Working in H-Learning Program - My Experience

I have been working in the Hybrid Learning Program since May-2015. I work in the English content development team which produces short videos teaching English, wherein children enact a scene and the conversation that follows is in English. From the perspective of a scriptwriter, the dialogues in those conversations are short, with the simplest form of the sentence being used. Had it not been for someone enacting them, they would probably seem lame when you just read them printed on a sheet of paper. This is where the best of my experiences are associated with – shooting those videos with children.

We shoot with children who are beneficiaries of our intervention. So you go to a village couple of days before the shooting begins, select children for the characters required in your different scenes, prep them up and rehearse. Call it “acting skills” or the children “improvising”, but the transition the children make from Day-1 of shooting to the last day, is palpable. On day-1 of shooting, when asked to walk, the character may just walk – as instructed. But on the last day, you ask them to walk, they walk, but the gait, the grace, the style - there is no missing it! It’s not we who taught them how to gracefully walk, but probably in all the TV shows and movies accessible to them, the children saw themselves playing a role. It’s amazing how children get influenced, respond, improve and refine themselves.

Work apart, in all those little breaks between shots and in those late evenings, you get to look around and see the lifestyle in a rural backdrop - the games the children play, improvised swing hung on every other tree – for a city bred guy in a constant race, the sheer pace of life in a rural setting is pretty humbling. Children there play way more games than urban children do. A common thumb rule - whether it is ‘kachhi imli’ or ‘kachha amrud’, it dare not be allowed to ripen! It is meant to be plucked and eaten – no second thoughts; and here we are worrying about pesticides!

Lastly, if anyone wants to know what a starry night literally is, all they have to do is look up!