by Dr. Jyothsana Narasimhan, Educator
Dr. Shailaja Menon’s Masterclass started off even before the NLF officially began, for this was a pre-registered event with prior readings (aka homework and analysis) as we geared up for an engaging ‘grand conversation’ in a safe inclusive space of collaborative reading. The objective of the workshop was modelling conversational modes of teaching wherein we deep-dive into carefully selected literary texts encouraging collaborative construction of meaning. The text that we discussed was a translated short story by Janaki Srinivasa Murthy, popularly known by her pen name Vaidehi, a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer in Kannada.
Vaidehi’s “A Memory Called Ammacchi” subtly weaves in feminist themes, particularly in its portrayal of the central character, Ammacchi. She is not a romanticized or glorified figure—she is practical, resilient, assertive and strong-willed. She is portrayed as a multifaceted individual with her own struggles, opinions, and moments of frustration challenging patriarchal narratives of power & gender. Through Ammacchi, Vaidehi emphasizes the autonomy, resilience, and agency of women in traditional settings, subtly critiquing the societal structures that confine them to domestic gendered spaces.
The Masterclass also brought in elements of the reflective process that the student as a reader engages in between themselves and the literary work wherein they evaluate whether their personal response aligns with the text and compare their interpretation with others. This reflection involves questions like: What happened within me while reading? What elements stood out or puzzled me? How do others’ interpretations, including classmates or critics, differ, and do they highlight aspects I missed? Do their interpretations help me see my blind spots? By considering these insights, the student refines their understanding, aiming for a more comprehensive response to the text and future works. The discussion revolved around the reader’s perception of Ammacchi through the narrator – her child’s memories and the session turned into a beautifully woven tapestry of diverse points of view, each participant taking turns to construct and deconstruct the literary work through dialogues and a constant va et vient between words, contexts, experiences and newly crystallized understanding of the text. Some of the perspectives discussed were: How is Ammacchi’s character shaped by the cultural and societal roles expected of her, and how does she, in turn, shape the lives of those around her? How does language and the narrative device of memory shape the tone of the story? How might the story differ if it were told from a third-person point of view? How reliable is the narrator, given that memories are subjective and malleable over time?
Dr. Shailaja also brought in the literary theories and frameworks such as that of Louise Rosenblatt’s “The Acid Test for Literature Teaching” and how this can be an integral part of the scaffolding we create for the students in their learning. From the close-reading of texts to understanding the active role teachers play in guiding productive discussions in the classroom through posing big questions to modelling discussion skills, encouraging participation, supporting respectful turn-taking, idea-building, navigating differences in opinions to learning to collaborate to promoting student-led discussions to encouraging critical thinking and co-constructing meaning through conversation through strategies like ‘turn and talk’, ‘discussion triads’, ‘literature circles’, ‘idea circles’, ‘literature logs’, ‘sketch to stretch’, and ‘traffic lights’ providing for collaborative exploration of texts, helping students link new information to their prior knowledge, fostering peer interaction and deepening students’ understanding nurturing higher order thinking and so much more—we were in for a two-hour literary feast with the ineffable Shailaja Menon.
References:
- Rosenblatt, L. (1956). “The Acid Test for Literature Teaching” in The English Journal, Vol. 45, No. 2. (Feb., 1956), pp. 66-74.
- McGee, I., & Parra, A. (2009). Grand conversations in the classroom: A presentation for the 2009 National Reading Recovery & K–6 Classroom Literacy Conference. http://www.readingrecovery.org/pdf/conferences/NC09/Handouts/McGee_Inger_Grand_Conversations.pdf.
