Be The Change - Sunita Mehta

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My Good School presents Joy Of Reading.

The community reading program helps inspire you by reading and reflecting, sharing examples of where children and adults in real life are using values and is very useful to stimulate discussion and philosophical debate. The Joy Of Reading Program is only one part of our Life Skills Program - Reading, Speaking and Writing.

On Sunday mornings at 11.00 AM, you can join us for live reading sessions. Best you attend with a copy of the book and experience the Joy of Reading.  #ReadToLead

Post the session; the readers may want to reflect and share real-life experiences. Our blog www.JoyOfLearningDiaries.com helps them express themselves in writing, audio, video, graphic, poetry, or how they experience the joy of learning.

Dr Anupam Sibal Through his experience as a father, paediatrician and Group Medical Director of Apollo Hospitals Group, Dr Anupam Sibal outlines his approach to effectively getting through to children and mastering the art of parenthood. Focusing on the different values and qualities that make a good person, Dr Sibal has a hands-on approach to instil each in a child. Is Your Child Ready To Face The World? Focusing on the different values and qualities that make a good person, Dr Sibal has a hands-on approach to instil each in a child. Exploring the crux of parenting, this book asks and answers whether your child is ready to face the world.

Abstract by Dr Noella Pereira

Dr Anupam Sibal's book titled "Is Your Child Ready To Face The World?" is an inspirational compilation of essential values that we need to teach our children. It instils in us the importance of imbibing these values before introducing them to our children. It emphasizes the need to be humble, compassionate, forgiving, honest, grateful, and, most importantly, the change we would like to see in others. Through his experiences as a paediatrician and father, he masters the art of conveying each virtue to his son. This book teaches us lessons for life—a must-read for all individuals wishing to make a change in today's world.

18 Chapters

1. Humility; 2. Beating The Odds; 3. It's Never Too Late; 4. Courage; 5. Handling Pressure; 6. Making Mistakes Accepting Flaws; 7. Be A Dreamer; 8. Finding Your Calling; 9. Compassion; 10. Making Others Happy; 11, Never Give Up Hope; 12. Determination; 13. Giving; 14. Be The Change; 15. Gratitude; 16. Goals; 17. Honesty; and 18. Forgiveness.

Be The Change

Chapter 13, narrated by Sunita Mehta, Headmistress Gyanshree School Noida, India

Freedom and Peace - Nikita Rajpurohit

Freedom is when we have a free mind and we are not the slave of any other decisions. It helps us to

act without any fear or constraint. It means the liberty of opinion, expression or the power to act, speak and think freely. Every individual has the right to express freely their opinion on all the questions which are concerned with his or her life.

Peace is a value which helps us to stay calm and silent in an adverse situation without getting panic. True inner peace is independent of external conditions and circumstances. It confers tranquillity, inner harmony and balance. Peace is a very necessary part of humankind because it gives us the capability of good decision making and keeps us relaxed even when the situations don't turn up well. A state of inner peace eliminates anxieties, fears and worries. It also removes negative thoughts, stress, lack of satisfaction and unhappiness. 

Peace and freedom can be said to be interconnected with each other. Let's take it this way, if a person has a freedom of expressing himself, he would be in a peaceful state of mind because there's nothing hammering him inside. He can let everything out. So it is very important to give freedom to our students to express their opinions or views to have a peaceful mind, which would help them to explore their talents without any pressure and make good decisions. 

Nikita Rajpurohit

The Fabindia School

nra@fabindiaschools.in

Freedom & Peace - Innovators BHIS

     Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein

 In a class of forty students, Jia always stood out from the rest as she was far ahead of her classmates in regards to academics. She would always keep herself immersed in books as if she had no other friends. She was excellent in her performances in all the subjects. She had hoards of knowledge on any topic as she was a voracious reader. Only one thing made her shrink into her cocoon and that was if she was asked to speak or give vent to her thoughts. She would shy away from that within seconds….never wanting to speak up! This shying away into her shell worried her class teacher a lot. The teacher would always think about ways to make her express herself, most of the time wondering why such an exceptionally intelligent child would be cocooned in her shell! She decided to take one to one interactive session with her class so that she could make Jia speak up. As decided, she informed the class that they would have an interactive session on a particular day and that they should be ready to speak on something that they haven’t spoken to anyone else about.

