19 Nov 2021

Dear all,

Yes, the end of two weeks after we began, but we are still setting up the shop. There was full attendance this week. We did a bit of cleaning and are reshuffling furniture etc. The rodent problem seems to have subsided by itself, but there's no guarantee it will not come again. Waiting and watching…then we hope to start some gardening too.

Updates on week’s happenings...

Elections

Monday was election day. Few interesting promises were made like, “I will eradicate any and every kind of violence from LC”, “I will promote zero waste culture”, “I will make sure that I will abide by all the rules of LC and serve the community”. Surprisingly, only the big kids stood for election, even though we prompted the younger ones they seemed not very interested. The primary responsibilities of the ministers are to communicate the decisions with their fellow learners, take in-charge of housekeeping, conduct the judiciary meetings and manage all resources in LC.

Math Mornings

Every morning is a math morning so far. Everyone seems to have caught on, barring a very few. We are also riding the wave till it lasts…:)

Shaikh Sir’s Drg

This week Shaikh Sir came along with many of his paintings. Some of his paintings were 3’X4’ and some were just 8”X10” in sizes. Some of them were just mere single hand drawn sketches and a few of them were vivid, bright coloured abstract paintings. Few of the kids who have signed up for his class had a variety of questions to ask him. LIke, how many hours does something like this take? how much money will you make by selling these?, why do you want to sell them?, how were you able to make something so beautiful? These questions can put any normal person at unease, but Shaikh Sir took everything with a smile.

Guest

We had our first guest of this season, Shrikant Karwa, a friend and a second time visitor to LC. Few kids were curious about him, since he wore a bright saffron dhoti or “mundu”. One of them was very eager to give him a tour and someone asked why he wore a dhoti. Interestingly, he worked for UIDAI and he gave kids a talk about identity proofs and why we need them. How can he have an id for 1.2 billion people? And why its necessary? He also led a 10 min meditation session.

Newspaper reading

Newspapers are a wealth of information, there are all kinds of things for everyone’s interest. But it's also the most underrated thing as a source for our understanding of the world around us. So this semester we are attempting to explore our world through newspapers. With that in mind we had an interesting debate about the new laws that the Gujarat government has put in order to close down all kinds of non vegetarian food stalls. There were pro and against parties. We debated and tried to dig deeper as to what the authority wanted to do by making such laws. Surprisingly, kids arrived at the same conclusion.

Special days

This is one of the sessions we are taking this semester. It's actually a smart way to introduce different concepts and ideas to kids. Otherwise we needed to find a context to discuss all these things. For example, November 15 is Jharkhand foundation day. So that day, we got a chance to speak to them about how it was not a state before, why it wanted to be a state? What kinds of minerals and natural resources are found in the state - The distress the locals and tribals faced due to exploitation - We connected to the latest naxalite movements - Jharkhand Mukti Morcha - and thus so far.

Friday Food

Kids decided about it pretty late but eventually decided on making maggi noodles with veggies. I think they would have been content with just the noodles, but added the veggies to avoid contradictory comments from the facilitators.

Circle time

We had an interesting discussion on why everyone wanted to come to LC. And what is that one thing that will stop them from coming here. Unanimously, all wanted to come because they seek the company of their friends and want to play. Some also said they came because they learnt something interesting and liked being here. No one had anything to say about what would stop them from coming to LC.

So that's all for now.

More later next week. Till then take care,