#63 - Notes on Reading, Muscles and Playwrights
Education Coffee is a 2xWeekly Newsletter on People, Ideas and Culture.
In each edition of this newsletter, I will share five inspiring web resources that I have curated after hours of research to ensure that you have the best education coffee in your inbox. In upcoming editions, I will focus on sharing insights, notes and realizations that I gather from people, ideas, books, films and podcasts.
1. Learning from People
Faezeh Jalali is an Indian–Iranian actress, director, writer, producer and activist Jalali's theatre acting performances include, Mira Nair's stage musical Monsoon Wedding, I Don’t Like It, As You Like It and other productions such as Jatinga, The Djinns of Eidgah, Thook, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Arms and the Man, The Trestle at Popelick Creek. She also directed her own plays such as 07/07/07 and Shikhandi- The Story of the In-betweens, and Strictly Unconventional. I love her plays and and make an effort to watch each new play that she releases and directs. I got a chance to watch her recent play, Strictly Unconventional at a local theatre in Mumbai and here is a picture of the cast at the end of the play.
There is something magical and irreplaceable about a live performance. The sound, lighting, actors voices, costumes, stage design come alive and can really be felt and appreciated in theatre. You can catch a glimpse of the same in this short clip about the making of one of her plays. You can follow her on Instagram for updates on future work.
2. Learning from Ideas and Questions
I have always loved running but I recently started a regular schedule of resistance training at my local gym. Resistance training increases muscle strength by making your muscles work against a weight or force. We have 600 muscles in our body and they need regular care and maintenance. Different forms of resistance training include using free weights, weight machines, resistance bands and your own body weight. Resistance training helps to improve muscle strength, maintain flexibility and protect you from joint injury. Most sessions at the gym include a set of exercises to train specific muscles in my body like the shoulder, biceps, triceps or core. I was curious about the science of building and maintaining muscles in your body and came across this video from TED - Ed.
3. Learning from Books, Websites and Blogs
is an educator and school leader that writes, All Things Learning on Substack. In a recent post she shared some research about digital vs paper reading. I learned a lot from this post. I relate to her experience of adopting audio books and ebooks to give her more flexibility to engage and read books during her work day. I read 52 books last year through the 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge and a majority of them were audiobooks and ebooks. I agree that longer texts can be easier to process in the physical form. As a reader flexibility and variety is one of the more important factors that stimulate and sustain my interest for books. But I also believe younger kids need to first develop a reading habit with physical books and then slowly adopt other mediums as they get more comfortable. What medium do you prefer the most as a reader? I loved this quote on her experience with digital reading
Beyond school, most reading is done in free reading environments. Almost all my reading in the last 2 decades has been in free reading environments. For me all of these hold true - it allowed me to read the way that I wanted - on demand, while traveling/ waiting instead of dedicated reading time, easy note taking - I can do the old school stuff - highlight and annotate and I can also copy entire paragraphs into my notes, I can search my notes and re-organize them, I link the source material, etc.
4. Learning from Films, Videos and Shows
Cake (2018) is one of my favourite family dramas about grief, aging and second chances. It is a film from Pakistan directed by Asim Abbasi. It stars Sanam Saaed, Aamina Shaikh and Adnan Malik. Here is the premise from the film’s Letterboxd film page
A woman who takes care of her aging parents and their land is joined by her sister when their parents’ health worsens.
There are three siblings in the family. The family have a farm and are well off. Two of the siblings study abroad and one has stayed back to support the family. There are deep rooted resentments between the siblings that come to the front when the aging parents of the family get sick and need continuous support. All the siblings are called back home to take care of the parents. On this trip, all the siblings confront each other about unresolved issues from the past and through their experiences we get to see how a family navigates loss, grief, expectations and tragedy. The acting is impeccable and the writing even better. I cannot recommend this film enough.
5. Learning from Podcasts and Music
This was a difficult podcast to listen to for me as a fan of the artist. Stephen John Fry is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator, and writer. He has appeared in several shows and written some pivotal texts. In this conversation he opens up about the mental health challenges he faced along the way and how he developed certain strategies to cope with them at different stages.
Thank you for reading this edition of #EducationCoffee. I look forward to writing weekly editions of this newsletter this year. I hope to continue to share resources that will add value to your life. You can also review the archive of Education Coffee for free at this link (62 past newsletters). You can subscribe to this newsletter for more such recommendations on people, ideas and culture.
Please do send me your thoughts and resources on any edition of this newsletter through email at abhishekashokshetty@gmail.com, Linkedin or on twitter @AbhishekShetty_. You can find my work online at https://abhishekshetty.carrd.co/. If you would like to read pieces in the future please do consider subscribing to this newsletter by clicking the button below. I love taking these discussions forward on those platforms and look forward to hearing your feedback.
Abhishek Shetty