Home stays offer time to nurture creativity
One of the necessary measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was to shut down all schools. With kids at home, parents are constantly looking for means of keeping them occupied during the curfews. However, as Mokshini Jayamanne and Kavitha Gunesekera, who share more than 35 years of Speech and Drama teaching experience between them point out, this is a golden opportunity to nurture creativity in these children.
Together they began StoryLand SL, a non profit venture. StoryLand SL uses a series of storytelling Youtube videos to enhance language skills and facilitate creative and analytical thinking amongst its young audience. It aims at choosing the right story books with a proper theme that matches the age groups (four to sixteen) so that it would hold their attention for a maximum of eight to ten minutes. In addition, the pair hope to broadcast live videos over their instagram page of story times and poetry readings, periodically.
Mokshini and Kavitha use the text in the story whenever possible to help their audience understand basic language tools. They aim to build the vocabulary of these children and through this, help them understand grammatical structures and pronunciation. The questions related to the text also promote lateral thinking, emotional intelligence and elicit a deeper understanding of the text.
In their years of teaching both Mokshini and Kavitha discovered that fewer children use their imagination. And there is very little creativity amongst those who don’t. “They don’t dream, they don’t travel to far away lands of their own making, they don’t even know what it means to imagine. The Covid-19 lockdown was the perfect opportunity to change this.”
The pair first crossed paths back in 2017 when they were cast in the Cold Theatre 7 production of Twelve Angry Women. Here they discovered several similarities including their perspectives of life and their passion for teaching and children. Because of this and their set of skills they had wanted to collaborate together for the longest time but couldn’t owing to their professional commitments.
Mokshini is an Attorney-at-Law with over 13 years of experience in civil litigation in Sri Lanka. She also holds professional qualifications in teaching Speech and Drama, with Trinity College London and has over 20 years’ experience in training children and young adults in the art of communication and acting. She tells us she loves working with children but also enjoys helping the young and old alike, find their voices and speak their mind confidently in any forum.
Kavitha on the other hand is an educator across multiple contexts, currently leading global Talent Development for a renowned ERP consultancy and IT solutions delivery company. She holds a B.A. in English Language Teaching and professional qualifications in Drama from Trinity College, London, and is a Certified Professional of the Society for Human Resource Management, USA.
She has also served on the staff of Lyceum Group of International Schools, teaching English, Speech, Drama and Special Needs. She continues to teach Speech, Drama and Speaking Skills on most weekends and is also an Examiner for the Institute of Music, Speech and Speaking Skills, Colombo.