Get a perspective this summer - Lawrence High School

Summer is here and soon the exams will be all over to expose the unlimited time on hands. After spending the last few stressful months studying, it is only natural and justified to take a break to chill out and do nothing. However, even doing nothing can be refreshing only for some time. So, how best can you make use of the vacation?

Students of grade VII to X have a golden opportunity to use this time to make the groundwork for their career stronger. Many of you might be still deciding what would be the best career path. Vacation time can be best put to use knowing yourself, your interests and aptitude. Summer jobs may not be very popular among the higher secondary school students but the idea behind a summer job can be well- applied.

Diversifying your areas of interest: do numbers interest you? You can consider learning about how the share markets function.  Getting hands on knowledge will help you cement the fundamental concepts and get familiarized with jargons like share value, premium, net value, redemption, IPO, etc. What’s more, with little help from elders and newspaper reading, you can even make quick bucks.

Taking on different kinds of work: You can consider helping your aunt with her small-scale business. You may probably not be interested in sales or marketing and this may not directly help you in finalizing a career but you can get a feel of whether you are a people’s person. Dealing with customers on a one-to-one basis will train you on important soft skills like communication and confidence to deal with clients.

Expanding your knowledge area: Reading upon different subjects will give you an insight about the various fields and even areas that are directly and indirectly associated with your area of interest. This will definitely open up the erstwhile unknown career opportunities and will help you draw up career plans B and C.

Taking up internship or volunteering work: If you have strong areas of interest, you may consider working as a trainee, even if it means working for free or a small pay, with professionals in the field. This will indeed help you understand the dynamics of a full time job and the nitty-gritty associated. Taking up volunteering work in NGOs can prove handy if you have entrepreneurial inclination.

So, pull up your socks and get ready to get a new perspective this summer. 

Foreign language as a career option - Lawrence High School

While a plethora of new, diverse, interesting and off-beaten tracks as careers have cropped in the last few years, there is still some ambiguity and uncertainty regarding the feasibility of these options in the minds of students. One such track is the foreign language sector. This sector is seeing a steady rise in demand for language professionals in the last few years.

While French and German are touted to be the most popular choices, Spanish, Japanese, Madrid, Italian, Portuguese and even Dutch are scoring high on the popularity charts these days.  There are reputed and internationally recognized institutes offering a basic and advanced level courses for each of these languages. For example, Max Mueller Bhavan affiliated to the Goethe Institute is synonymous with learning German and The JLPT is a certified test offered in many places within India to evaluate the proficiency in Japanese language.

So, if you have a knack of picking up new languages and also love interacting with people from diverse cultures, learning a foreign language can prove to be a very lucrative and interesting career option.  You can opt to learn just the basics of the language to complement your professional degree to gain that extra edge during an onsite opportunity or spread your wings wider to learn the depths of the language and work as a translator or even interpreter depending upon your choice.

An interpreter needs to be open to travelling within and outside the country as the job involves a lot of people interaction, sometimes even with top-notch individuals. One needs to be very fluent in speaking the language and also have good listening skills. A translator on the other hand needs to have a good command on the target and source language while also having an insight into the culture of the foreign land.

Learning a foreign language can throw up the exciting opportunity to visit other countries, understand the culture, observe the people of a foreign land and expand your knowledge and thinking.

Responsible parenting equals responsible next generation - Lawrence High School

Parenting has never been so challenging before today. This is probably what a parent from every generation felt when they compared the teaching patterns, methods and environment with the earlier generation. However, it is true that while this generation is synonymous with more creature comforts and luxuries made available at the drop of a hat, it is more often accompanied by more work, more stress and more scarcity of family time.  Where our parents and grandparents took the time to teach us the values of life, we take to the short-cut method and try to replace quantity time with more outings, gifts, parties and silly pampering.

Whatever is your social and financial scenario, it cannot take away from the fact that children emulate their parents and learn from what is being offered to them. So, instead of succumbing to outside pressures, it is worthwhile to take a pause and look at how we as parents behave when our children are around and what is it that we would like them to imbibe through our stand in certain situations.

A simple example is that of the birthday parties that are making the round these days. Where once children’s parties could be easily translated to a homely affair with a tight guest list of close friends, small snacks, fun and frolic, the same has been replaced with lavish décor, huge guest lists, dinner parties, magic shows, tattoo making and the likes with very fancy return gifts.  The bottom line being, have money, flaunt it! Can you then blame the young impressionable minds who care less about money and throw tantrums for every little wish?

Another common example is that of how parents behave in a social situation, for example in a queue or taking care of the garbage. We as adults do not think twice before jumping a queue or honking without restraint in a traffic snarl. We sit in swanky cars, wolf down a packet of chips and mindlessly throw it out on the roads. What lessons do you think the children get from these acts? It’s a no-brainer, right?

Consciously or unconsciously, we are responsible for how the future generation turns out to be. So, if we wish to see a country of sensible, sensitive, compassionate and responsible citizens, it is time to clean up our acts and be the same. 

Keeping the examination blues away - Lawrence High School

With the board exams looming large, can the stress and anxiety be far behind? Examinations are considered a stressful affair for both-the parents and the children. I think it is more to do with the approach rather than the exam by itself. A healthy and clinical approach will help both parties arrive at a neutral feeling and will be able to cope better during examinations.

As an old saying goes, preparation is the key to success. Preparing well in advance will naturally keep the stress levels at the minimum. With no surprises staring at you at the last minute, you are well-equipped to carry on the revisions before the examinations. Parents can help students achieve that by helping them prepare a schedule well before and tackle the difficult and tricky topics in advance.

Keeping distractions at bay should be the next important thing to do during the final count-down to the finals. Mobiles, internet, Facebook, chatting (even if it means discussing studies) should be kept at the lowest minimum. Too much of discussing about how much each one has studied and how much one needs to catch up only raises the anxiety levels.

