Saturday, July 28, 2012

My Daily Lessons

We had a 3-day SBIP on Life Skills recently in our school. Frankly, it was like old wine in new bottle. Ditto with educating GNH in Schools. We have been doing these on a daily basis not being consciously aware of it.Now you can give me a situation to handle, almost any situation, i can give you a standardized formula to effectively win from that crisis.
So that is life skills: self awareness, creative thinking, critical thinking, empathy, coping up with stress blah blah. In one of the activity, the facilitators wanted us to enact various situations so that we can apply those life skills genuinely. I and my group of teacher colleagues got a tricky case. We were supposed to enact a drama whereby a boy forces a girl to "have sex ". Bingo! I volunteered to act as "the forceful boy". Well, most of the times i have prospered being forceful so there was nothing new in that. The lady teachers in my group went silent as to who would be the girl. After much discussions, i had to force a male teacher to act like a girl! A stout man of 70+ kilo, there is little feminine in him but that wouldn't deter my sexual pleasures unless he didnt have halitosis, atleast in a drama :). There were similar acts from other groups also but finally at the end of the day, we had much awareness on how to deal with traumatic situations in a win-win way.
The other day i was teaching about "Structures" in 6th grade. Funny thing in class six science is, most of the topics are activity-based. You flip a page, there are more activity than lesson in that!  Presently,they were required to model a bride using various supports: circle, triangle, pentagon, hexagon etc and find out which of those shapes made the strongest support. After the activity i was to give them examples of various shapes used in big structures like our Dzongs. Out of curiosity, i asked them, "How many Dzongs are there in Bhutan?". "Twenty!", they answered me without doubt."Wrong!", i yelled at them. "There are only 19 Dzongs presently in Bhutan". Their face lights up with tiny rays and falls back in acceptance. We haven't started with the reconstruction of our beloved Wangdi Dzong as of now, i put up my arguments. He he he.
I am aware that i could be sued if i preached such lessons in the towns where kids and the parents are much sensitive than one can imagine but here, i did it for the purpose of gaining students' attention, not for facts.
Quite regularly, i tell those kids that there are no ghosts vis-a-vis gods. They are not impressed with my justification, by any means.
Much later, i knew how serious these kids can be when Choden once complained that i had taught small kids wrong concepts. "What was wrong?", i accused her vehemently. "You taught them that there are no ghosts?!".  Hmm..
Well, the last week, we had some touching moments when we bid farewell to a lady teacher as she had to leave to some foreign countries to catch up with her family. I have had my foreign excursions but it was more of trauma being in that foreign slum than any fun. How i wish to go to America!:). Well, i would try to update things about America if i had to suddenly take my flights to attend some seminars in NYC but for now, i must conclude here:)
Good Day, friends!

3 comments:

  1. Sonam sir,

    With full of humor as always, its Nice and entertaining post.

    Well abt your trip to US, I hope your wish will come true someday. We will never know what our future have in store for us.....so keep wishing, keep dreaming, and keep hoping. If it comes true, then its well and good. If it does't then we have a saying that that "expectancy is sweeter than fruition"


    all then best and have a nice sunday ahead.


    PSN

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  2. Nice read as always. Seems like you are imparting wholesome education to the students. Good job!

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  3. Hey PSN and karma, thanks a lot for your comments. warm wishes, sillywit.

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