There are many celebrations, which we do every year. Like, celebrating new year, different personal calendars, religious calendars, social calendars. Many of these engagements are also repetitive in nature, some weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly and even yearly.
How many of these do we celebrate with all our heart and mind set to celebrate it ? And, how many of them do we — each individual — celebrate as a routine, celebrating for the sake of celebration ?
One needs to ponder over it.
This post comes in response to a friends request.
Shifting to India:
Its always like shifting back to Home. Home Sweet Home. Does this need any more explanation ?
Be prepared for:
While shifting from a foreign land to India, there are many things which change, in regular day-to-day life. There are no malls to roam around. No good places to hang out. Lot of dust on the road. Pollution from vehicles is all over the environment. Driving rules and safety — forget it. Anyone can drive anywhere, any vehicle, any stuff. You cant say anything to anyone.
More stuff — will think and write.
It’s a bright sunny friday — the long waited weekly holiday. Life just going on. Many many thoughts in mind to pour through, but cant decide on what to write and what not to write. Lot of stuff to complete.
Counting days to move to Nagpur.
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Had been pretty busy since some time, did not get time to blog also. Hopefully will resume blogging. With a couple of blogs today.
Sometimes, my blogs are confusing, have multiple references, arranged into one. Sometimes, I give them tag, which are on the front nothing to do with the matter of the blog, but they are linked.
This weeks Google Analytics is something like this:
I am grateful to all the regular and new visitors. The statistics are quite impressive.
A nice compilation of bloggers from Nagpur.
http://thenagpurblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/list-of-bloggers-from-nagpur/
I hope the list grows on !!!!
Upgraded to wordpress 2.7 from earlier version 2.6.
Used the auto upgrade plugin and did it myself in minutes. The plugin is really great.
Being an ex-teacher myself for quite a long time in my life, and being an Student forever, im tempted to re-post this article which appeared in Khaleej Times on December 27, 2008. The original article is also appended below, if you want to read the same.
The text is : (with highlightings done by me)
Hundreds of schools have barred teachers from marking in red in case it upsets the children.
They are scrapping the traditional method of correcting work because they consider it ‘confrontational’ and ‘threatening’.
Pupils increasingly find that the ticks and crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow, or even in pencil.
Some schools worry that red ink upsets students Traditionalists have branded the ban ‘barmy’, saying that red ink makes it easier for children to spot errors and improve. There are no set government guidelines on marking and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.
Crofton Junior School, in Orpington, Kent, whose pupils range from seven to 11, is among those to have banned red ink. Its Marking Code of Practice states: “Work is generally marked in pen – not red – but on occasion it may be appropriate to indicate errors in pencil so that they may be corrected.”
Headmaster Richard Sammonds said: “Red pen can be quite demotivating for children. It has negative, old school connotations of “See me” and “Not good enough”.
“We are no longer producing clerks and bookkeepers. We are trying to provide an education for children coming into the workforce in the 21st century.
“The idea is to raise standards by taking a positive approach.
“We highlight bits that are really good in one colour and use a different colour to mark areas that could be improved.”
At Hutton Cranswick Community Primary School in Driffield, East York shire, the Marking and Feedback Policy reads: “Marking should be in a different colour or medium from the pupil’s writing but should not dominate. For this reason, red ink is inappropriate.”
Shirley Clarke, an associate of the Institute of Education, said: “Banning red ink is a reaction to years of children having nothing but red over their work and feeling demoralised. When children, especially young children, see every single spelling mistake covered in red, they can feel useless and give up.’ But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Banning red ink is absolutely barmy.
Common sense suggests that children learn by their mistakes and occasionally they need upsetting to teach them to pull their socks up.
“Self-esteem has to be built on genuine achievement, not mollycoddling, which only harms children in the long-run.
“Red ink is the quickest way for pupils to see where they are going wrong and raise standards. I give teachers who have ditched their red pens nought out of ten.” –
Dream is not what you see in sleep;
Dream is which does not let you sleep.
-- Dr Abdul Kalam (Former President of Republic of India).