Oral Examination

I never thought I would be teaching but I landed up at a school. After having worked for nearly five years I have realized I have some aptitude for teaching and I am loving it.

Although I teach music, I was assigned to assess English oral skills of class V and VIth students had who come for admission. English has always been my favourite subject and I thought I would manage. I was told by the vice principal that I have been assigned to do the job. I asked her if I would be able to. She assured I could. So I gave it a shot. Children walked in and took their seats in the classroom. I had no idea how oral examination is conducted. I asked a colleague and she gave me few tips – few questions and ‘pickup lines.’ I also observed another colleague doing the oral test of children. So I began with one student. It was quite a fun to chit-chat with the kids and I could assess them from the way they spoke.

In the end I completed oral tests of 14 children and gave the assessment results to the office. I hope I have done a decent job. Who knows I might be teaching literature in the future 🙂

Head, Heart & Gut

It may not be in that order but these three things are very important to keep our life in balance. What goes into our head, gut and heart makes us who we are. Our children today should be aware of this idea in order for them to create a healthy and happy life.

Food that we eat is important. Our gut helps process anything we eat. So eating healthy, nutritious and clean food is very important. Every cell of our body requires healthy food. It keeps us going and keeps us from falling ill. Junk and processed food is rampant and we tend to crave for it. We eat everything the advertisements tells us to eat. The old way of home cooked food is almost going out of fashion. Obesity, stress, high blood sugar are killing us everyday. Where do we get them from? Food.

Our head needs to be fed with relevant and healthy knowledge, not just information. The brain needs to remain healthy at all times. We can shut it for anything that destroys our good thinking. Healthy brain is a thinking brain. Head should be kept from any ‘junk’ that’s out there. Creativity and innovation come out of our head.

Heart is the wellspring of life, as the Bible says. It’s the most important organ. If it fails you die. You can be brain-dead but not heart-dead. We feel life with it, we love life with it, we celebrate with it. If the heart is destroyed we lose everything. It can be destroyed by things that are trivial, unworthy and evil. Heart also helps us to connect with God. Heart prompts us to do what we love.

In the end what matters is how much you have loved yourself and others before anything else. When we feed our head, heart and gut well, out of them our life will flow.

I thought I was ugly

I visited a family friend last Sunday along with my wife and daughter. As we met my wife’s friend said that I looked a little dark. I instantly said no I am looking fairer. And we had a good laugh as she was just pulling my legs.

This took me back to my childhood days. There was dearth of appreciation from the elderly people around me. I was always labeled as ‘dark skinned boy.’ People would call me by names that I didn’t like. They would say that I resembled a particular dark-skinned actor popular at that time, in a negative way. I never liked it but on the other hand I believed what they said. I felt under-confident because of this. I had this conditioning that dark-skinned meant bad and fair skin was good. I took their ‘lies’ seriously.

Thank God I got new perspective as I grew up and started working. But little children are affected by what we say to them. We must look at the positive in them and highlight that and not hammar at the weakness nor make it look like it is.