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Thursday, May 14, 2015

Things Change

For most people, graduation is an exciting day - the culmination of years of hard work. My graduation day... was not.

I remember that weekend two years ago. Family and friends had flown in from across the country to watch our class walk across that stage. But like everyone else in my graduating class, I had watched the economy turn from bad to worse my senior year. We graduates had degrees, but very limited prospects. Numerous applications had not panned out and I knew that the next day, when my lease ended, I would no longer have a place to call home.

The weeks ahead weren't easy. I gathered up everything I couldn't carry and put it into storage. Then, because I knew my small university town couldn't offer me any opportunities, I packed up my car and drove to Southern California to find work. But what I thought would take a week dragged into two, and then four, and 100 job applications later, I found myself in the exact same spot as I was before. And the due date to begin paying back my student loans was creeping ever closer.

You know that feeling when you wake up and you are just consumed with dread? Dread about something you can't control - that sense of impending failure that lingers over you as you hope that everything that happened to you thus far was just a bad dream? That feeling became a constant in my life.

Days felt like weeks, weeks like months, and those many months felt like an unending eternity of destitution. And the most frustrating part was no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't seem to make any progress.

So what did I do to maintain my sanity? I wrote. Something about putting words on a page made everything seem a little clearer - a little brighter. Something about writing gave me hope. And if you want something badly enough... sometimes a little hope is all you need!

I channeled my frustration into a children's book. Beyond the River was the story of an unlikely hero featuring a little fish who simply refused to give up on his dream.

And then one day, without any sort of writing degree or contacts in the writing world - just a lot of hard work and perseverance - I was offered a publishing contract for my first book! After that, things slowly began to fall into place. I was offered a second book deal. Then, a few months later, I got an interview with The Walt Disney Company and was hired shortly after.

The moral of this story is... don't give up. Even if things look bleak now, don't give up. Two years ago I was huddled in my car drinking cold soup right out of the can. Things change.

If you work hard, give it time, and don't give up, things will always get better. Oftentimes our dreams lie in wait just a little further upstream... all we need is the courage to push beyond the river

Monday, May 4, 2015

Wooden Bowls

A frail old man lived with his son, his daughter-in-law, and his four-year-old grandson. His eyes were blurry, his hands trembled, and his step faltered.

The family would eat together nightly at the dinner table. But the elderly grandfather's shaky hands and failing sight made eating rather difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon, drooping to the floor. When he grasped his glass of milk, it often spilled clumsily at the tablecloth.

With this happening almost every night, the son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess.

"We must do something about grandfather," said the son.

"I've had enough of his milk spilling, noisy eating and food on the floor," the daughter-in-law agreed.

So the couple set a small table at the corner.

There, grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed their dinner at the dinner table. Since grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in wooden bowls. Sometimes when the family glanced in grandfather's direction, he had a tear in his eye as he ate alone. Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food. The four-year-old watched it all in silence.

One evening, before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He asked the child sweetly: "What are you making?" Just as sweetly, the boy replied, "Oh, I'm making a little bowl for you and mama to eat your food from when I grow up." The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.

These words so struck the parents that they were speechless. Then tears streamed down their cheeks. Though no words were spoken, both knew what must be done. That evening, the husband took grandfather's hand and gently led him back to the family table.

For the remainder of his days, grandfather ate every meal with the family. And for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped, milk was spilled or the table cloth was soiled.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

SAIBSA GLIMPSES

SAIBSA GLIMPSES by Stuti Vasavada

Date: 18th April’2015
Venue: Mulund – Mumbai

Session – 1
Approaches To Learning – ATL Skills
Facilitator –Mr. Rafael Angel

§  Culture Of Learning
o   ATLs are considered as ‘backbone’ of MYP curriculum
o   Collaborative Learning and Interdisciplinary Projects are the major aspects to develop all different sets of skills
o   To make Collaborative Learning effective –
1)Awareness of the academic surroundings – Each subject teacher should be aware of the other subject curriculums and alert about the rest of the activities and happenings. 
2)      Sharing Strategies –The teachers should share their unit plans and strategies of teaching with one another frequently
3)      Students should be able to demonstrate learning
4)      Setting up proper system for storing the acquired knowledge
5)      Attitude – Each teacher is responsible to carry an attitude of        contributing equally, regardless of the acquired position
6)      Designing Documents &Classes –The documents and the classes should be designed in such a way that it creates enough scope and opportunity to develop all different sets of skills prescribed by the MYP. Students should not only be able to learn, rather they should be able to ‘feel’.
7)      Students should make self assessments/reflect through journals and essays

§  Key Words
Following are few key words to keep in mind while considering ATL Skills as part of the curriculum and the unit plans.

o   Promote – Thinking Skills through Inquiry Questions, Statement of Inquiry and Experiments

o   Empathy – Create and develop empathy within students by addressing burning issues through debates or online discussions by getting registered on some particular websites

Registration on MUN – Model UN Online Debates
www.onlinemodelunitednations.org/‎

Registration on SPECPOL –Making association with UNICEF

o   Apart from these – Analyze, Art, Contradict, Debate, Contrast, Relate, Compare, Evaluate, Assess

§  Generating Dialogue through Reading
Following are some books,which could help to generate dialogue within the students through reading
1)    ‘Number The Star’ – For Individuals & Societies
2)    ‘The Curious Incident of A Dog in A Night’ – For Visual Arts
3)    ‘Hatchef’ – For Biology
4)    ‘A Brilliant Mind’ – For Maths

§  All ATL Skills have to be applied to CAS projects

§  Important Links:
o   google books

§  A separate document on certain questions to be thought over for developing ATLs effectively was provided; which is submitted to the MYP Coordinator if it is required to be studied.


Session – 2
Conceptual & Contextual Learning
Facilitator: Ms. Shyalaja Salwan

§  The Activity:

The participants were supposed to make loops of news paper stripes and link them at various stages. It started with the one single participant and increased till five participants step by step. At every stage the time duration was same. 

Up to three steps the output was increasing, however at the fourth stage it came down and once again at the fifth stage it went up with the marginal difference.

The facts derived as conclusion were-
1)    Teamwork could produce better output as compare to the individual one; however not always with all the probabilities. If number of participants increases more than required, the output might turn up the other way round. Also, it might bring down the level of quality.So the number of participants in a teamwork should be exactly as per the requirement.
2)    All the teams were provided resources however not of the same quality; i.e. quality of adhesive tape and the pair of scissors. The quality of resources matters a lot for the quality output of any project.
3)    At some stages the instructions were not given properly in between the activity; which was proven through the output how important it is to be clear and specific while giving instructions while teaching.

4) These concluded facts led the participants towards the larger picture of the business studies and how it affects economics.The same fundamental is applicable for the each project at different stages of academic subjects in schools too.


§  Global Context:

o   The activity described above finally directed how a broad term concept could be delivered through a simple activity. How a complex concept could be delivered through a contextual activity, yet simplified.

o   An MYP teacher should try to connect all different ‘Global Concepts’ and the ‘Key Concepts’ as prescribed in the MYP guide with each and every single task as far as possible.

o   A key concept may be createdas per the requirement out of theprescribed set by the MYP in the guide.

Session – 3
The Subject Specific Session
Facilitator: Ms. Meeta Verma

Discussion on –
o   MYP Art Curriculum
o   How Art could be incorporated with the other subjects of MYP Curriculum
o   Assessments

o   Task Specific Clarification (TSC) for each strand for the summative assessment