31st JULY 2011- RKM

Alright then! We are up and running with awesome highs and tons of learning from the last year. Speaking of last year, our center Ramakrishna Mission recorded the best ever score in the 10th grade in the whole of RKM history. WOOOOOHOO! It goes without saying that we Dronas had a huge impact on the kids. Thumbs up, people! :D

We had an amazing Drona turnout today, with activities that kept them on their toes! ;) The GA team as usual brought in amazing activities, and the kids as usual surprised us all with their abundance of skills, something that gets us wide eyed every single time!

Let's head to the activities themselves. The first one involved pairing up the children. Each child sat with his back against that of his partner. One child was given an image made of basic geometric shapes arranged in a specific form. The rules were simple: the child with the image should instruct his partner, guiding him to reproduce the image on another piece of paper. Sounds easy? Hell no, it wasn't! Although the shapes were simple and all the kids had to do was use words to indicate what to draw and where, it boiled down to the mutual trust between partners and the ability to process and respond to clear/unclear explanations. It was the duty of the ‘instructor child’ to make sure his partner listened well and arrived at the image. Concentration, trust, listening skills and instant adaptability were the skills targeted and, hey, we did succeed! The kids loved it, and we loved it, and now the story ends with everyone living happily ever after. :P Uh huh? We Dronas don’t settle for less do we? We didn't stop there...

We moved right on to yet another activity brought up by ‘Superman Srinivas’. This involved pairs of children lifting sticks. The catch? A child could use just one finger. And the fingers of both the children in a pair should be separated by no more than 3 inches of space. Pretty apparent even if I don’t say it - the kids nailed it! :D

Now came the best session of the day. It was  S.T.O.R.Y. .T.I.M.E! :P Bhawana brought us all a treat. It was a cartoon that showed us that everyone is a true king and that to be a true king you need to be a true human.

P.S : The people who attended the session today know exactly what “the best session of the day” meant! :D We all have to thank Bhawana for this. :P

All said and done, the kids enjoyed it. And that's all that matters!  

19th MARCH 2011

                                                       Are we to cry or to smile ? :( / :) ?

Was a perfect personification of 'MIXED EMOTIONS' Was the last day of the current year at RKM..
      
But wow! Some heck of an experience it was. A lump of ups and downs smiles and smiles dying out. A lot had gone through in the hearts and minds of our very potential Dronas. As planned earlier we had goodies given out to our mentees. 1 ink pen , 1 ball pen , 1 pencil , 1 eraser ,1 scale and 1 watch (which delighted them the most) was given out by the mentors to their respective mentees. It was sure a very emotional day with a few mentors kinda having their eyes filled..awwww...! All the mentors had their last talk over followed by a photo session and a lot of wishes and words of encouragement.

        But hey! Amongst everything, We are rest assured all did carry great memories, learnings, experiences and a lot of long lasting friends. A few Dronas would be parting from the sessions. But but but.. NOT THE FAMILY !!! ONCE A DRONA ALWAYS A DRONA. :D

Bows and salutes to all the dronas, who carried out everything with great passion and made DnE what it is today!

13th march 2011

Venue : RKM..!

Tring ..tring..time for dne 10 am the session began!

 A very serious day ... our kids have their exams knocking at their doors ,and we had an experienced and retired teacher among us to give them ideas on how to face examinations.                                                                                                                                                              She started off with how to prepare for the exams .She gave them the following ideas:-

§    Be cool! All izz well!

§    *Subjects to study during morning,noon, evening and night.

§    *Write neatly!coz first impression is the best impression.(though not true in all cases)

§    *Concentrate on the text book information as it helps to learn things from scratch, helps you to give the best and also gives the impression that you know the answers well.

§    *Importance of time management for each paper.

§    *Do not panic during exams coz it does not help you in anyway.

§    *Preparations should be serious work, use colour pens to highlight important information during preparation so that it stays coloured in your memory forever.

§    *Finally, do your best and god will do the rest!

So our guys are off to face it smart and confident! The session was covered by a student from womens Christian college for her project, a documentary.

few  of our Volunteers had a short talk with her regarding dne and its functioning.

Mentoring went on for sometime, and everything seemed to be quiet serious today. Totally felt the heat huh?

Winding up session made things more interesting!...next week dne is gonna wind up with this academic year. Discussions were done on how to wind up.ideas came up from everywhere corner and we decided to gift our kids something before they leave..and then we came up with the idea of a card,exam stationery materials and a wrist watch! Cool! We have mentally prepared them to face the exams! Let’s now sit and watch them coming out in flying colours!

Venue: St. George 

As is usually the practice at St. George's, the mentors were in front of the
kids' hostel at 9:30 awaiting our precious little demon to come out of their
wonderlands and join us for yet another sunday with a group activity
iterlaced with fun-filled moments. that's when Bhargav, Kenny, Joel and I
started kicking the football around the ground (we were no match for the
kids. but we did manage to get our legs on the ball now and then) while
Vijitha was chatting with Katherine (Kat), Christina and Rachel.

Today Vijitha came up with a game called "Identify Jack the robber" (well at
least that's what i vaguely remember calling it, some of the kids were
reeling out similar names one after the other!!) wherein each person
(mentors included) picked up chits of paper where the following were
written:
(1) Police (2) Jack (3) Associate-1 (4) Associate-2....Associate-n (just
prepare as many chits as there are participants

The games starts off with everyone sittin in a 'round' circle (that was
Damu's phrase!!) facing each other. Then Police announces that he's the boss
while the others keep traps shut. Then Jack winks at each of his associates
without being spotted by Police. Then the associate declares "Received
Signal" (or something wacky) to let the others know that he's been contacted
by Jack, and then leaves the group. One by one the contacted associates
leave the group.
The fewer the associates that escape and sooner that Jack is caught in the
act of winking at his associates, the higher is the Police's score.

