VACATIONS, VALUE ENHANCEMENT AND FUN

 

Eagerness to meet our cousins/ grandparents, Antakshari, late night gossips, listening to the childhood/adventure stories of grandparents and parents, relishing homemade food and becoming sad at the time of departure…

This is how summer vacations used to be at one point of time.

A close look reveals how valuable these meetings were during summer breaks!!!

Summer/Winter breaks often helped children learn and develop interpersonal relationships, tackle problems and solve issues at their levels which technically are life skills, remain fit and enjoy life in real sense.

However, when technology made an entry and dominated every space which was otherwise personal, the fun of weekends and vacations vanished. The hangover of gadget will never fade. The reason is simple. Updates every other day, new applications, increasing fan following, soaring virtual attention… with something new happening every minute virtually why would one want to limit himself/herself to those same faces and games which are otherwise so boring now?

The impacts of excessive tilt towards the gadgets are:

•  Increasing ophthalmic issues
• Reduced memory space (brain space for retention of data naturally)
• Increasing obesity and allied diseases
•  Reduced attention span
•  Weakened personal relations and increasing gap between relations
• Excessive reliance and belief on/in virtual circles
• Selfie show off
•  Eroding self confidence
• Fading street smartness

    There are several other points as well which can find a space but have been intentionally left out to accommodate space for other points in the article.

       Can we accuse technology only for such a colossal drainage?

My answer is, no!!!

Add to it the waning patience levels, inability to control the wails of the children and their instability to be seated at a particular place as other reasons which have made children tech-savvy from the very month of their birth.

Android must not have imagined that for the mistaken comfort that parents must be accused; the software and the hardware are being blamed, convicted and sentenced virtually!!!

What can be done/What is being done to retrieve and reposition the golden era?

• Summer camps at school levels – the participation is 1/10^th of the total school strength
• Adventure sports/ games
• Reading clubs
• Art and craft crash courses
• Skating classes and a few similar activities to engage children during summer vacations.

While these are good and necessary, they fail to establish the connect with the family members as it used to be once upon a time.

What is required to be done?

A few suggestions to rebuild the lost world are as follows:

• Allow children to relive your summer holidays – recreate the scenario by planning visits to villages, reconnecting them to roots etc.
• Engage them in qualitative interactions by being a key note speaker or a moderator to the idea exchange that happens during such conversations
• Set no boundaries, let children enjoy and forget mobiles and technology
•  Plan adventure tours

Let us understand that if we can give time to our kids and allow ourselves to relive our vacations by reconnecting ourselves to the world of fun and bonding we had once, vacations can be fun and value filled.

Happy Vacations!!!

 

 

10 C’s for Teachers

1.       Be certified: posses the degrees necessary to be considered eligible for teaching

2.       Be capable: certificates alone are not enough if you fail to acquire the art of teaching

3.       Be creative: being capable is necessary, but being creative is quintessential. Learn to create a new you every day in order to ensure that the students fail to remain inattentive and understand with interest and intention, what you desire to deliver. Design teaching aids, acquire a few and motivate students to come up with innovative and comfortable ways in which they can understand a concept. These actions will help you to establish yourself as an edupreneur!  

4.       Be collaborative: when you work in a school/ college, you work in and with a team. An edu team is a set of different people who have skills and multiple ideas but work with a unified set of actions aimed at achieving the organizational goal of providing quality and innovative education. While you may be an expert in your subject, you might be falling short of the skill required to control the class or design a teaching aid. In order to ensure order, discipline and unity, collaboration or cooperation with the team leaders and within the team is quintessential. Work as a team, work as one. This helps.

5.       Be confident:  be assertive with your skills, words, walk and ideas. Assertiveness is a sign of confidence or the other name for confidence. While it helps you to clear your stand, it also injects a dose of confidence in students and colleagues. Remember this: confidence is contagious.

6.       Be a Communicator: Learn to speak and present things clearly. Words and actions communicate intention and a biased/veiled communication helps none. In order to ensure effectiveness and efficiency and leave an indelible mark as a communicator par excellence, learn to sharpen communication skills. Avoid grape wine talks to avoid miscommunication and character assassination.

7.       Be Constant: your approach towards teaching must not be influenced by anyone and anything other than the developments in your subject area. Make efforts to understand a student inside out and help him/her develop as a human being.  Make consistent efforts to help the students understand the subject with ease. Make continuous efforts to upgrade yourself as an educator par excellence. Be an inspiration. Always.

8.       Continuous development: as a teacher acquiring degrees is not enough. One has to ensure that he/she does continuous research and development in/on his subject. This is as necessary as upgrading a cell phone to keep it effectively functional. The moment you stop upgrading your skills, your content, your methods, your approach, your career becomes stagnant where demand will be less in proportion to your expectations and experience. Reading newspapers, maintaining a learning diary, attending workshops/seminars/webinars, enroll for online courses, using free content on and from social media platforms to develop speaking skills, writing skills etc.are a few instances of what continuous development means.

