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Love God, Serve Others, Live Simply : Sundaram House

Paropakaaraartham idam shareeram (this body is meant for the service of others) This is a proverbial poetic line, fervently recited by many, fostering fondness and devotion to the country’s composite cultural heritage but H.D.H. P.P. Hariprasad Swamiji lives through it. His life is completely devoted and committed for the welfare of others. Hence, the value […]

English Activity: Role Play Interview by Students

January 18, 2011/0 Comments/in 21st Century Skills, AVM Updates, Teaching /by AVM Teachers

Love God, Serve Others, Live Simply : Sundaram House

January 21, 2011/0 Comments/in AVM Updates, Value Based Education /by AVM Teachers

English Activity: Role Play Interview by Students

January 18, 2011/0 Comments/in 21st Century Skills, AVM Updates, Teaching /by AVM Teachers

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Love God, Serve Others, Live Simply : Sundaram House

January 21, 2011/0 Comments/in AVM Updates, Value Based Education /by AVM Teachers

Paropakaaraartham idam shareeram (this body is meant for the service of others) This is a proverbial poetic line, fervently recited by many, fostering fondness and devotion to the country’s composite cultural heritage but H.D.H. P.P. Hariprasad Swamiji lives through it. His life is completely devoted and committed for the welfare of others. Hence, the value based education of Atmiya Vidya Mandir follows His message which means to enrich the mind with expansion, fellow feeling and benevolence.

Many parents still sing this hoary value to their young children and Sundaram House clearly and evidently made sincere efforts through morning assemblies and soft board displays that the great legacy is not lost, but only to be restored, thereby proclaiming the relevance of service to the students for a meaningful life.

Sundaram House celebrated its yet another week with a great value-Service or Seva, conveying the students the message that human embodiment is meant to gain the treasure of values so it should be nourished with healthy food, exercise and rest, employing it more in the service of others than for their own needs.

It has been practice of Sundaram House to demonstrate and live up to the value first, which is being conveyed to other students by them. Applying this value, on the very first day of the week, the members of Sundaram House, the teachers and students took up the seva at dining hall. They served the food to everybody with utmost respect and care. It was a great experience for the students as they realized how fulfilling it is to do a little good to others. They were all just inspiring, standing at the counters of the dining hall offering their services selflessly!

It was Anand Kalavadia in the next day morning assembly, who highlighted another aspect of the value of service. He presented a slide show of the world renowned personalities who served the mankind some or the other way. Anand explained how Mahatma Gandhi sacrificed his flourishing career at South Africa in order to serve our nation, how Mother Teresa lived for the poor and the needy and her service still goes through the mission she established. The students got to know from the presentation of Anand how Narayan Murthy the founder-chairman of Infosys and his wife Sudha Murthy have made a better life of thousands of people through many programmes. He also shared with the students the remarkable acts of philanthropy and benevolence rendered by Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft bringing a positive change in the lives of many people.

The Wednesday morning assembly had something most significant to know about the people in Atmiya Vidya Mandir Campus, who offer their services in the campus tirelessly with a sole purpose to please Swamiji. Jay Tailor explained in his speech how inspiring it is to find the elders in the campus who devotionally serve others without any expectations.

After conveying these various important aspects of Service or Seva to the students, it was mandatory for the students to know what the acts of disservice are and how to keep away from aseva. In Thursday assembly, Priyavadan Sir explained the students how to keep away from disservice. It was highly important for the students to know that thinking negative about others, criticizing others, being judgmental about others and disrespecting others for their status are the certain kinds of acts of disservice which the students must keep away from.

Sundaram house was all set to develop an understanding in the students that our first attitude should be to regard our body as an invaluable means to help and serve others. Seva or service is not something we do additional to everything else that we are doing in our lives; it is something that we do while we are going about the normal business of everyday living.

Following this was an amazing session by Sahishnu Patel (Class 10) in the morning assembly of Friday. He put forward the ways of serving others as directed in Vachanamrut G. M. 41. Sahishnu shared that the sole purpose of seva is to please God so we should extend a helping hand to others without any discrimination or sense of superiority as to serve humans is to please God.

