IEP – The Trip to Sisters Island

We had a great trip to Sisters Island, thanks to Shree for coordinating and organizing the trip and activities. About 30 people, adults and children took part in the trip and all of them enjoyed the trip, from the boat trip to the island to the games, waterplay, wildlife observation and exploration.

IEP sessions always revolve around a theme, and the theme of the day was perseverance. After the trip, some facilitators commented that perhaps the children didn’t quite get the concept of perseverance. However, the theme of perseverance was underlying several events that occurred throughout the day. The kabbadi and Number-Off games were of course introduced to encourage interaction and persevere in the face of a difficult task. Other than them also, there was a lot of perseverance, along with other qualities coming in during the water play and worm digging that went on in the island. Children who were initially afraid to climb the rocks or to go into the water eventually got over their fear and walked into the ocean. By the end of the day, most of the children were very comfortable with having millipedes crawling over them, or having little crabs on their hands. I also noticed a lot of perseverance in the jet-lagged Pradeepta who gritted herself through the trip to give her support in the event though she had just returned from Barcelona the evening before.

As a facilitator, I also learnt an important lesson on being a role model. During the drawing session, a child was referring to my drawing and making her own. The adults in the group encouraged her to draw on her own and not copy. Though I didn’t think much of it then, I remembered the event later. Children learn all the time by copying and imitating. Which is why we need to set such high standards for ourselves. If she sees me doing shoddy work, she would do shoddy work herself. Which brings me to the fact that due to lack of time, I completed my drawing rather shoddily, which of course the child picked up on, asking "Your drawing is very nice, but why have you scribbled the colours??"

Mother once said that children are merciless when they see adults displaying the weaknesses that we so often tell children not to display. As facilitators, we have to be doubly aware of the dangers of doing so.