Me-my space and environment around me

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Me-my space and environment around me - At genikids we work towards EMOPWERING rather than controlling. The path of empowerment is long but life long. The path of controlling is "effcetive now" but has no life long learning value.

  • Safety of Material, Space and Other people - any action which leads to harming any of them will need intervention from faculty to child, faculty to faculty and child to faculty.
  • In the name of exploration we are creating conflict and that conflict leads to different issues in different sessions. For example we use sitting mats as a binocular today as part of the activity and tomorrow we ask them to not to roll them and use only for sitting :(. We as a team need to first understating MY actions and implications of that action in my class.
  • Krishnamurti in "what does freedom means" says- " Freedom cannot exist without order" - a bird is free to fly but if her fly is hurting others then she needs to fly somewhere else. Are we in the name of exploraton stepping out and "disrespecting" material some times - let us look into this as a team and redefine the meaning of "exploration".
  • Consistency, and Uniformity are the key words.  
  • SEARCH the meaning of "safety and respecting".
  • Similarly we work on other groups like 1% change, care taker training, and environment. We understand the meaning before we take that as a rule.

Also If I as a faculty is Ok with throwing things - I do not object. If I as a faculty is fine with Jumping i am ok with it - so kids get different "discipline environment" and they manipulate as per the faculty. And when they are out without faculty - they do not follow any faculty and hence go by their own way of working.  How about empowering them to understand that "jumping on the cupboard can hurt the cupboard - so let us explore more options" Throwing anything on the floor can damage the materiel - so look for options" "Going up onto terrace may be not be dangerous for you but can harm other kids so care for others and hence do not break the mat and go up to chajja". and so on - When we understand the basic concept of "respect" we let go my personality of faculty who is influencing the behavioral and environment  in the class. And the whole GK start behaving in oneness of "respecting the space, material and people".  

 

 
Often we set codes and expect the kids to follow. Some faculty set the codes some do not - and the codes reflect the personality of faculty - If I am COOL - my codes are cool, If I am strict - the codes are strict in my class. Many times when they do not work we leave it with note "this is not working in my class". Are we looking at "discipline from my perspective or from a fundamental perspective. Fundamental of "respecting".

We need to understand the Discipline in a bigger perspective. We as TEAM need to first understand and define the meaning and then move ahead. So year 2009-10 is dedicated to understanding "Me-my space and environment around me". First we need to explore and understand and then pass to children.

We start formal training in June '09- but meanwhile you start "questioning" - what am I doing? Why Am I doing? And Am I Respecting the "space, material and people around me - are they safe with me".  

 
A small experiment done at home
Dhrupad does not like "fastening seat belt". And we were insisting that you need to wear the seat belt because it is for your safety. And every time we used to ask - have you put "seat belt"? He would say "I have seat belt stomach pain". All levels of discipline happened - talk, explanation, writing, consequence etc etc - but the stomach pain was not going and the resistance to put seat belt was increasing.
We realize that we were trying to work on "wearing seat belt" - while it was the case of "safety". We changed our approach - we talked how we become safe in various vehicles. Soon he started liking the idea of "getting safe" in any vehicle - in bus we hold black rod tightly because there is no seat belt, on cycle I hold mummy's seat tightly and so on. So now it is not about "putting seat belt" but about safety. Now we hear a loud voice coming from back side of the car "I am getting SAFE" and he puts the seat belt. 
  • My Safety - I am unsafe when I do not put seat belt
  • Respecting of others - My actions leads to discomfort for others- bumping into them, stamp others feet, in case of my hurt others also get effected etc. When I jumping all over the place in the car - that disturbs the driver and it can be dangerous for me and others.
  • Respecting the things in the car - When I a not putting seat belt - I roll over things like water bottle etc. So even If I am not putting seat belt like in BUS I care for others as well myself.

Faculty without the "c" in it spells faulty :-)
So what does c stand for

  1. Consistency
  2. Care (for children, for environment, for material, for other people, for everything)
  3. Codes (of how all we can show respect to material, space and people)
  4. Consciousness (this is what we want to build in OURSELVES and finally in children - everything should finally happen through consciousness

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Awareness

Submitted by aditi on Fri, 13 Mar 2009.

Discipline by AWARENESS

Try this experiment - a child is throwing mats in your class

  1. Sit at his level and look into his eyes,  give a smile.
  2. Make him Aware - How do you feel when you throw the mat?


    How does the mat feel when you throw the mat?


    The trick is to not to ask more questions - even if the answer is I feel good, mat feels good - its okay - just repeat the questions the next time it happens
  3. May be remove mat from his hand gently and keep nicely back in place and continue with your work.
  4. Every time this happens repeat all the above three steps. No rules, no verbal instructions, no code setting
  5. If more kids join him - do the same with other kids also.
  6. Be consistence - whenever you SEE take all the above NON-Verbal actions.
  7. Try this experiment without any pre-judgment of the outcome
  8. Try doing this consistently with your self awareness and relaxed mind - no judgment about the child, no image building or no rules.  Just try this and anyone who try can discuss the observation.
     
  9. Design Circle time activity where they can express - "how they can take care of material?" Do not bring the example of the child/ren who is/are throwing mats (make sure no put downs, finger pointing happens) - LISTEN to all and let all together EXPRESS how they want to care for materiel in the class. First of all understand what do they think about "respecting material". Conclude with how they would like to do?
  • for 3to5yrs - bring in thru role play or games
  • for 6 above bring in discussion, problem solving etc.

Alternative

Submitted by aditi on Fri, 13 Mar 2009.

Mail by Radhika - I want to share few of my experiences in our class,
 
Initially when i joined khoj, i use to feel totally uncomfortable, if i see kids jumping on the slates, i used all gyaan,"no jumping on saltes" and one fine day i realised this is not going to work .The next day i entered the class preparing myself " I am going to see my kids with a fresh mind today " and that day i kept my mouth shut and completely stopped telling " no jumping on slates" and i found a alternate place for jumping is jumping on the shapes on the circle in the class.I told loudly in the class, "i want to write,draw on the slate , if i finish i will keep it back in the stationary rack and if i want to jump i will jump on the squares, triangle ,rectangles " and i continued this for many days and after that i initiated saying " today i want to jump on the square ,today i want to jump on the rectangle and lots of shapes exploration happened because of this and now this jumping on the slate has been completely stopped and whenever i find kids recalling the jumping on the slates , i simply go to the shapes and i start jumping ,walking round which really helped using the slates for its own purpose.
 
2.kicking others-- For this we started singing, telling non verbally "legs for walking, jumping, running, playing with friends instead of telling "no kicking" and kids started singing the same or doing nonverbally the jumping running actions whenever they see kicking in the class.
 
3.pulling hair - Instead of saying no pulling hair or showing the no pulling hair picture code,what we are trying is " i want to touch and see the softy softy hair of that genie " and they starts seeing and feeling the hair.
Even when they are getting hurt by others instead of telling no hurting to that kid which i experienced better working in my class is " i like to take care of that X genie like this" by showing (touching the hair) and coming out of that place and next moment seeing, that kid touching the hair of the kid (got hurt).
 
4.Chalk tasting - Nowadays the tasting of chalks has come to our class and we tried saying " We have lot of things to eat (Poori, roti, idlis, popcorn and when i say chalk with a very bad face expression they also do the same and it helped stopping that tasting and whenever other kids see chalk tasting they are doing the same telling "poori ,dosa and chalk Nooo ".
 
Radhika

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