Allowing time for recreational hobby is not a sacrilegious thing to do. In fact all study will bring down the absorption levels after a point. The mind needs to recharge with something creative or stimulating. It could be anything- a favourite sport, painting, music, dancing or even cooking.

Keeping realistic expectations and having a clinical approach is one of the best methods of approaching any exam. Parents and children need to bring down the expectation levels to match the capacity of the student, keeping past performances in mind too. An overall 60% achiever cannot top up his scores to 85% just by cramming in the last few days.

Finally, parents need to befriend their children and win their confidence. They need to demonstrate that exams and their results is not the end of the world-even if they are board exams.  

The need to switch off - Lawrence High School

We have come a long way in the world of technology in terms of being connected. Those were the days of landline telephones and snail mails. The walkie-talkies, then the mobile phones and then the internet caught up with us and enveloped us all in a single enormous wave. We cannot function without google, Facebook and WhatsApp now.

While, the technology did bring in a lot of good, somewhere the social behavior in the real sense is being eroded, especially with young children and the teenagers. These have fallen prey to the technology in a not-so-positive way. Socializing has taken a new meaning for these youngsters, wherein they are extremely comfortable carrying on lengthy conversations with a stranger on the internet but clam up or turn into a recluse in real life.

Many youngsters can be seen poring over their smart-phones (who carries a basic cell phone these days?!) updating their Facebook statuses or chatting or browsing the net. Even when in the company of close family members, they seem uncomfortable to part with their gadgets. A pending online presence seems more important than conversing with parents or siblings or socializing during family functions. And, it is not uncommon to see young kids playing games on iPhone's or even being given a gadget as a treat for being good.

While, not everyone falls in the extreme case where medical help is needed, this phenomenon is slowly catching up to alarming levels. Even adults are not spared of being caught in the technological quick-sand. We are simply unable to switch off!

It is all about taking a deep breath and having a quiet introspection about our priorities. Is it really all that important to answer that email or respond to a Facebook status immediately? Will something untoward happen if the activity is pushed to some minutes later? We, as adults and parents serve as examples to our children and when we set ourselves boundaries, the children will follow suit or at least be willing to hear us out when they are pointed out to be in the wrong.

So, resist the urge to be a virtual person at all times and start living in the real. 

A trip to the “Indian institute of astrophysics” - Lawrence High School

The students of classes VIII, IX and X were taken to The Indian Institute of Astrophysics at Koramangala, Bangalore for a field trip on 28^th January 2013. Below is the account of the trip by a student.

Our trip to the IIA was extremely educative while at the same time full of fun and it brings me great joy to recount the high points of our trip.

We were first taken to the auditorium, where a presentation was shown about the SETI – Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, by Dr. Jayant Murthy. It was indeed wonderful to learn about the lesser known facts about the UFO sightings, including communication with outer space to search for extra terrestrial life and loads of other information.

After the presentation, a short but fun quiz was conducted to assess whether we had grasped the basics of the Universe.

After a short break, we were taken inside a dome-shaped structure-situated on top of the building-that had a telescope among other machines. A technician explained to us about the structure and the functioning of the telescope. It was a very interesting experience for us to see a live working telescope which had an amazing feature of self-detection of celestial bodies in space.

We were then shown a “balloon experiment” performed by Mr. Sreejith. This experiment covered factors like altitude, temperature, pressure and mass, friction, etc. Although the experiment was a complicated one, Mr. Sreejith explained the analysis of the experiments to us in a simple and effective manner.

The next stop was at the “Photonics division” of the institute where we were familiarized with various kinds of lenses used in the telescopes.

We came back to the auditorium to watch a video clip called “Powers of Ten”. The feature dealt with how huge numbers can be represented by powers of 10. We were greatly benefited by this video as it explained the concept in a way that was simple and easy to understand.

At the end of this session, we had a question and answer session with Dr. Jayant Murthy. This gave us a chance to raise the many questions that boggled our mind, to which Dr. Jayant Murthy gave satisfying answers.

The trip was amazing as we not only gained precious knowledge but also had a wonderful experience in learning valuable pieces of information from the vast subject of astrophysics.

Lawrence School Activity Round-up (January 2013)

Spell-Bee for our Tiny Tots         

We held a Spell-Bee competition for our Kindergarteners on 3^rd January at our school. 30 kids from the KG classes and 8 students from the Pre-KG classes took part in an event that included coloring, filling in the missing letters, arranging words and pictures in alphabetical order, joining the dots and identifying pictures. The kids enjoyed the different challenges and every participant walked away with a Gold medal. The winners of this Spell-Bee competition now move on to the next level where they will pit their wits against kids from other schools. We wish them every success!

 The event was conducted by Marrs International.

 

 The English Language Classroom Workshop 

An interactive and informative workshop was held to help our English teachers understand and handle the challenges of teaching the English language. The workshop focus points were:

·         How to be an effective teacher of the English language, and

·         The challenges in a contemporary classroom

Many creative ideas and solutions were generated to tackle language challenges. The ideation included deciding on the course material for different classes, the SMS language, teaching vocabulary and writing effectively.

The post-lunch session focused on group discussions on two streams: 

#1: Who is responsible for the problems associated with teaching of English and why? 

#2: Why do so many of our schools fail to meet the objectives of teaching-learning English?

A lot of what was presented and discussed could actually be translated into tactical classroom techniques. The areas covered included:

• Using different approaches to learning English
• Listening and speaking skills for effective communication
• Integrating different approaches in teaching grammar and vocabulary
• Critical thinking and assessment
• Writing as a process

The workshop was a great learning experience and our English teachers had many key takeaways that they plan to apply in their classrooms.