the experience of learning about the oral traditions of India and how their learning connects to their own lives as storytellers.
Our final projects will be presented to the school community and a screening/cultural festival that celebrates the richness of the culture of India and what we have learned from its traditions.
SHARING CURRICULUM:
Upon my return, I will edit the film of my project and make it available to the school community on a website that chronicles my trip and my findings. Further, upon completion of my students’ film projects, I will work with the administration and student government of my school to invite the school and community to a screening of our work and a cultural celebration of India and its rich history of storytelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment