Literacy Week

Literacy Week (24 September, 2012- 28 September, 2012)

'Padhega India tabhi toh badhega India'. Truly said. Knowledge is power. Education is something that helps you conquer any quest or any difficulty in this world. It leads us to prosperity and development. 
The educational facilities in India are not very good. India has a very high illiteracy rate. We being IB students wanted to spread awareness about this global issue. Hence 24th September to 28th September was celebrated as 'Literacy week' in our school. And we took up the task of organizing it as a part of our CAS activity. All the DP students were paired up and we had to conduct assemblies on the given topic. First assembly was conducted by Jagveer Vij and Sahil Jham on the topic Importance of Education. They put in great efforts and told the students how education can yield us success. They informed us about how education is necessary for our growth and also the growth of our nation. Director ma'am too presented her views about illiteracy. 

Second assembly was conducted by myself and Yongmin Cho.  We sat together and worked collaboratively to plan and conduct the assembly. Our topic was Life without Education.  In our assembly we explained the students how our life would be a nightmare and a disaster without education. Yongmin told us the reason behind the high literacy rate in South Korea. The reason is that in South Korea only Korean is spoken. But in India, language differs from state to state. Here eradicating illiteracy is one heck of a challenge.

Third assembly was conducted by Sohil Shahare and Stanis Marian. Their topic was ‘Education for all’. They stressed on the point the education should be provided irrespective of caste or gender. In some remote villages in India, girls are not allowed to go to schools and are forced to stay home and learn house hold chores. This taboo has to be removed from the Indian society.

Fourth assembly was conducted by Aditya Gupta and Sahil Jham. Their topic was ‘Pathanatya’ (Flashmob). Their assembly taught us the effects of illiteracy and how people take advantage of illiterate people. Their assembly consisted of a very meaningful skit.

The last assembly was conducted by myself and Meghan Kadam. We planned the assembly before hand and decided that i would carry on with the compering and he would conduct the interactive session with the students. We asked the students to express their thoughts on illiteracy. The Literacy Week was a great success. 

I personally learnt a lot from this week. I learned to how to conduct an assembly, making the presentations, running helter-skelter for getting things done correctly. It was one tiring, fun and a really great experience. I hope I keep getting further opportunities like these.. 

Till next time.. :)

Tree Plantation

14th September, 2012

Sorry mother earth..
Sorry for all the exploitation.. 
Sorry for all the plastic.. 
Sorry that your own children are the ones to rip you apart this way.. 
Your beautiful rivers and your beautiful green hair.. 
I am sorry to say they are no more there.
But now I promise and now I dare, to bring it all back to you once again.. 
It may take years and it may take decades..
 But your beautiful bounty, I would not let it sway. 

There are many environmental changes taking place. These are bad changes. They all happen due to rapid progress in industrialization. This is the effect of our doing. We are the ones destroying the balance of nature. One major reason for the disturbance in the balance of nature is deforestation. Lack of trees result in soil erosion, land slides and so on. Trees are giver of life. They produce oxygen and keep the air clean. They keep the environment cool. Trees should be treated with love and respect.

Keeping all these thoughts in mind, our school organized a tree plantation program. All the students of the school brought sapling. Some of were on small flowering plants and some were of big trees. All of us, with love in our hearts, planted the trees ourselves. 
To me, personally, nature is god. Nature is what giveth life and what taketh life away. We being nature's children should respect and strive to protect it. Not destroy and poison it. The main thing that we wanted to do through this activity was to create awareness about this global issue among the students and teachers. Global Warming is increasing at an alarming rate and the only way to reduce it is to plant as many trees as possible.  
I felt good planting my own little sapling. I wasn't a very huge step, but as it is said, huge outcomes are a result of small baby steps. Plant as many trees as you can! Live and let live. 

Till next time :)

Lets Start!

Our CAS activities have started. We visit Sule High School, Dhantoli every saturday as a part of our CAS activity. It is a government school. The school's principal, Mr. Vasant Rathod had given us the pleasure of interacting with the students there. 

The school will completing 100 years this 2012! The architecture of the school is remarkable. By the looks of it, it was constructed sometime back in the '90s.

Anyways.. we are going to teach grade 1st to 4th. All the activities will be written down. Photos will be added and well, experiences will be shared! 

So here is the account of my first visit..

1 SEPTEMBER, 2012

Today was my first official visit to Sule High School. I was obviously nervous about it! Frankly, I have never done something like this before. This activity comes in the service part of CAS. The educational facilities in some parts of India are not very established. And similar was the case with this school. So being IB students, it was our duty to provide them with certain provisions and encourage learning.
I paired myself with Meghan Kadam, who is my senior, for conducting the class. We were chose to teach the first grade and to teach them good manners. 

Their class teacher showed us the classroom where we were suppose to teach them. Most of the children there were more inclined towards Marathi than English. So for their convenience we conversed with them in marathi.There were 15-20 kids in the class. They started introducing themselves. After the ice breaking session, we started with the topic good manners. 

We taught them to say 'Good Morning' and 'Good evening" and the three magic words PLEASE, SORRY & THANK YOU. We also taught them how to greet the elderly and made a chart and stuck the pictures of good manners there. Then they recited some of the poems they had learned in the school. It was the first time I was interacting with children as a teacher. This was very new to me. After handling these children we realized how challenging it is to be a teacher. 

It was a great first experience. The kids were great. I hope we bond more over time. 

At the end of the day, I had this satisfied feeling of doing something good for somebody else selflessly.

It is truly said.. Joy is more in giving than in receiving. 

Till next time! :)

Supervisors: Kiran Sir, Muktanand Sir, Vijaylaxmi Ma'am