20 Jan 2023

Dear Parents,

Hope everyone who joined for the trek has recovered from its exhaustion. We all made it back down without much harm, rather not even a scratch. But there were moments when it felt like maybe we should make a U turn. But kids persisted and with the help of parents some reached the very top. Kids were largely cooperative. Not many were creating ruckus. But the best part was all the fun we had during the train journey, up and down.

Now back to all the other news from LC…

Circle Time

We have a consequence review committee with six kids (no facilitators) in it. They are the ones who will review if the consequences are done satisfactorily. What decisions are to be taken in this matter will also be decided by them.

The consequences have become time bound. Meaning if you have gotten any, then it needs to be completed in the first two days, delay any further and you won’t be able to come for a week’s time.

There are many complaints written, but now onwards its validity against any rule will be verified before the accuser is held responsible. Most of the time it’s merely a grievance and can be mutually tackled by having a dialogue between two parties. So that’s why we have a child and a facilitator team who will lead the grievance hearings every Thursday from now on.

There was an excellent point raised by a child challenging the authority that the facilitators have or (pretend to have). We think it's the aftermath of last week’s School-like exercise. They have observed that there are at times few kids who don’t listen to their friends’ requests but listen to facilitators when the same request is made. This is being viewed as facilitators having more power. Rather it looks like kids listen to them merely because of age difference or better credibility. Nonetheless we welcomed the emotion and congratulated the children and asked them to question the facilitators if they are found wrong. Any time and every time.

Few kids do not put their bags in place in spite of having a locker and they are always the same kids. The bags lie on the floor, here and there or in the middle of things. We have decided to put these bags out of our way and place them outside the corridor. If this continues then we will have to take away the lockers given to them since this clearly means that they don’t need them. They have been given warnings and will be given 3 chances.

Building Construction-Site visit

Adolescents who signed up for Architecture are taken for site visit every tuesday. We have been seeing how the construction site works. How big are the machines? What people do and how they work? and how chaotic it looks? We will be tracking the progress of a site from its foundation.

Modelling

We have finished making few models on TinkerCAD and Sketchup. Now we have making models of things in clay. So that the proportions, look and feel can be studied. After this we will have an assignment of designing something in clay as well as in computer.

In People & Places, we have covered Western Europe. Women, Caste and Educational reforms in British Era was covered during History for the adolescents. We spoke about Sardar Patel and his achievements and contributions in TWTW. During body systems we covered Nutrition and digestion and Face and facial organs.

Everyday 15 minutes practice is being done with weights at the insistence of Vinayak Sir. Blossoms were taken to the Sion Circle garden.

Drama Club

Kids turned up with a lot of enthusiasm. So we asked them to make a story with ghosts and all. Create a horror drama. It turned out to be a total confusion, where all of them were trying to cook their own stories. The scripts were changing all the time and the audience was left high and dry to make sense of what little to understand.

Debate Club

Is it ok to lie or cheat sometimes to avoid the consequences? This was interesting because we could see which children willingly chose which side. A reflection of what they think sometimes. The team which was on the side of never to cheat were quoting things from a Moral Science text book, but couldn’t argue in relation to how it feels to them and what it meant ethically. Whereas the bunch who said its ok sometimes, had a mischievous grin. It almost looked like they all have been through it atleast once.

Friday Food

There are some sweet treats waiting for you. If kids have not eaten it on their way home then you are in luck. Like every year we are keeping up the tradition of making til gud in LC. Check out the WA for pics.

Gymnastics Session

We are planning to keep an extra gymnastics practice session in the morning before LC begins. This will be taken by Vinayak Sir and the timing will be from 7 am to 8:30 am on mondays and thursdays. This is not an LC session so kids who are interested in gymnastics should join. The fees for this might range from 1200 Rs/month. We will update soon.

Movie Club - Remember the Titans

This is a movie based on a true story of the 1970’s High School football team in US. The movie is about racial integration, grit, hard work, team spirit and much more. We wanted to show this movie in LC to demonstrate what does sense of ownership mean. How it feels to play for a team. What is hard work and what does toiling in its pursuit mean. Since everyone play some kind of sport, it’s easy to have a feel for it. We also had discussions about what is dictatorship vs. democracy, which we will further extended to the debate club.

That's all for now, more next week...