9.       Critical thinking:  Develop your high order thinking skills (H.O.T.S) to ensure that you match the expectations of the students and simultaneously develop the same skill in them.

10.   Computer literate: basic computer skills like typing and using MS OFFICE, reverting by e-mail are skills which are necessary. Stop assuming that these skills are for students and office goers and not for teachers. AI getting introduced into school syllabus is an indication that teachers must get ready to use it or be replaced. Use of technology during CoVID has to a greater extent made teachers IT enabled but there are miles to go before computer literacy becomes a non negotiable term of employment for any teacher.

 

Number

 

Just a number, which is all we are

From months 9 to year 90

We live in numbers in plenty.

Name for our loved ones

Number to contact for all,

Biological link for our parents

Numbered link for our clients…

Birth Certificate, License, Aadhar, Passport-

Documents define us by number

Either to prove as alive or in death!

A millionth we must be in population,

First in a few and outnumbered in many

Just a number to begin and end with

Just a number- that is all what we are!

THE BAY

 

 

I find no bay to sit by and let my emotions flow

For there are many within which overflow

the contents of my heart and my soul.

“Is it the dirt within or the wanted ghoul?”

I ask myself while I wander so lost and disbanded

in the streets so full and demanded.

 

While I see the world around in the darkness and glow

I seek for light from within to fill the darker hole!

“Am I the only lonely being or are there many-

Who shed a tear from within and then look so funny?”

“Innumerable there are!” said the winds which brushed

as I walked with my thoughts in plenty and heavy.

 

A mile away, kid I saw dirty and naked, baking in the heat

Bathing in the dust and dancing to the barks with a smile

Knowing no pain, no hurt nor emotional was his mother

Who smiled through the tan and broken skin and ruffled tatter…

With no place to hide, no bay to rest and none to ponder upon

They lived their crumbs with honor and there I hushed!

 

All the tears and the pain- they disappeared like the clouds

And I beamed as a rainbow with tinkling eyes and a clearer vision

Of how thankful I must be to Thee!

The winds must have smiled as did they and HE

‘coz it washed off the dirt and gleamed a new Me!  

As

I knew I found my bay in Thee.

 

D D S Sai Kumar

FATAL CESSATION

Not that every pause is sensuous.

A few freeze the senses terribly.

A few lead to headaches and rise in pressures.

And this one did the same and continues to do this without a feeling of guilt. After all, that is what it was put in place for.

CoVID has, without doubt, skewed the financial canvas and has put the common man’s balance onto a see saw in a maze and he/she cannot cut the costs or the nerve. Debt burden increased while the source of funds started drying.

 In such a situation, the news of moratorium to the working class and farmers eased their tension and they heaved a sigh of relief, praised the decision and perhaps started diverting their funds with a thought that this announcement will help them to overcome whatever financial burdens CoVID had burdened them with.

 And that was when; the twist to the tale came into picture.

For many who did not know that moratorium meant a shift in the payment of the EMI and not a waiver, it was a time to celebrate the decision.

They did not know that it also meant an accumulation of interest during the period of moratorium as well.

What this means is that if the borrower relaxes on the cot called moratorium he/she will have to wake up to a web of additional charges in the form of higher interest rates (as high as 40% to assume) which will end up creating an additional EMI of sorts and may even add bouncing charges to add spice to the pizza called Moratorium.

Why am I writing this now?

Simple!

To wake you up and pay your dues instead of enjoying the EMI holiday!

EMI Holiday is generally a term used to denote the time gap between the educational loan (an example) taken and starting of the repayment once the student starts earning.

Remember: YOUR HOLIDAY IS AN EARNING FOR THE BANK and AN IRREVERSIBLE BURDEN ON YOU!

Hope so this explains why, educational loans are a huge burden and why they allow EMI HOLIDAY and why MORATORIUM is a Fatal cessation which robs more than it relaxes you! 

To react and be a fool or be silent and wise?

 A few decades ago when I answered to everything which my friend spoke in a cold manner, I was told that one must react and respond. Until then, I never knew what reactions were or for that matter what was the difference between reaction and response. 

Thereafter, I tried to react and respond the way I must. 

Smile, laugh, be shocked, surprised... I became human! 

With the passage of time, as responsibilities multiplied, I realized that these reactions and responses were more lethal than not. 

And I started tuning them. 

And am still. 

In this process of being and tuning, I realized something. 

and what was that?

Roll the dice

 Make a move,walk ahead

Stop and skip a turn, it said, 

Jump a few and kill...

Roll the dice n feel the thrill!

Oh! nice it would've been in real

if life gave options and a hint

Alas! It wont ever give a feel 

of the mess or the possible glint. 

Treading in the dark even when in the light

We often fall and tumble and fight 

and smile and shed a tear or fright

the uncertain next roll of His divine dice. 

Trust his light, trust his dark

be calm in the storm and in the Ice 

kiss the fateline and embark

on a journey He deems fits us nice!