5 Mar 2021

Dear Parents,

This time’s newsletter is also going to all those parents who had visited us on Sunday. Newsletters are sent once a week highlighting the week’s events, so the parents get a peep into the life at LC.

Open House

This event turned out to be a success. People from varied backgrounds with their children had visited. Our speakers, Premjibhai and Supriya shared their life’s experiences during their adventure in alternative education. 

We were anticipating connectivity issues, low turnout, parking problems, etc. but were glad to see people come in good numbers. This is an assertion that whatever we are doing here, is leaving people curious at the least. Their questions tell us a genuine concern about the future of their children. We openly debated and expressed our anxieties.

Judiciary

After we decided last time that judiciary meetings are not compulsory, we were expecting to see only a few to turn up to the meetings. Instead we had an attendance of 70%. 

Warmups

It's usually a 20 min non stop yoga/zumba/aerobic style routine. We put on music, shake, jump and dance, including the facilitators. This monday we learnt to do some garba. 

Geography

During the session the kids had to travel on the map with tickets that were assigned to them. They had to travel from places like Okha to Dibrugarh, Leh to Thiruvananthapuram, Patna to Panaji and Jaisalmer to Vishakhapatnam. They were given choices to travel by rail and air. They were asked to trace their route through the map. Some struggled pronouncing the tongue twister names, some of them got lost in the map and took a while to find where their destination was.

Park visit

Since we didn’t have the KKS session this wednesday, we went to the Indira Market garden. Largely everyone played the virus game at the play area. Some went jogging around the walking track and a couple of them were learning to climb trees.

LC Cricket match

We have a lot of cricket enthusiasts at LC and others are catching the fever too. The first match was that of Girls Vs. Boys then we had a mixed team match. The matches were played with a plastic bat and a big fat plastic ball. It was played inside our playroom with LC rules. For some aiming the ball at the batsman seemed like a challenge and for a few, every ball went for a six. A lot of team spirit, cooing and cheering was on display. There was also live commentary.

Visitors

An interesting person who spent 20 long years as a teacher came to visit us. She was waiting for us at the gate for 50 mins while we were away at the park. Children gave her a tour and then later on she asked me, “What according to you is an ideal education for your child?” This put me in some deep thinking. I was wondering if she asked me the question because I was critical of the traditional schooling system. But it's quite a valid question. If one were to go back to the first principles and design a school then what would that be? How would that look? What we figured is that we should always question ourselves and never settle for an answer. 

A very enthusiastic parent who came to the Open House visited us for a clay making activity. He got the supplies from the nearby store and some food colours. Within about two hours the kids were rolling different coloured mushy balls. He categorically spoke to them in hindi and kids were soon swamping him with requests to make this and that.

We also had parents with two 4 yr olds who came to spend the day with us on friday. The parents had very interesting backgrounds, journalism, photography and one of them is a movie director. Not bollywood movies but movies meant for children and parents.

NIOS/IPM

Few kids have expressed interest in appearing for the exam. Though there is still time, remember 3rd April is the last date for filling up the forms for IPM. Visit the website and check out the past papers to get a fair idea of how these exams are conducted. We will soon be taking up sessions specifically meant for them.

Food for thought

These are excerpts from Unconditional parenting by Alfie Kohn. The book asks, “ What are we supposed to do when children act in ways that are disturbing or inappropriate?” 

Alfie says that your goal is to avoid crossing over into conditional parenting. Here’s how.

1. Limit the number of criticisms.

2. Limit the scope of each criticism

3. Limit the intensity of each criticism

4. Look for alternatives to criticism

Hope you enjoyed reading this, until next week…

Take care!