Freedom and Peace - Roopa Bhattacharyya

Few lucky people achieve their dreams. However, multiple factors have to fall into place to achieve your dreams. What may or may not be possible for any person is a combination of the socio-economic realities of the family, the world view of the parents and the extended family as the peer group of not only the child but also the family. So, freedom to dream is limited by what the child knows, reads, hears and realizes based on the juxtaposition of the society in which he or she is growing up.

1. For instance, in my case, I wanted to learn Sitar when I was in grade 6. However, my parents could not afford to buy a Sitar. So, they sent me to singing classes instead.

2. I never had the opportunity to travel or see places independently, as my peer group never did. Though we did travel as a family to visit places on vacations. Children nowadays have multiple opportunities.

3. I wanted to have a career after education, but I married someone with a transferable job. And I became a school teacher.

        

Though, now, I am delighted. The realities today are different. However, that, too, is dependent on the economic conditions of the individuals.

Violence stems from anger. However, it also stems from the conditioning of the mind. Anger essentially originates from the inability to handle the realities. But, training the mind to hold certain beliefs is an outcome of what the child is taught at home and in schools.

Some individuals are taught from childhood about their inherent superiority over others who do not subscribe to their belief system. This is a significant cause of violence that we see around us. So, to solve the problem of violence, we would need a two-pronged approach.

Firstly, wean our children away from dogma, religion, and racial ideologies. Ideally, these should find no place in educational institutes or society. As far as anger management is concerned, this could be addressed in the classrooms through exposure to practices like meditation that help you achieve mastery over your mind.

Roopa Bhattacharyya
Ahlcon Public School

Freedom and Peace - Preeti Mahajan and Mridula Renjit

 FREEDOM

"Freedom is not the right to do what we please. But it is the opportunity to do what is right."

Being a girl is cool, but it is not always easy. For no good reason, girls are not always given the same opportunities as boys. Just sharing when I was denied the freedom to be on my own.

1. I wanted to go abroad to pursue higher education because of the restricted atmosphere at home. I had to compromise on my passion.

2. I wanted to pursue music as my career, but then, I was not given the freedom to choose my subject of choice.

3. I wanted to keep a full-time maid for the household chores so that I could devote more quality time to my kids. But I could not take this decision independently. My freedom to take such decisions was curtailed, and I had to compromise again.

Yes, definitely; there are many occasions where I still feel I am not free to take my own decisions. But no regrets so far because we have to make certain compromises when we are in a family. We want to bring so many improvements in our lifestyle, our qualifications, our style of dressing, our way of upbringing our own children, and in adopting new teaching methods in school. Still, the bitter reality is that we all must adhere to certain restrictions and can't take decisions independently or freely.

Peace

Why do people give up the peace and adopt violence? There are many reasons for giving up peace and adopting violence. Man is a product of his circumstances. There are several reasons for violent behaviour.

A few are mentioned below:

1. Neglect at home.

2. Lack of self-respect.

3. Low self-worth.

4. Peer influence.

5. Witnessing violence at home or community.

6. Impact of social media.

7. Availability of weapons.

How can we use the classrooms to shape peace-loving individuals?

• The critical action in promoting peace is education. Teachers are more than educators: mentors, event coordinators, monitoring and evaluation experts, curriculum specialists, conflict negotiators, administrators, and social change makers. One role of teachers that may be overlooked is peace builder. With ongoing global conflict, teachers must expose their students to those global issues and incite motivation in their students to be advocates for peace, both in their local communities and globally.

• Peace can be made the theme of various events like Sports day and the Annual day.

• Literary activities like debate, declamation, poem recitation, one-act play etc., can be conducted on the theme 'Peace.'

• no-bullying policy should be adopted strictly.

• moral lectures on peace and tolerance should be imparted.

• Board decoration, poster making, poem writing, story narration - all these activities should be done with the theme PEACE and HARMONY.

Ms Preeti Mahajan
Ms Mridula Ranjit
Ahlcon Public School
JOL cohorts

Responsibility and Cooperation - Ahlcon Public School

Why do you think that responsibility is an important trait?

