Lauren is our newest volunteer. She’s an art teacher from Philadelphia where she works in a school for deaf kids, some of whom have other learning difficulties as well. She’s fluent in sign language, which automatically makes her a fascinating character to us, AND she’s an artist in her own right. (You can check out her website in which she showcases her beautiful pottery here). Her maiden name is Ingalls and yes, you guessed it, she is a descendant of the wonderful children’s writer (Little House on the Prairie) Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This picture of Lauren kind of sums her up for me: charming, graceful, wonderful sense of humor and full of surprises. (The pup, whose name is Lassi, is a little street dog which she and her husband Will have adopted for their duration here and have found a home for when they leave.)

Lauren has been moving throughout the Foundation, observing at first and now fully immersed in the classroom work, bringing her special gift for art and the creative life to what we are already doing with the kids. She told me that her main thing is to support what is  happening by enhancing it, helping the teachers to develop and deepen their lessons by adding fun projects that the kids love doing.

At Latika Vihar, for example, I found her doing an amazing newspaper sculpture with the children (it brought back a memory I had totally forgotten of building a beanstalk from newspaper with my Mom – oh, gosh, 43 years ago!):

Here’s what she had to say about the project: It got the kids thinking about balance, structure, shape, line and weight. They figured out that the triangle is the best base shape to make for this project and built from there. This kind of work also forced the kids to work on their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and tapped into their creativity and imagination. The final sculpture was bigger than some of our 7 year olds.

While this way of working fits right in with our educational philosophy, we still have so much to learn from someone like Lauren about how to actually make it happen. It’s easy to fall into set patterns of teaching and interacting with the children, to use the same tired props over and over again, to play the same old games, sing the same old songs and recycle the same old themes year in and year out.

Kids thrive on repetition, yes, and many actually require it to absorb new information, but spicing it up with variety and new approaches is also essential. If only because the kids move on to the next class but the teachers are still there year after year – they get bored too!