Simplicity and Trust - Prakash Dangi

Simplicity is the most important part of human nature. It is the state or quality of being

simple. Something is simple or complex depending on the way how we describe it. That means we should be simple with our personality and ideas without any showoff. If we talk about school life there also we adapted simplicity to achieve the goal in a short time. And opposite to it, we can show off anything that we move away from our goals. 

When we talk about simplicity, there are some people who come in my mind such as Mahatma Gandhi, APJ Abdul Kalam, Mother Teresa etc. Mahatma Gandhi was a very great freedom fighter but he was a very simple man. The most important proverb that we remember is Mahatma Gandhi " Simple living, high thinking". I will share one incident of APJ Abdul Kalam's life. In 2013, APJ Abdul Kalam went to attend the graduation ceremony in IIT Badlapur. He saw seven chairs arranged on the stage but the centre chair was different from the other chair. Kalam was disappointed and told the organiser to change the chair immediately and bring it to the same chair, then he attended the ceremony. So this incident shows the simplicity of APJ Abdul Kalam. We should tell the stories of great people to our students to build simplicity in life.

I think simplicity and trust work together. If people are simple, then we can trust them. This is because we feel quite comfortable with them. I will share one story on trust. It's about a pilot flying a plane. Lots of people were travelling on the plane. Suddenly, the weather was bad and the pilot could not see the way. All people were frightened but there was a small girl who was playing with her doll. She was very calm and people could see no fear on her face. Everyone was shocked to see the girl. After some time, the weather changed and the sky was clear. 

One man  came near a small girl and asked her, "Why you were not scared when the plane lost its control?"The child replied, "Because the pilot of the plane is my father and I am sure that he will put all his efforts to save me and he will not let anything happen to me". This story depicts the trust of a daughter on her father. So I think to create a healthy environment in the classroom for learning, we should listen to students carefully, try to solve the problem of students,  give equal opportunity to every student, etc. If these things are applied, then we will definitely build trust in students. "Trust doesn't need any verification, if things are to be verified, then there  is no trust."

- Prakash Dangi, The Fabindia School

Courage and Patience - Nikita Rajpurohit

Courage refers to the strength of overcoming a fear. It is very important as it helps the child to grow bold. It boasts a child's confidence. Whereas, patience refers to staying calm in a situation and waiting for your turn to act. Every child is different in their own way so we can say that some children are naturally more patient than others. But we can teach patience to children by taking the same simple steps like teaching them self control, having purposeful delays and making them wait for their turns.

These strategies could help the children to make patience a habit. I remember an incident 7/8 years back when an adventure was organised for our school students in the school. It was paragliding. Everyone was excited about it because most of them had never seen it or experienced it. It was happening for the first time in our area. So they all were eagerly waiting for it.


When the day arrived, all the students were taken to the nearby ground. They all were getting impatient and wanted to do it first. Then the teachers advised them to patiently wait for their turn saying that everyone would get a chance to do it. When the trainer showed them how it's done, many students got excited but some students got scared on seeing him flying in the air. When their turn came, they got very nervous and frightened. Then they stepped back saying that it's not their cup of tea and they ended up refusing for the event. After that, a few teachers called the students and asked their reason for the refusal. After listening to them, the teacher called the event officer and informed him about the situation. Therefore the officer went up to the students and told them that it's not at all a risk for any one of them and they supervise each and every second of the event and they guarantee students' protection. This gave a major relief to the students and they started their way back to the event.

This shows us a scenario where at a moment, students were impatient and had great excitement for the adventure but then they lost courage and patience and how the teacher and the adventure officer made it a successful adventure trip. This was just an example of a single scenario, but there are numerous scenarios where the teacher can preach students about the lesson of courage and patience.

Nikita Rajpurohit The Fabindia School