Adventure…living on the edge?

 Last week I  suddenly  found myself escorting 25 girls to the Summer Education Camp in Dudhsagar Forest Camp . This is part of the Bhagwan Mahavir National Park  near Collem. As  the duty was totally unexpected I had a thousand questions buzzing in my mind. I contacted the organisers and realised that we would be staying in tents…

My mind went into a tizzy. I packed my bags with a little apprehension , a little thrill and because of the inevitability- with a I don’t care attitude too!

The next morning we left the school towards Collem. The parents had a thousand questions . I was as curious as them!We reached Collem at 9 AM. The organisers were to meet us there and take us into the jungle.They were soon located. They told us that we were to walk for 1/2 a kilometre and there a vehicle would be waiting for us. We soon reached a rivulet.A pick-up came and took our bags. We crossed the rivulet by treading in crystal clear waters….shoes in hand , the kids shreiked in happiness and playfully splashed water around. Our adventure had begun.

To be continued…

Time to let go ??

These last few weeks have been hectic.

An academic  session is coming to an end.

I have been stealing glances at some blogs and commenting too.But somehow couldn’t manage enough time to write.

The day I bid farewell to my Std. II kids was very emotional.

I felt I was sending them away to an unknown place.

Sahil was worried why I held on to him with a tight hug for a long time.Being the most restless and talkative kid in class, he has all my empathy… But I know it will be an uphill task for the new teacher next year.

Abhipsa , being the reticent and shy artist has all the ingredients to bring out the protectiveness in me..

Shruti, the perfectionist makes me want to ruffle her dress and shuffle her books so that she relaxes and learns that there is  more to life …

Akansha, the kid who is expecting a  sibling after ruling the house for seven glorious years gets a special hug. I know she will face a few tough months ahead getting used to sharing space …. 

Mayuresh with his thick glasses had finally learned to write …

So many thoughts and time slipping by..

I know that this hurt is inevitable every year. It is a sweet pain. As a teacher one wants to be gradually dispensable…

A teacher has to develop detachable attachments,else she will wallow in her past pupils and fail to take the new ones in to her fold.

I had read somewhere that parenting is like kite flying..one has to let go to succeed in the job..

Tax(ing) calculations …? Not now

Each year  when the school office gives deadlines for our tax calculations many of us find it cumbersome to calculate on our own and most of us find it too funny to go to a tax consultant with such a meagre annual income

 Actually tax calculations are not tough, saving to escape the dragnet is also not difficult for people with two incomes at homes .But the ever changing calculations are a big burden to some of us.

I found this file and I wanted to share it here.

http://www.planmytax.com/

This has a ready reckoner which can be downloaded to do various calculations with regard to tax and savings.

Where are we heading ?

This morning  I was conducting an activity in which the kids had to  jointly ‘write’ an article to a newspaper . The second standard kids were shown newspaper articles and stories. I suggested that they choose an incident that had occurred that afternoon in the class.. a quarrel between two kids as an incident to be ‘written’.They were very interested.

They  ‘reminded ‘me to write the date, place, day etc..

I began writing on the blackboard all that the little ones narrated in sequence.Suddenly a girl said, “  pahele ladke ne doosare ki khoon kar di..(the first boy killed the second..).  ” This stumped me for a fraction of a second. I quickly reacted by saying , ” We are newspaper reporters, we write only what has really happened.” I was shocked by the extent of their involvement in the gory details of the fight and also about their awareness levels  wrt recent happenings in the country and their ideas of how a fight could end!! Fortunately we were  alluding to the kids as pahele ladke ne and doosare ladke ne…otherwise  things would have gone a bit too far.

Quickly I managed to bring the story to a conclusion . The kids ended up by saying, ..” tabhee ghanti baji aur teacher ko dekhte hi bachche apni-apni jagah par baith gaye…(the bell rang and the kids went back to their places on seeing the teacher. )

The story had  other surprises too.  One of the kids who really fought is Ahil who doesn’t speak much. The other ‘fighter’ is Sahil who loves to describe things graphically.The narration of Ahil stunned me because he took active part in narrating his side of the duel very well. And Sahil was too  stunned to  counter /react /defend effectively !!Luckily for him I was busy writing.

The titles they suggested were:

Do ladkon ki ladai,

bachchon ma maraamaari,

school me ladai,

____ me ladai  ( the name of the school.. )

They even suggested that a snap should be put. I drew a rectangle and some stick figures in it.

Tomorrow ‘we’  report on a wedding. Looking forward to it.

