Hari om parents,
We warmly welcome you to Bala Vihar 2018-19. Sitaram and I will be the 9th Grade teachers for this year's Sunday AM sessions. It was a pleasure seeing your children on the first day of class!
We have a few new students who have joined this year. A hearty welcome to your families! Rest of you, welcome back :).
Our class structure is more like a discussion forum rather than a lecture format. Children were very enthusiastic and shared their thoughts and ideas liberally, so much so that we had to be ushered repeatedly to the auditorium at the end of class :).
- We started off the class with a 3-minute meditation and an assignment, to begin with.
- The children were given 10 minutes time. They were asked to 'make something from scratch'. It could be anything, but the rule was - it had to be made entirely by 'them'! They came up with interesting ideas and used unexpected materials. Please ask them to elaborate :). Eventually, we told them 'none of their creations qualified or sufficed the condition posed, because..., we couldn't quite possibly make anything from scratch as we HAVE to use the materials already existent in nature. This should teach us humility and surrender, the underlying elements of our vedaanta!'
- We then moved on to discuss the assigned curriculum for this year. We will be studying 'Hindu Culture'. We have discussed an overview of what's coming for the rest of the year.
- We will all be learning the 2nd half of bhagavadgeeta chapter 18 this year. We have started off with learning the 41st verse today as it was a short class. We will be learning from verse 41 to 78 over the year.
- We talked about the difference between an argument vs a discussion. The quote we wrote down today was - An argument is to find out WHO is right, whereas a discussion is to find out WHAT is right. They were totally in discussion mode in class. Hopefully, they continue at home as well :).
In the meanwhile, we may give small homework to parents as well :). We call them Ask Parents Questions (APQs). We will assign a question to the children that they need to discuss with you before next class. If they have forgotten to discuss, please encourage them to question and debate.
The question for this week is -
APQ 1 - What is the requirement for something to stay new, ALWAYS (sadaa nootanam - ever new)?
We look forward to having a wonderful year of learning, growing and having fun! Do look out for emails regularly from us teachers giving you class updates. Feel free to email us with your questions or comments anytime.
Regards,
Rashmi, Sitaram.
Rashmi, Sitaram.
