News from Pathways World School Aravali, India

[Boyd Roberts]

Mona Sharma reports:

The five Gr. 12 students who completed their Bonze Level in March, received their awards and certificates on their Graduation day in April.

It was certainly a memorable moment for all of us.

 The Gr.11 students have already signed up for the Silver level and have had a brilliant & wonderful experience where ‘understanding other cultures & outlooks’ go, when a group of 20 students & faculty visited Pathways from Mt. Madonna School, in California, and spent the day interacting with our students & faculty. A large number of our students from Grades 9 & 11 participated actively & the total number was about 100 people involved. Everyone (visitors & the Pathwazians)  found it to be a truly fulfilling experience and many of the students & faculty have kept in touch with their counterparts in California. This interaction will become an annual feature between the 2 schools, as they do make an effort to visit India on a field trip from their ‘Values in World Thought’ course. They go on an extremely well planned tour visiting schools, do some service at a specific orphanage and on almost every visit get to have a recorded interview with the Dalai Lama. We have already received the interview from them and all our Gr 9 & Gr. 11 students have heard that interview and discussed their thoughts on it too, during their P.U.L.S.E. lesson.

 

We needed 100 more awards to be ready for the bronze level, along with the little badges we had designed. The supplier (from Delhi) ran into some serious personal difficulties which he had to address and thus will only be able to send the items to us by the end of this week.

 

The students will be awarded during a special assembly around mid- May, just before they start their end of term exams. 

 

The Pathways (PWS) team of faculty mentors have been meeting regularly not just to get the programme off the ground, but to design it such that it can involve a larger number of our students & faculty. Dr.Pathma Naidu, Head of the Life Support Education in school, runs the P.U.L.S.E. programme ( which is the PSHE equivalent in Pathways). She has been very passionately supporting the IGCA Program from the time it was introduced at PWS. She is in the process of planning the best way to have the IGCA programme become an all-school programme and is in the process of presenting our thoughts to all 3 principals (Sr., Middle & Primary schools) and the School Director. As it takes a clear shape, she too will definitely share our thought process.

 

The team ensuring the smooth-running of the IGCA Programme is much larger and is very passionate about the programme and perhaps more importantly, we are very pleased with the reflections and record-keeping that all those students who have completed the Bronze Level have presented to us (we have hard copies of the reflections & records).

The award is so impressive that we are working towards making it an integral part of our curriculum right from the primary years.