Activity Week - Dehra Dun with Grade 7

I spent last week with fifty seven grade students during activity week. To be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to activity week for a multitude of reasons – one being that going to Dehra Dun seemed kind of lame compared to what other students and teachers were doing for the week. BUT I had a great time with the students and our trip was better than I anticipated. Many of the other activity week trips focused on hiking or adventurous things. Our trip was service based. Apparently our students had been doing some research on different disabilities within their advisor and homeroom groups. The point of our trip was to visit and interact with students from Dehra Dun that a variety of disabilities. The seventh grade class was divided into four groups and each group traveled to a new school during the week. The schools were the school for the blind, early childhood intervention center, Karuna Vihar School and Karuna Vihar Vocational Center. The school for the blind is pretty self explanatory, but the other three might need a little explaining… They are all schools/centers for children and students with a mental disability. The early childhood intervention center is a place where young children – toddler-aged- can get one on one attention and therapy from trained teachers and physical therapists. Karuna Vihar School is for elementary and middle school-aged children. There are four or five different rooms and several different teachers to work with various ability levels of the students. Karuna Vihar Vocational Center is a place where young adults can come to learn numerous life and vocational skills.

Our students went to one school/center every day. I went to both of the Karuna Vihar centers and the Early Childhood Intervention Center. It was necessary for the chaperones to go to certain places more than once so that there could always be one leader that was familiar with the particular place. That is why I went to the vocational center two days In a row and did not go to the blind school. For the most part, the Woodstock students did a fantastic job of playing and working with students at the schools. At the beginning of the week one of the goals was to go back to Woodstock having made some new friends. Towards the end of the week I asked some of the kids if they had some new friends and each student I talked to told me some names of the other kids they met. I could go into more detail about each place and what the kids did there, but instead I’ll just post some pictures. The pictures I have are from the walk down to Dehra Dun, the first place we stayed – TorchBearers, the Karuna Vihar School and the Vocational Center. The other two big hits from the students point of the view was the trip to the water park and eating dinner at McDonalds.

I really enjoyed getting to know the students of grade seven a lot better. I only have five or six seventh graders in band and woodwind lessons. I had to learn lots of new names, but it was great to hang out with some new kids. There were also six other teachers along to chaperone the trip – three of the ESL teachers, the religion teacher, computer teacher and the head of the middle school. The music department is almost like its own school at Woodstock, so even though I am technically a middle school teacher, I rarely see or get a chance to chat with the other middle school teachers. It was great to be able to get to know my colleges a bit better. I also had the chance to witness several different courses of mediation between students. When seventh grade girls are “forced” to stay in a hotel room with their peers the drama starts to unfold… Sanjaya is our head of middle school and she dealt with most of these “dramatic” situations. I learned so much by watching her interact with kids and help to fix each problem as it arose. It is obvious that she really cares about her students and it seems like she is able to find a solution to anything!

Well, I had a great week, but I was certainly ready to be back home on Friday evening! This week was supposed to be a “normal” week of school. BUT today, mid morning, all of the students were called to an assembly and then released from school back into dorms. Apparently there is a political group protesting and all of the schools in India were called upon to not be in session today. The students were all very happy be get a day off school, but I really wish we could have continued with the normal schedule for the rest of the day!

Oh, I should also mention that I enjoy reading the comments that you all write on my blog and I really enjoy them! If you ever want to send me an email, I will definitely respond back!