UNIFORM and YOU

The uniform your child wears to school is the index of how much care you take of her.
It should be freshly cleaned, ironed and must fit well.It gives her immense pleasure to be seen is the best dressed child of the class. It gives her self esteem a boost. It makes her aware that being smartly turned out is a quick key to acceptability in her friend circle.
Further, do remember that she wears it for atleast 7-8 hours. She must feel comfortable in it. All the fastenings should be in top condition. It has to be cleaned everyday.A stale one will be an invitation to skin diseases and more.Microbes love sweat and grime.Wash the uniform everyday. Use a good quality detergent . Using too many chemicals to remove stains can sometimes make the fabric rough.Uniform is a part of the school’s smartness quotient.It makes or mars the school’s reputation too.
Send your child smartly dressed to school. This way you are sowing the seeds of a smartly dressed , healthy adult.

Why I love my job…

Each month when I plan my lessons , I search for cliparts and animations, sounds and videos to incorporate into my TAL ..i.e technology aided lessons.

On one such hunt I stumbled into      http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

It was the search for an  animation of water cycle that brought me to this beautiful site.The kids of second standard  enjoyed the journey through water vapour to rain and back to the clouds…

I then came across animal sounds, sounds of transport and much more….

I later discovered the songs and rhymes which one can play on real one player. I could even get the words in pdf format.There are  links to so many other sites and the possibilities are immense.

Today I discovered that I could learn to type too  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/flash/stage1.shtml

Each time I enter such sites I learn a lot. I try to transfer what I have learnt to my teaching but I am not always successful because of  time constraints…

I am like a kid with a new toy.Thanks to my organisation for making me tech -enabled.I marvel at the variety of resources available and the miserly way in which most of us use  them.We still remain glued to our textbooks and exam-oriented  teaching.

Some cards.

Shardul gave a card on T day.It said the usual things. Inside he had solved a multiplication problem. Below it he wrote : ma’am,if this is correct  ,call out my name  in the class and  smile at me .

He had ensured that I saw the card AND a rsvp sort of acknowledgement.

Sweta gave a huge card.It said :”If you like this card hug me. If you don’t like it ..I won’t mind . “

Some cards!

the edited version is above.

I just gave these suggestions to some parents.

HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD MASTER SPELLINGS 

•       Put up new words written clearly on cards on the wall . 

•       Ask child to jumble new words.
     This will help her to KNOW the letters in the word. 

•       Make a list of correct and incorrect spellings.
     Ask child to encircle the correct word.
    This will help her to scrutinize  the word carefully–thereby        she   observes it closely,and remembers it better. 

•       Use new words in your daily conversation.
     This promotes familiarity. 

•    Please add your ideas.

How each day is a new lesson for me

The need for open ended assignments at home and in school

Every child has an innate sense of being able to relate to the characters in the story being read or an anecdote being narrated. This is often observed in classes where the teacher asks the children to postulate the ending after narrating only half the story or gives ample room for the kids’ freedom of imagination by asking what do they think would have happened if this were not the ending. This is also found in houses where the grandmother narrates a story till the point where justice has to be meted out to the aggrieved and the child is asked to pronounce the judgment as if she were the judge.

Being given the choice to change the course of the story allows her to develop a sense of responsibility towards the characters. She also feels vindicated as she has mentally  taken sides with some characters. She feels that it is her story now. She gets a feeling of having created something and her confidence level will soar  high.

In the classroom this is used as a part of group discussion  especially in lower classes. Today, I narrated a story and asked: What do you think would have happened if X had gone home straight after his work? I was not only surprised by the varied answers I got but also by the totally inventive ones from the usually reticent ones. They came out with fantastic ones which an adult can’t ever think of.!

This sort of behaviour never stops making me wonder. Now I have been teaching from twenty years but I am  thrilled to see such responses.   This is a big reward and it keeps the spirit going in spite of the body acting mulish. The day was especially busy, but this last minute perk-up was a tonic. I had to stay back longer than usual due to a meeting and the surprising thing was I was relaxed and tolerant.

Some areas where I feel one can give such open –ended tasks to young kids are:

o       In stories found in the language textbooks/other storybooks

o       In kids’ serials watched on TV

o       In popular ‘family’ movies

o       In mythological  stories

o       In biographies / autobiographies

o       In anecdotes of famous scientists

                An extension of this activity could be:

o       writing out dialogues of the changed ending

o       enacting it out

o       organizing a debate on the merits of different endings

o       hypothesizing as to why the author found this ending most suitable