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Hello!
Here’s a report on the 45th TAS Municipal School Program. Our last program at Municipal Schools in this academic year due to final exams which begin in the month of April.
Today we visited the Municipal School no. 2 at SRP (State Reserve Police) ground, Krishnanagar, Ahmedabad. Though school is in the SRP campus, the students attending are from the nearby slum areas. This program was actually scheduled on 6th Feb but, due to sports day at school it was rescheduled for today.
As usual, we were accorded a warm welcome by the students and the authorities excitedly awaiting the program.
The poster display was set up for the students to explore the mysteries of the solar system at their own pace. And we watched them peruse the information and discuss the same with their friends.
The program started with a multi-media session instead of observation, as the sky was full of clouds. During the interactive session, nearly all the solar system slides fascinated them as they had never before seen such beautiful pictures of our neighboring planets. Another wonderful thing that gave us tremendous satisfaction is that the teachers too got into the spirit of things and participated wholeheartedly in the question – answer sessions that interspersed the presentation! Especially Bharatbhai, the only male teacher in the school. Questions like – what are sunspots, who was the first to go to moon, etc’ created some interesting debates. Some exceptionally bright students answered my questions with amazing clarity and were awarded prizes at the end of the presentation. Both, the teachers and students, were especially keen to have us come again to give them a deeper understanding. After the presentation, we once again tried to look for an interesting celestial body to show the children thru the telescope, but were unsuccessful due to thick clouds.
At the end of the program, our entire team was thanked with poignant gifts. A first and very unique experience for us. Then Bharatbhai, the teacher shared with us an amazing initiative at the school – the “Shri Ram-Hat” (a small, self-help stationary store corner) a place in a class room corner where, all the stationary is kept in open pigeon holes with prices marked over each product. A student who may need stationary from the stock puts money in small open piggy bank on the table with all due honesty and buys pencil or rubber or sharpener. At the end of the day that money is collected and at the end of the month the same money is used again to buy new stationary. Profits are used for buying some useful things/treats for the students. The lesson of honesty and trust wrought by this visionary teacher is truly priceless, innovative as well as extremely successful!
As we walked out after having tea, we saw a patch open up in the sky. Since all the teachers were interested in understanding the mysteries of the star configurations in the sky, they were shown Orion, Canis major and Auriga constellations. Today’s session, more than any other, gave us a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment!
We acknowledge the gracious support of the following people in making this program a success: Bharatbhai (teacher), Jigar Darji & Stephen Samuel for nice and quick set up and Rajesh Nath for photo documentation. We thank them all for their interest.
Summary:
1. Venue : Muni school No – 2, SRP Krishnanagar, Ahmedabad
2. Date : 13-03-2009
3. Time : 6:30 to 8:00 pm
4. Object observed : Cloudy
5. Participants : 57
6. Volunteers : 0
7. Photo : Rajesh Nath
8. Resource Persons : 3
9. Winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd) : Heena Gohel, Sangita Japadiya, Naved Mughal
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