The Sundaram house week concluded with a big bang with its incredible creative assembly. The students portrayed a scene from the book Nilkanth Charitra which describes the incidences of Bhagwan Swaminarayan’s pilgrimage of India. During His pilgrimage how lord Swaminarayan as Nilkanth Varni served and helped the ungrateful Sevakram despite his disgraceful and humiliating nature. The students watched with great interest how Niral Patel (9B) acted well as Sevakram and Tanmay Patel was befitting in the character of Nilkanth Varni. Besides these students, Harshill Soni (8A) and Vishvajeet Solanki (8B) acted as pedestrians. Anmol Kagrecha (8A), Harshit Talesara (8B) and Jay Madgunki (5C) served as property managers and Jay Tailor (11 Science) and Nimit (Std 5) as hosts. The students were highly inspired to find how unconditionally Nilkanth Varni served Sevakram.

The amazing week of Sundaram House had much more for the students and it was the superb display material on the soft boards, displaying worth watching information along with the values. The chief motive of decorating the soft board is to enrich the knowledge of students and enhance their overall skills. Students of Sundaram house made an effort in the same direction.

The theme selected was “Traffic Signs”. Students of grade 9 collected Mandatory and Regulatory signs which were displayed on one soft board. Many of them came up with good ideas and suggestions to display those signs in a creative manner on the other soft board. For that they decided to make a symbolic path named as Path Of Success. On which they showed 16 different traffic signs along with the values they derived from those signs. E.g. One Way – There is only one way to succeed that is Perseverance. Success lies in focusing our entire energy on a single aim or No horn – Speak less work more, let your work speak for you. Speech is silver, silence is golden or Speed limit – Delimit the excitement and confidence to avoid an accident. Perseverance pays. Rome was not built in a day. The students who toiled hard for the concept, design, cutting, pasting and making of these display materials were Neelkanth Garg – 9A, Meet Chugh – 9A, Yash Patel – 9A, Sunny Patel – 9A, Smeet Bhatt – 9A, Harshal Gadhiya – 9B, Sagar N Patel – 9B, Parth Agrawal – 9B, Dhimant Rambhia – 9B, Niral Patel – 9B, Krushan Panchal – 6A, Kevin Patidar – 6A, Hitarth Savani – 6B, Utsav Patel – 6B, Jugal Vyas – 6B, Pranesh Tanna – 6C, Suraj Yadav – 7C, Virat Italiya – 7A, Arpit Trapasiya – 7B and Samir Patel – 7B. It was a stupendous concept of symbolic meaning of various traffic signals for a successful happy life. The presentation on both display boards was fantastic.

Thus Sundaram House made a humble effort that students at all levels of the school learn that serving others fosters their own individual growth and civic responsibility. Offer your work by means of your thoughts, words and actions today. “Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can,” Sundaram House claims.. “This is happiness.” Thus students of Atmiya Vidya Mandir acknowledged that all services rendered through love are services to God through mankind and those who help or renders services to the needy through love never regret doing so, because God rewards for such services. God gives us blessings in various forms – some in the form of wealth, some in the form of good health, some in the form of skill and so on. The best way of thanking God is to share His blessings with fellow human-beings.

“The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Written by: Seema Madam

English Activity: Role Play Interview by Students

January 18, 2011/0 Comments/in 21st Century Skills, AVM Updates, Teaching /by AVM Teachers

Loud reading…..factual answers…inferential answers…cramming vocabulary, extrapolative answers..literary explanations…paper pencil test ..and so on.. the mechanical order of learning…..Abstract concepts are difficult for most young children to grasp simply by hearing them explained. Atmiya Vidya Mandir, humbly, yet with a sense of pride, makes the abstract concrete. It is about doing rather than listening, about active engagement rather than mindless copying of words and sentences, which are often little understood. One fine example of such a practice is the ‘Role Play Interview Round conducted by English teacher of grade 8. Instead of teaching a big unit of the English textbook titled ‘Secret of Their Success’ with conventional method ,where students were to read and write about the success story of great personalities, she thought of an activity based learning to empower their communicative skills .

