Hari Om,
It is wonderful to be back in person. After a brief introduction of the teachers Jayashree and Uma, the students introduced themselves. We are delighted to welcome some students who are new to Balavihar. We played a great ice breaker called speed friending in which each student picked up a question slip and had 40 seconds to ask that question of another student. What is your favorite Indian restaurant, what food do you like, what subjects are you studying in school were some of the questions. A2B, Dosai were some of the answers we overheard.
We gave the class a bird's eye view of this year's curriculum- Introduction to Hindu culture. Dissecting the topic, examining it word by word, the class discussed the 2 words that pack a lot in them. Discussing culture, students gave us their understanding of what counts as culture- food, language, traditions, religion, arts, clothes, festivals. It was interesting to note that students made a distinction between religion and culture by saying that religion is a subset of culture. This will surely come up for further exploration. In discussing Hindu, students identified what makes someone Hindu, or what about their own lives do they consider as Hindu. Students honed in on praying in a temple, following Hindu scriptures, praying to God in difficult times such as an exam or audition, wearing special clothes and celebrating special festivals.
Parents visited the class and also were invited to share their understanding of what it means to be Hindu.
We also had a visit from a youth volunteer announcing the Swach Ashram initiative. We have also shared the link for the youth volunteer group in the parents whatsapp group. If you have not joined our Grade 9 parents whatsapp group please do so soon (The link is in the first email we sent out).
We will be creating a separate message group with the children as well.
Going forward - we will have some chanting, meditation, in addition to discussion based classes. Swami Tejomayananda ji's book Hindu Culture might be a good book to buy even though it is not a required book for the class.
See you all this Friday , Sep 23 at 7 pm.
9th grade teachers
Jayashree Vedamurthy
Uma Shankar