In the allotted class, the teacher was there on time as she had an agenda on her mind. Finally, it was Jia’s turn. This shy teenager somehow walked up to the teacher’s desk and sat on the chair with her head lowered. As the teacher gently asked her to speak on what she wanted to share, there were tears rolling down her cheeks…she very discreetly shared that her parents were never at peace with each other. After repeated nasty fights at home, they had finally decided to part ways She was extremely perplexed as to who she would be with….she wanted to be with both! The teacher comforted her as much as she could and explained that adults had the freedom to make their choices in life. Jia, while wiping away her tears, owned up to her teacher that she was feeling a lot relieved by being able to speak her heart out. She thanked her teacher. She suddenly felt that she was freed from the clutches of her sorrows and dilemmas. This day of opening her heart out to her teacher and her feeling of freedom from her brought her inexplicable peace! She slowly started mingling freely with her classmates and felt happy, free and at peace as would any other girl of her age.

Innovators @ Billabong High International School, Thane

-Vaishali Phatak, Smita Bobhate, Bhumi Punjabi, Krishnakshi RaviShankor.

Honesty: Direct Proportional to Respect - Jitendra Suthar

Honesty means having moral principles, to which a person sticks forever. When a person is honest, the first principle is not to compromise with anything happening wrong. Being honest means keeping truth on top of everything.  

As per Human tendency, we all love the feeling of getting respect. Respect itself is a great value of kindness everyone should learn. Respect will bring a lot of change in one's life. A polite, kind & helpful person gets respected.

An incident of class, where there was a child who was always shy to express himself in front of the whole class. There were times when a teacher forced that kid to answer and express himself in front of everyone. The teacher observed that child for two weeks. After that, she decided to bring out the best of that child.

Later on, she started making him speak, read and explain whichever topic he felt was easy. She practised this for a week and every time he answered something, the teacher appreciated him. With this, that child started taking more and more part in-class activities. This built his confidence and made him respected more in class.

Kids in class are honest in any situation, only thing is we, as a teacher, should try to make them express themselves to get respect also and when these kids start getting respect, they automatically start building honesty. No one will be dishonest with others because gaining respect is not easy and once we get that respect and appreciation for our work, we always try to keep things going on.

Jitendra Suthar
The Fabindia School

Reading – A Must: Prerna Rathod

Reading is an essential part of our learning. It helps us to understand others views, keeps us update on topics of past, present or future. It also enhances our personality. It helps us to express our views to others or keep our point of view in front of others. It will help us to gain fluency of the language. It increases our confidence level.

Reading can be done in any language in which we are comfortable. This habit should be inculcated right from our childhood. To start with, parents can read to their children aloud in their mother tongue some small stories. This will give the child to listen attentively and he/she will be able to grasp the correct pronunciation of words and thus he/she will always use it properly. If poems are read to the child with the proper way of expressions they will learn to express themselves very nicely. A child’s mind is able to pick up anything you read or show to them very quickly. Thus, this will sharpen their memory and one thing is for sure they will never forget it throughout their life.

Learning is a never-ending process and reading is one of the basic steps in learning. Reading is necessary for individuals irrespective of his/her age. Parents must set an example for children by keeping a habit of reading daily. Once the child goes to school, then it is the responsibility of the teacher to keep continuing the habit of reading. At first, the teacher should read aloud and then with time the students can be given to do reading under the supervision of the teacher. Reading in school by teachers and by parents at home will make the child think and ask questions to clear his/her doubts.  

Reading aloud makes the children feel that they are cared for both by parents and teachers. Once the child develops an interest in reading he/she can take it as a hobby. So, reading will be continued through his/her life.

Prerna Rathod

Educator: The Fabindia School

prd4fab@gmail.com