So whats next ??????

It was the very first - "Drona's Day out"!! We decided to meet up at 5pm at Gandhi beach!

Had a lovely evening filled with fun in the water, bajjis and fially ending the day at Dominos :D !

Just as all children are not equally intelligent, all children are not equally creative. But just as all children exhibit behaviours which evidence intelligence from birth, they also exhibit behaviours which evidence the potential for creativity.
Creativity is essentially a form of problem-solving. But it is a special type of problem-solving--one that involves problems for which there are no easy answers
-anonymous


Now we know what creativity is all about .we just saw it today!Every mentor must have smiled Jwhen their mentees came up with mind-blowing ideas from the materials we gave(:news paper,colour charts,tapes,and colour pens).


Cheers!! The great minds are working!

From Laptops to ..flower vase..handbags...beach...apartment..airports...isnt it awesome!!!:)
All this came out of those little minds from just the little things we gave them..And we can be sure that our country is going to do well coz these little minds are already on work!
Proud to be a part of dne right!:) gr8 job!

Since the creative session went on and on we couldn’t make up with the learning cycle!It was Creativity at its best 

Mentoring went on well..guess all had a nice time with kids.

RKM - 20th Feb 2011

Picture perfect indeed! Rightly put by Yeshwanth..

It was rather sad that a few mentors and mentees missed out today’s session..The reason for the mentees was actually acceptable; They had to go receive awards somewhere..But Mentors??

                Regardless….An ideal day yet again.. Proud of the way we are rolling..KUDOS DnE =) The Bench marks are being raised week and week again. It goes beyond mention how talented and surprising the kids are proving to be. Wooooo..Imagine 16 year olds cracking a solution to a Management activity.. Awesome uh ? An activity brought up yet again by our very own Madav. The activity was called “MAGIC TILES” where in the kids had to cross 20 people in their team using just 6 tiles in 10mins ONLY.. (Scenario: The place is on fire and they have to rely on the tiles to cross the length of the hall on.. The catch - avoid any part of your body touching the flaming ground!!!) All kinds of techniques and strategies were implemented and TADAAAAA all 20 got through even before 10mins..! 

          

 Mentoring was up next. Discussions were again on their exams. A few mentors personally provided hands on help with their subjects. In today’s case it was Math the following day. A few others helped them structure their study time. A few mentees were so engrossed interacting and working their hearts out with the mentors that even when we wanted to call it a day for them, they actually said they wanted to STAY..WOW! Yet another sign of how well Dronas are performing and connecting with the mentees.

Now now now.. LC.. This was when tensions heated up a little, a few confrontations, a few REALIZATIONS and a few ‘To-Do things’ were brought up after Parthiban and family had their creative-‘no video’ oriented LC on ‘CREATIVITY’. The session ended with mixed emotions( hopefully positive...Right Dronas??).

 FINALLY.. ‘A BIG WELCOME TO OUR 4 NEW VOLUNTEERS’ WELCOME ABOARD. WE ARE GLAD AND THRILLED TO HAVE YOU IN!  =) =)

                

RKM - 6th-Feb-2011 !

An ideal session portraying what ‘DnE is actually all about’.

                                Sunday morning started off with pre-arrangements for the GA( Group Activity) brought up by a co-drona-MADAV. Which apparently came to us as a surprise with most of us thinking the activity would prove to be highly complicated for the levels of RKM’s 10^th graders. Surprise surprise..WE WERE WRONG! The kids stood up and completed the task in a highly impressive fashion than that was actually was expected of them. To be really honest, much wasn’t expected. Oh! Speaking of which, the activity was an adaptation from one of the HARWARD MANAGEMENT GAMES.

             (Curious about the activity ? ---The link with activity details would be up shortly!) 

A successful, exuberant and a very satisfactory GA was followed by ‘personal one on one mentoring sessions’. With board exams tingling every kid’s (well almost :P ) serious side  it was agreed upon mutually by all mentors that the prime focus would be-EXAMS. Despite a cricket match being conducted in their ‘home’ forming a distraction at the back of the heads; one could easily be convinced by simply looking at the bright and focused eyes of the mentors and their mentees and evidently conclude as to how amazingly effective the session turned out to be. The Mentoring session ended a little earlier than usual (Courtesy-Cricket Matches x(Cricket does play a spoil sport many a times in our life.. P.S: Cricket lovers..NO OFFENCE!! :D  )

                                Now came in the time to switch roles.. from being teachers/mentors/preachers…and what not ‘ers’ to being Learn'ers'. The mentors now gathered around for our weekly “LC (learning cycle)”.This week’s LC was co-ordinated by Uma and family. We were presented with an awe inspiring and ‘neuron tickling’ video (big word uh? :P..we at DnE believe in Making it BIG..lol). Getting serious, the video presented by Uma and Family was a TED talk by – Sugata Mitra(Educational Technician) on a concept he named ‘Hole in the wall’!  And as usual our ‘Drona brains where put to work’. A discussion and a feedback session followed up.  The session ended with a brainstorming session and also a little bit of thought clashes and misinterpretations….“AHEM”…. All in all, a very satisfactory and productive session.  

                                Ooops.. did I miss out on the open house visitor from ‘MAD-Bhumi’ ? I, just like the others think he apparently would have had a very positive feed to give and left with a smile glued on. Especially considering the fact the amazing Drona’s who make DnE a Great place to be!