The Harry Potter Conspiracy

In the morning on the bus my junior told us that Prince Charles is the 8th cousin of Ralph Fiennes, the actor who played Lord Voldemort. What follows is an example of how my brain works. Charles was married to Diana. Diana was said to be killed in a car crash. The Dursleys told Harry that so were Lily and James Potter. Diana's son-Prince Harry. His brother, Prince William married Kate Middleton who is not of royal blood hence a "muggleborn". Yes,she is Hermione!!! Oh and what's her son's name? Prince George!

MIND=BLOWN

 This continued for some time. We also came up with the theory that Diana's sister, not having married into a royal family would be Petunia. The discussion ended with us deciding that Buckingham Palace was actually No 12 Grimmauld Place, and J.K. Rowling is actually professorSybil Trelawney, because she predicted the future. That explains what she was doing at the cafe when writing Harry Potter, she was trying to figure out what the tea leaves were saying!

Hope you enjoyed reading this :D
Have a fun weekend!

Teaching kindness- the second grade way

I realized that I complain way too often about what all goes wrong, especially where school is concerned. So I thought, why not share something that cheered me up immensely. Now you must be wondering, what on Earth can cheer an unwilling student up. Let me add this: it was on a Monday morning, and the entire school was smiling, with not one yawn noticed anywhere.

It was a Monday morning. I was tired (yes at 6 a.m. after getting 8 hours of sleep I was tired), and didn't want to go to school. The bus was late. Another bus had broken down and all the people on that bus squeezed onto ours and we were on our way once more. By the time we'd reached, the assembly had started. All I could hear was slow music playing. I walked up to Jai and asked him what was going on. He said "Random acts of kindness. Watch."

And I did. I watched a little girl walk up to one of the seniors and hand her a piece of paper. I watched another give her big sister a sash. Mark ran up to our transport-in-charge with a letter of thanks. Shruthi gave our Vice Principal the cutest hug ever. Grade 12 got a big card from the entire Grade 2. Two of us got balloons. The 'chechi' who takes care of the kids got a card as well. One boy got a flag, another gave his mom a photo of both of them together.

These are but a few examples of what the kids did. And thanks to them we kept smiling the entire day. I keep thinking, one random act of kindness can cheer up someone so much, why don't we all do it? You know once in a while, share chocolates for no reason...buy your friends' food...do something to make someone smile. Because there is nothing better than knowing that you made someone smile.

Back in class, I walked over to the display board to see our timetable. And I saw a box of Tic-Tac. The little ones had not forgotten even a single person. They'd given the box to our lab assistant with a little 'thank-you' note :)

Keep smiling. Keep making others smile.

Finding happiness

I love this photo. It's one I clicked recently and I love it for a lot of reasons. I love it for the light, which by the way came from a paper lantern (see below). I love it because at that moment I was surrounded by children working on lighting and letting go of their paper lanterns with so much concentration that their teachers would have been wistfully staring wondering where this side of the kids is in a classroom. But mostly I love it for the expression on the child's face. 

Last year a newspaper article urged us to write in about what a child loses as he or she grows up. I was among a lot who wrote in. I said the saddest thing that happens to one as they grow up is that they lose the sense of wonder. As you grow, I feel it even among my peers now, you have this "been there, done that, seen that, nothing new can happen" attitude. One memory which sticks to my mind is of when I was in Grade   8 and we had gone to a planetarium. Because it was a school trip, we got to stay on after closing hours and use the telescopes. I remember standing on the terrace and pointing out a plane's twinkling lights excitedly to my classmates. A classmate's retort to this was a mocking laugh and the words "Have you never seen a plane before?!"

This expression was one filled with such wonder, and just a tinge of apprehension as he wondered if the lantern is actually going to rise. And as soon as the lanterns rose above us, and made their way across the sky as if making their way towards the moon, a huge cheer rose. There were smiles and whoops of joy all around, and kids running up to me saying "Look at those lanterns go!! May I please click a photo with your camera??"

Once in a while, you need such a boost. You need to surround yourself by people who find joy in the littlest things. That evening will remain a very sweet memory for me, because after a long time I saw wonder, joy, and a strange sense of satisfaction surrounding me. We often tell people we teach these children. We couldn't be more wrong. It's these children, in their own special ways who teach us something, every single time we meet them. 

Happy New Year!

Just a quick post to wish all of you a very happy new year! It's been a hectic start to the new year with falling ill, my laptop crashing and getting into trouble as soon as classes started again. Hope you had a better start :D

Once again, Happy New Year folks!