24 Sept 2021

Dear Parents,

I am re-reading the bestseller, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and have been simply enthralled by it. I wanted to share this with our kids and bumped onto his talk on “Future of Education”. Here is the link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uw7Xc0fLk. It is amazing how lucidly he puts what future holds for us human race. Even though it might seem far away from here or one might think that what happens in the West will not affect us and our children. He explains how it is already happening and there is no escaping it. Watch the Youtube link to understand more.

Now, let us see what happened this week.

Judiciary

We have set up a grievance committee which will take care of all the complaints and mutual disagreements among kids. They will meet once a week and discuss further how it will function. 

Project Day

It went well this time. At least half of them have improved in their research and their presentation skills. They also showed more confidence. A few did forget it was project day..:) All the topics were varied. We had a lot more animals’ topic this time, Fossa, Pug, Lions, Pomeranian, Dinosaurs and Whales. Other topics were Eclipse, Pyramid of Giza, Rocket launcher, Knots and its types, Rainbows, Computer coding, Subway Surfers (a video game), Chess and Football. One of our facilitators also presented on climate change and the kind of lifestyle we should adopt. But the show stealers were the dancers, who had done some jaw dropping performances which included our tiny tots too. 

Big thanks to Kaushal and Neelu who diligently sat through all the presentations and gave very specific and personal feedback. Facilitators also gave feedback that next day which included some critical reviews and points for improvement.

Mock day

Granted the project day was a success, but you should have come the previous day. दूध का दूध पानी का पानी is the exact description to express where everyone stood.  A few had no clue what their projects were, no topic, no presentations...it was a blank slate. Some had researched but had not done any presentation. This is bad work ethics, reminds me of my college night-outs. We will from now try to regulate the progress but we need help from you to narrow down on their topics and help them pick something that interests them.

Rodent Problem

We have got a massive rodent problem. If anyone has any natural and non poisonous way of getting rid of them then kindly suggest. We have had four dead in our premises this week. 

Safety Circle time

One of our friends, a co traveller in this journey, Sultan Charaniya passed away last week during an attempt to save the life of a girl. He was with a few children at a river side. He was a facilitator in a centre like ours. He had visited our place quite a few times. A very curious person, always smiling and had a very pleasant personality. He would bring with him a pocket full of interesting curios to play with kids. He would ask them different kinds of puzzles, some of them were mind bending. His answer to all the puzzles were, “there is never a right answer” and he would tell us never give them your answers. 

The tragedy here is that he died drowning saving the life of the student who used to study at his centre. No one knows what actually happened. Could this have been avoided? Maybe or maybe not. Who knows? We spoke about safety to our children. How safety is sometimes treated as a matter of convenience, a choice, or something only the fearful opt for. Safety of oneself has to be understood, otherwise it harm others too. 

Friday food

We had bread pizza this time. A new dish. Sourcing the ingredients, chopping, cooking and finally serving everything went well. Kids also did their part of cleaning and mopping. 

Guests

Kim who is 7 yrs is doing a trial period with us now. He is very interested in animals and is full of energy.

Premjibhai and his wife Jyothi gave us a surprise visit. They are always a source of inspiration. 

Vipul Mehra with his daughter 4 year old daughter, Carol had come to visit us on Friday. Vipul is a math teacher and used to teach at one of the competitive schools in South Mumbai and he quit his job after realising how compromised the learning actually is in a school setting. 

Shraddha and Trupti are graduates from Swaraj University. Trupti’s mother has set up a centre like ours in Bangalore called Abheek. Shraddha is visiting place like ours in an attempt to understand and learn how these centres function.

Thats all for now. More later, next week.