Reading extensively: All the students of class VIII were divided into groups, each group consisted of two students. They were given research work on the life and success story of great personalities of the world , for example, Mother Teresa, Pablo Picasso, Azim Premji, Abdul Kalam, John Keats and many more…Here comes the reading part!!!!!!!! It was worth seeing, the scene of the library, to find all the students of Std VIII browsing books, reading about successful people of the world and discussing in groups. All of them read ardently and collected enough information about the success story and inspiring life of these personalities to feel inspired themselves.

Writing and speaking earnestly: It was the time to take up writing and speaking part. Each one of them along with their group member was assigned the role of interviewer and interviewee. In each group one student took up the role of a successful and renowned personality and the other one prepared and wrote a series of questions related to the life and success story of that personality. Some students like Anmol Kagrecha, Nishit Banka, Satyam Bajaj, Harsh Sarda, Harshil Soni, Parth Amipara, Param Patel and Love Patel were helping their peers to prepare well for the question-answer round for this Role Play Interview Activity.

Listening Actively: Once they were ready with their questions and answers related to the respective personality they were assigned to, their teacher showed them some videos of interviews. They all listened carefully and watched these videos to learn correct pronunciation, fluency, presentation, gestures and even the dressing of the interviewer and interviewee.

Learning Social skills: The students and their English teacher decided to perform this activity in presence of students, teachers and some elders of the school hence the preparations were in the air. The students prepared invitation cards for the guests of this event but their English teacher was happy to see that her students were actually learning how to write an invitation for an event, the learning just happened!!! More than learning to write they also acknowledged how to meet and talk dignitaries as they went to give invitation to Fuvaji, Haresh Sir, Principal Madam and all Departmental Heads. It was amazing to find them working as a wonderful team with coordination.

Event Management Skill: Besides being the participants of this activity, Students of Std VIII learnt how to organize an event owing to this activity. The seating arrangement, stage decoration, property management, receiving the guests, making bouquet of fresh flowers, etc. It was wonderful to see them do their work with great responsibility and coordination under the guidance of their English Teacher.

L.A.R.P (live action role playing): Finally, it was the day when they were to perform the role of the assigned personality(interviewee) and the other as interviewer. Tanmay Patel started the programme by calling upon the guest on the stage to do the pujan of Thakorji. Then Anmol Kagrecha took up the mic to deliver the welcome speech. Here comes the incredible performance!

The stage wore a perfect decorum of an interview session where these boys were in the shoe of world-renowned-personalities and were asked questions regarding their success journey, mile-stones, struggle and achievements. The back stage screen displays were amazing with the photograph and a short biography of each personality the students were role playing. This slide show was appealing and befitting to the show. The anchors Jeet Maradia, Yash Jariwala, Mitul Mehta, Harshit Talesara and many more were just astounding with their confident performance. Most of the students were able to overcome their stage fear and low self-esteem through this activity. Some of the students were able to get along with each other and work as a group.

Now it was the time for the three judges Paras Sir, Saumya Mam and Rupashree Mam to announce the result. It was amazing to get their positive comment about the performance of all the participants. The suggestions regarding pronunciation by Rupashree Mam were valuable. At the end, Prajval Sir announced the winners and congratulated them. The show ended with vote of thanks by Vishvajeet Solanki. Later, Nishit Banka, Harshil Soni, Bhavik Parikh and Kenny Patel and many students shared their experiences.

Akshay Golwala says, “We can understand now the importance of communication and communicating the right way.”

“Not everyone is equally endowed with the ability to effectively express himself and this is where the importance of communication skills can be truly fathomed.” says their English Teacher

The usually quiet Mitul says “I know now that the importance of communication is equal in every walk of like, be it in personal, professional or social life.”

Yash Chhatani says “I have read and understood that people who end up making a positive difference in the world often possess qualities that transcripts are powerless to measure.”

“I now know that important traits and attributes include perseverance, self-knowledge, imagination, the ability to identify the purpose of your life.” says Harshit Y Agarwal

Parikshit says. “I understand now that we should pursue what we have interest in.”

Pratipal Jadeja says “I came to know that success means the willingness to take risks, the ability to rebound from setbacks, and the capacity to empathize with and to work well with others.”

Written by: Seema Madam