Celebrating Safe and Sensitive Schools!

The already present festive atmosphere made it easier for me...Armed as a Lady Santa Claus with enthusiastic ideas,balloons,bag full of goodies to easily blend into their cheerful ambience! I got to meet the primary and middle school teachers first. A quick word of assurance from me that I would not overstep the 20-25mins given to me quickly helped dissipate the general look of apprhension on their faces. It was their last working day and they had a long day scheduled ahead of them-TTF interaction,snack time,a lenghty end of term staff meeting and understandingly they wanted to leave as early as possible!

Jenny's quote “life is too short to allow us to lose our vibrancy of spirit” allowed me to drive in the need for celebrations and set in the pace for the day. After very briefly sharing with them how children are constantly making emotional onslaughts on us on a daily basis and how as teachers we need to be really courageous to brave these onslaughts and how courage can only be fuelled by GM's/Moments of fun. I introduced the game of the day and likewise divided them into 2 groups and then asked each one of them to pair up with a member of another group, each pair was then given a balloon that was placed in between their foreheads and they were asked to burst them when the 'go'signal was given.

BANG,bang,bang....burst the balloons-the teachers participated with such fiery gusto that the entire auditorium was filled with good cheer...we shook hands,took photos,clapped for the winners and it really felt great when they showered profuse thanks on me saying that they had had a great time!The photographs attached speak volumes to this end!

They filed out each one of them individually picking up little tokens of appreciation from TTF's end (a bowl containing small 5 stars and a tray well arranged with TTF bookmarks)

The second session started after a very brief break of 5 mins. Another group of 45 teachers,same look of apprehension,same words of comfort and reassurance from my end..!.Then the game-unscrambling of Christmas Carols(pair work)-competitive edge-fun moments-winner(Sujata herself and her partner)singing aloud one of the Carols of their choice-Clapping-passing around the two bowls of chocolates and book mark from either end of the circular arrangement in which they were seated were briefly the sequence of events!

It was heartening to see teachers really relish taking such apparently small tokens of goodwill-constantly thanking them for making me feel good that they are accepting them and also for being so sportive-calming complaints that they too needed a fiesty game of balloons-a heartfelt thank you speech to TTF from the Principal herself and then the first group being called in to join and form a larger group for the staff meet and a FGD with TTF (designed as part of the staff meet itself) was how events unfolded thereon.

Posted by Rajasree Sen, Coordinator - Training and Teacher Support, TTF Bangalore