Posts

Child Series - Importance of Consent

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Child Series - Importance of Consent “Love Our Children Day” is celebrated in USA on the first Saturday of April, focusing on raising awareness about child abuse and promoting loving, respectful relationships with children. As this is the month of April, this post is to raise awareness about child abuse, honor all children, encourage the development of loving and respectful relationships with children and raise awareness of the importance of consent. My cousin sister and I (we lived together in a joint family) were a year apart and walked to school. We had to reach school by 7.15 am. It was a ten minute walk. Seven minutes walk to the main gate from our house in a housing colony and then 2 minutes to cross the main road and a minute to reach the school that was diagonally across. The last five minutes of walking in the colony to the main gate was walking in a lane with a compound wall on both sides - no buildings or houses. At that time in the morning, the lane was usually deserted. Wh...
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Child Series - Student safety

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I remember being scared of many of my teachers. They would hit students. I remember that our craft teacher was extremely strict. If we misbehaved or were caught talking or did anything to upset her, she would take a wooden ruler, ask us to put out our hand, close our fists to and make our knuckles visible, which she would hit our knuckles with the ruler, so we were very scared of her. I also remember an English teacher who would remove the pants of boys and make them parade through the school in case of any mis-behaviour. I remember the boys in my class screaming and crying and begging the teacher not to remove their pants. This is a problem at so many levels. First, you are shaming the child and humiliating him. Second, you are sexualising the problem.Third, you are scarring the children emotionally and traumatising them for years to come. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which has come into force with effect from 1 April 2010, prohibits 'phy...
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Child series - Five articles

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     Child series - Five articles  I was perhaps in the sixth grade. We had a teacher - a craft teacher.  Craft period was when we would make products out of paper, cardboard or other material.   The culmination activity at the end of the year was creation of any five three-dimensional articles. Now the teacher told students that if they bought a plastic doll from her, some velvet material and some other accessories like sequins, she would help them make a dress for the doll from the velvet cloth and the doll in the velvet dress could be one of the articles. As this is so long ago, I cant exactly remember if students had to buy the doll from the teacher for a fee or if the students had to buy the doll and the velvet cloth themselves from a shop and the teacher would help them stitch the velvet dress for a fee, but a fee was involved. Craft was not something I was good at, but I could not dream of asking my parents for money for the doll.  Money was spe...
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Child series - Of philias and phobias

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   Child series - Of philias and phobias I used to hate Math as far back as I can remember.  I never really used to 'get it'. Algebra was a dark mystery and I was only slightly better at Geometry. Teachers used to solve some Math problems on the board which I could not follow and they would ask us to do similar kinds of problems ourselves. I never really understood what formulas to use, my tables were weak and I got all my calculations wrong. My mother was a Math teacher at the same school. She was in the primary section and taught all subjects but Math was her strong point.  And being a Math teacher, she believed that only children who 'got' Math were intelligent. I would come home from Math exams and pretend to be asleep so that I didn't have to tell my mother how the paper was. But my mother would come back home, knowing fully well that I was avoiding her and would force me to get up and ask me to solve the paper. In those days, we would get the hard copy of the ...
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Child Series - Naach na jaane, aangan teda (A bad worksman blames his tools)

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Child Series - Naach na jaane, aangan teda  ( A bad worksman blames his tools) I was in this state board school in Grade Four or Five. We had the school's annual day celebration coming up. All students were asked to participate in different activities like dance, drama and monologue. I was asked to be part of a dance performance. I dreaded the practice as I was not good at dancing. Sure enough, I was not able to keep up with the steps taught and was struggling. In order to cover up for my mistakes, I complained to the teachers about how the other students were not dancing properly. The teachers spoke to each other in Marathi (as they knew it was a language I did not know well) and remarked about how I did not know how to dance and how I was blaming others. Though I did understand the entirety of the conversation, I knew from the tone and their expressions that this was about me finding fault with others. I was ashamed on hearing this and stopped complaining. The practice was in the...
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Child Series - Very untidy work!!

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 Child Series -    Very untidy work!!   I was in third or fourth grade in a state board school. I think it was the English period. We were asked to write a small paragraph on the postman and to stick a picture of the postbox. We had to do it at home. I remember using a blade for some reason and I did a very untidy job of cutting the post box from the chart paper and sticking it to my notebook. My handwriting too was not very neat. When the books were returned, I saw that the teacher wrote at the left bottom corner of the left page, the remark “Very untidy work." She also asked me to get my mother to sign the page. I was of course very upset on receiving this remark. I did not want to show this to my mother. So I cut off the corner of the page having the offending remark, leaving the rest of the page intact. The next day, the teacher asked if I took my mother’s signature. I showed the book and said that the section of the page where the remark was written, tore off....
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Teacher series: Some great positive relationships!

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Some great positive relationships! Many years ago, I joined this international school as a middle year’s teacher. IB was new to me and I was drowning in the IB sea of documents, procedures and processes. It was induction week and the new teachers had independent working time. When  I was trying to figure out what I need to do and how to prioritise, there came into the room, this person with glasses and the kindest face I have ever seen. She sat next to me and said “Don't worry, I will help you”. She took me through what I needed to do, helped me prioritise my work and made everything seem so easy and doable. She was very efficient and knowledgeable and cleared all my doubts. She did this of her own volition. No one asked her to. And she did this with all the new teachers. She was phenomenal and soon became my mentor. Our relationship blossomed into a beautiful friendship. We went on to work together in different schools and we were like yin and yang; we had different strengths and ...
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