Mizoram: A Valuable Experience
This pilot was our first trip to Mizoram and we were very excited. The people, the culture—it was all new to us. How little we know about our fellow Indians! We took the opportunity to understand as much as we could about the Mizo culture, people, and language.
Group discussion
We visited schools in Mizoram with two major objectives: to understand students and to pilot story-telling and case study activities. We played games and conducted fun activities to understand students. During the activities, we asked a series of questions to better understand the students. We learnt that a majority of students enjoy watching English and Korean movies, like English songs, love to read comics and magazines in Mizo, value friendship and aspire to careers in the police force, army, medicine, engineering and teaching. They find English, science and social science interesting.
Case study being explained
We piloted two activities, a story and a case study. At the first school, we saw that language was a barrier. To engage students, we had to translate the story from English to Mizo. Our Mizo translator (Lawm Zuali) translated the stories and soon enough, students were enjoying them.
Overall, it was a great experience. The best part was that the students asked us, “When will you be back?” We replied: Kaninhmulehthuaidawnnia (See you soon)!
(Sreehari Ravindranath, Consultant Value Education, CLIx ; Assistant Professor , Department of Psychology, Christ University)
