16 Dec 2022

Dear Parents,

Let’s welcome Paarth, 14 years old, along with Reshmi and Shyam to our family. Paarth has been coming to LC for the past one month and commutes all alone via public transport from Goregaon. Also let’s welcome Nivaan, Prapti and Vishal. Nivaan is 8 and is a big football fan. He is a very jovial child and has already become friends with everyone.

Let’s see what happened this week…

Judiciary

We gave an update on everything that we discussed during LSH to children during our Judiciary.  All of us have also taken into consideration some of the suggestions.

1. We again reinforced that project days are not compulsory. Those folks who don’t participate in the projects can still come to LC but will not be able to go to the play zone. They are required to participate as a listener.
2. After all the iterations, if your project don’t seem upto the mark, you will still be able to present. So parent guides along with facilitators have to give feedback during the preparatory stage itself.
3. We all have decided to not use the word “ruckus creators”, as all of us agreed that it will create a negative impact on the minds of children. Instead of improving they might emulate ruckus behaviours. Hence onwards, they will be simply termed as people who are uninterested.
4. In relation to the Bilimora trip, kids who were voted out as uninterested, they will be doing twice their self consequence.
5. On the topic of being sensitive towards usage of aggressive language and behaviour, we told them that it’s a matter of habit. At home parents might ask them to be mindful. We request parents and everyone at home to shed any baggage from the past and not engage in any confrontation with the child. Conversations like, “I use it, cos you talk to me like that”; “why don’t you stop first, then I will improve”, etc. will not lead us anywhere. Let’s start fresh and the onus in on us.

Athletics Sessions

This session is not for lazy bones. Its intense and the facilitator grants no mercy. It is a mixture of yoga and fitness training. I joined the session last Tuesday and then onwards I was reminded of it every time I was getting up, sitting and climbing stairs. All of us were cooing oooh and aaah every time we changed our positions. Daring all the parents to join us next tuesday morning.

Clubs

Few of the clubs this time is working very well. Kids have found sustained interest in these activities. Drama club sees constant 8-9 kids every time. This time the theme was to enact the scene of Sita’s kidnapping and Hanuman creating a havoc in Lanka, with his tail on fire.

One of the other clubs that sees a sustained attendance is Debate/Talking club. The topics are usually very varied and impromptu. If preparation and research were a mandatory thing then no one will come for this club. This time the topic was “India is among one of the best countries of the world. Do you agree or not?” It was interesting to hear few biggies arguing about the deteriorating freedom of speech in our country. While the other team batted on diversity of our country.

IPM math club has the usual 3-4 suspects. We have made some attempt to revive the dwindling numbers of our reading club. The chess club was a hit last time, but this time its not such a cool thing. Couple of kids are doing chess classes so they might continue.

Guest

Yansh, 9, who is a differently abled child is doing his trial period with us. He travels with his mother from Thane. He comes for only a few hours everyday. We don’t know enough and will steer away from labelling him anything. As far as we have been communicated by his mother, he had delayed milestones. He communicates, but we will take time to understand his speech better. He did display some erratic behaviours, like switching off the PC when we were in session, taking the cards away while playing, etc.

At this moment we think we have to understand each other. The perspective so far has been to instruct him to do this and that, rather than playing with him. There is going to be a lot of questions and concerns among our kids, as all the rules that apply to all will not apply to him. But all said and done, this is an excellent opportunity for our children to understand how to assimilate people of all abilities into our life and become a really inclusive space. There is a lot we can learn. For example, all of us will have to watch our language and aggressive behaviour. If not then it will come back to us. We will learn to be a lot more patient which we tremendously lack at this moment.

That's all for now! More later...