Responsibility helps you learn how to handle difficult situations, make good decisions, set goals, and achieve them. Responsibility is essential because it makes you into a better person. Life lessons are often taught through taking responsibility for your actions, mistakes, and events.

When you are responsible for something, you accept that you own the success or failure of it. A responsible person keeps their eyes focussed on the things that matter most. It provides a sense of purpose and builds resilience amidst adversity on an individual and social level. By accepting responsibility, we become more action-oriented and gain confidence. The type of responsibilities we accept in our lives contributes to the person we become.

How can you teach your students to be responsible in school, at home, and outside?

The children are responsible for their own behaviour and words. We need to emphasize this through a reward system. Make the children enthusiastic about any task assigned to them. Once again, a reward system will work on this. Try and improve the responsibility of the children in a continuous manner. This could be achieved through assigning tasks, games, and activities and holding the children accountable for the outcomes.

In school, we can ask the children to represent the class in news reading in school assembly; of course, this will require guidance from the teacher. We must ensure that every child must participate in inter-section competitions. While we may win some, we will also lose some. Therefore, we must instil the spirit of winning for ourselves and the section. This will instil responsibility in the children.

At home, ask the children to pack their school bags according to the timetable and encourage them to polish their own shoes.

How strong is the culture of cooperation in your classroom?

Cooperation is working together with somebody else to achieve something. Cooperation is the sine-qua-non of teamwork. One of the essentials of school education is learning to work in a team. To promote cooperation, we must assign work to be done and games to be played as a team, simultaneously emphasizing the goal and our expectations and emphasizing a compelling cause. The games could be anything from Kabaddi to football or activities like short skits. A balloon and toothpick game is an excellent way to inculcate cooperation amongst the children.

The link added by the Editor is not part of the post's script; it, however, explains the game mentioned above https://youtu.be/q7xY3kDy-Is.

Roopa Bhattacharyya

Mridula Renjit

Ahlcon Public School
Happy Teachers JOL Cohort 2022

Responsibility and Cooperation - Anvesha Rana

Responsibility and Cooperation go hand in hand and are the two fundamental pillars of any classroom. A classroom always bursting with creativity, energy, and innovativeness is an uncontrollable power in need of the right master, a teacher. A class is a team; after all, it is a group of young learners who connect with each other to create something new and then critically analyze what could be done better; they take responsibility for their actions in case something is done wrong and then empathize with others to only cooperate more.  

Responsibility is accountability for owning up to your things and words, whether they were correct or incorrect. We are held responsible for others and for ourselves. Responsibility is the ability to respond and not react; it is to calmly anchor the ship without blaming others and by simply sharing the credit. Trust is perhaps the most crucial aspect of being responsible. Unless and until you are not accountable, you will never be trustworthy. 

We can teach students responsibility by assigning group tasks where each child needs to contribute. In my class, we often need to do group presentations on different topics, so we split the subtopics among ourselves. This way, all the bases are covered, and we can go in-depth about each subtopic; plus, all the members in the group are equally working. So, responsibility can be ignited in a team set up by simply doing what you are supposed to do. 

When someone is not responsible, rather than punishing them, we should make them realize and reflect upon the consequences of their actions so that they can empathize with others and never repeat the same mistake. If they were in a team and didn't prepare their part, the entire team would suffer because the team trusted them enough to hand over a task, but they broke the group's trust by not doing what was supposed to be done. How will he feel if that group member is asked to imagine himself in a similar situation where he is ready with his part, but a fellow team member has not prepared anything? 

When many young learners brainstorm upon a topic, it yields better results than when they work alone; this is Cooperation. It teaches us to trust, friendship and responsibility. When we cooperate with someone, we will only build trust, and once we build trust, we will be friends who will be trustworthy enough to be responsible. 

Our strength lies in our unity, and unity lies in our diversity. Imagine if we were all the same. How monotonous it would be, but our differences are what bring us closer. Close enough to respect others, learn from others and cooperate with others to achieve a common goal. 

Responsibility and Cooperation both arise from love and passion. If we love our education and are passionate about our profession, then only passion will meet education. Our Responsibility and Cooperation lie in loving what we do. 

Anvesha Rana, 

Grade 10-B, 

Gyanshree School.