Asked the kids to form a song/poem for their kingdom. This is what one of the teams came up with in fifteen minutes! Read: Our team love me so much. I also love them. Thank you. Math Oh Math you are so great. I know this addition so how much I eating I can tell the time so I dont get late. Math I love so much it has open my brain gate. ...
Yukta and her sister Pooja[From another section in the same school] have been asking us to visit their home for quite sometime now. And now they’re threatening to give us letters every single day till we turn up there!
Was stumped by this innocent letter from a kid in my class. Yukta - One of the smartest kids, questions me[ In RED and gives place for me to answer!] on how I came across the idea of playing the Age of Empires game! In this game that we play in the class, she happens to be the ‘Queen’ with the most notorious ‘subjects’. Guess she just wanted to vent all her frustration[?] through this letter. ...
We’d asked the kids to find out why a zebra is black and white in colour. Ali - A kid who was in a marathi medium school until last year, comes up with this paper the next day. ‘Zebra mothe is black and waite. The zebra is black and wate. Jab upar wale ne usko aise kar diya, vo kya karega’
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Yet another day was coming to an end and the people of the land were tending their chores. It was all one peaceful ambiance with just minor disruptions here and there. To help manage the affairs, the architect of the land decided to pull up a few responsible men and women and give them the authority to administer sections of the land..Well, ‘Decentralization of power’ as they call it. And then, things changed. With just one word, rose eleven kingdoms all powerful and energetic. And within minutes, the Kings and Queens swore at the altar to uprise their just formed kingdoms. Ministers, Treasurers and Soldiers were deputed and responsibilities bestowed. ...
Couple of hours back I opened my student tracker, just sat back and started mulling over how each of my kids have changed over the past few months. As I went through the list reading each of the kids names, images of the kid kept flashing in and out of my mind and most of them, so turned out to be of those moments when they were being ecstatic or really happy. This made me wonder how we as humans tend to capture/remember only the positives or the cheerful part in our relationships. But as a teacher, am I not failing my kids in not noticing their negative behaviour and working to get them back to their normal self? Am I doing justice to them by not stopping what I’m doing and not taking that extra time to pay attention to that minuscule behavioral change? How many times have I swept a behavioral change under the blanket and continued with my class/session? How many times have I ’neglected’ a kid in the rush to finish off a topic/objective? ...
Yesterday was one of those real interesting days. Couple of friends and I had been to the Korlai fort and were heading back from Alibag late in the evening. Seated in the rear of the bus, I’m not really sure how this conversation/debate ensued. For about an hour or so the six of us had a heated conversation on various policies, practices, ideologies and biases. Probably one of the best ever deliberations since my Infy days. In introspection, it kind of gave me some food for thought on how I’d like to proceed with the rest of my fellowship or for the next two years. ...
As I take one last gulp of hot tea from a roadside stall, Ronnie wickedly smiles and brings his hand forward with a congratulatory gesture. He just says - ‘One month’ and grins wildly! I wink back, pay for the tea and walk back towards the school gate. As we quickly make our way through the puddles and pits in the slight Pune drizzle, my mind wanders out in search of those small moments that I could call ‘achievements’ of the month thats been from my one month of teachers life. Sadly I get to recollect just a couple of them. And then it looms on me again how important it is to appreciate minuscule milestones in this journey - Something which I’ve been working hard on ever since the summer school. ...
It’s been close to two months that I’ve been with TFI. 1 week of induction, 4 weeks of summer school and 2 weeks of Placement school. There’s quite a lot that’s been weaving around here. I initially had planned to document most that’s been happening right from the first day but failed miserably. The ‘induction’ wave just swept me off the coast and kept me in the waters for close to a month. The rigorous schedule during the institute and other things took priority and I just couldn’t fit in time to sit back and write what’s been brewing out here. Things slowly seem to have fallen in place now and I’ve decided to be a bit more regular on my site. ...