TKG Academy

When you drive by the little green and red building that holds grades K through 8th grade classrooms and offices, you’ll see the street lined with cars from morning to afternoon.  School doesn’t start till August, so what are all these people doing in the school!

Well, parents, this year we have the great fortune of a Teachers Training Seminar and Conference,  held for the benefit of TKG Academy teachers and staff and for devotees who have driven from as far as Houston to glean valuable information from the devotee experts in different educational fields. 

The most prominent guest speaker is Her Grace Ananda Vrindavan Mataji, who has been serving as principal in Vrindavan’s Bhaktivedanta Academy for more than 10 years.  We also have her good husband, Brajabihari Prabhu, a wonderful devotee and expert in the field of communication and conflict resolution and who speaks worldwide on these topics.  How lucky we are that both of these Vrajavasi devotees are visiting their son Gopinath..

We also have Sara McClellan, a successful certified and trained Middle School Montessori teacher with us.  She is a very sweet devotee and had taught in the Gurukula many years ago.  Her explanations of the positive environments and expectations of her students in her particular school was so edifying. 

Tuesday – Wednesday June 6th - 7th

Brajabihari Prabhu spent some time teaching us the basics of Listening.  As teachers and parents, this quality is perhaps the most important one we will need to help understand what exactly are our children and peers trying to tell us.  It helps us get to the root of our problem.  

Some points I picked up:

• Generally, when a person is talking about their feelings, only 25 percent of the actual issue is what they’re saying.  The actual root of the problem, the 75% unspoken is under the surface, like how one usually only sees the very top portion of an iceburg.  Good Listening Skills help ascertain what the child is actually saying and get to the root of the problem.
• Good Listening starts with proper posture:  leaning forward, square shoulders, facing the speaker, eye contact.  (Improper posture can be leaning back, arms crossed, checking one’s watch etc.)
• Roadblocks to listening:  sympathizing, correcting, preaching, agreeing,  reassuring, criticizing, giving advice, etc.
• He explained that these roadblocks are counter-productive to finding out the actual cause of the issue at hand and dont satisfy the person, nor help them to come up with their own solution.
• Instead using Empathic Listening is the way to go.  Basically: “You feel (name the emotion) because of (cause of the emotion)”

example:  Hmm, sounds like you feel really angry because your little brother stole your burfi!

• Also use open ended questions, not close ended questions, which start with How or What, to help the child come up with their own methods for solving the problem.

• Finally, “What are you going to do about it?”  or “Have you thought of a possible solution?”

Sara McClellan talked to us about the Montessori training and value system her school has in place.  From expecting students accomplish goals they set themselves, to training them to run their own business, write and perform completely professional dramas, how to work with others (teacher, parents and students) with proper communication.. soo many points were covered and every point she brought up fostered more and more discussions that we scheduled for a later part in the seminar.

Mother Maha Vishnu Priya, a certified social worker and counselor from Florida had a phone conference with us.  Discussing and educating us on topics such as bullying, teen suicide, depression, motivating children, and safety.

Thursday July 8th:

On Thursday, Mother Ananda Vrindavan started her seminar.  She went over some really thorough strategies to help create character in our Gurukula students and even for all devotee parents at home.  It was almost a whole day of amazing and thought-provoking discussion and I’ll just put a short summary here.

1.  Hidden Agenda
The hidden agenda of the school should be how to develop the Soul Qualities.  We began this session by a envisioning what these soul qualities are. We all called out qualities one by one as she jotted them out on presentation paper.. Respect, honorable, gratitude, gernerosity, caring, balanced, sensitive, dependable, sense control, tolerance, kindness, love, caring, etc. etc.  As individual gentle voices called out the qualities one by one, and this went on for almost 10 minutes, I couldn’t help but feel a definite spiritual change in the atmosphere as we all imagined having a perfect little world where we could imbibe these qualities ourselves and teach our kids to be the same.  She explained that we should always ask ourselves, Am I strengthening or weakening the soul qualities of this child?

If a young child makes a mess and I either yell at him or clean it up myself, which qualities am I weakening?  If I give him the broom to clean it up himself, which qualities am I strengthening?

If I allow a teenager to talk back, if I let it slide that my daughter’s homework isn’t on time, or if I dont take care to correct him and perhaps make him do the work again, which soul qualities am I affecting?  (responsibility, respect, honorable, etc.)

That discussion set the stage for the rest of the day and rest of the topics of the day.  It was very powerful.

2.  Solidarity.

She explained how important it was that teachers communicate with other teachers.  That teachers present a unified front to the children, so they are not able to weasel their way out of things and avoid responsibility.  She also stressed immensely Parent Teacher Communication, for the very same reasons, that parents support teachers and vice versa, and that both parties take time to communicate issues so the child sees a unified front.. at the same time it gives him the comfort of knowing that both are on the same page.  This led us into a large discussion of Parent Teacher Communication.. How to foster it, encourage it, pitfalls to avoid, etc.  Soo important.

3.  Rhythm Replaces Strength

Rhythm means routines, procedures, things that happen at the same time consistently, every day, every week, etc.  Doing something consistently eliminates confusion, whining, arguing back.  “Before its time to leave the class, we will clean up for ten minutes.”  That’s a Rhythm established by good teachers that if followed consistently allows for students to develop soul qualities such as cleanliness, punctuality, and responsibility and because the kids have been doing it every time they leave the class, there will be less bickering, whining etc.

4.  Freedom From Choice

This was the most edifying and almost revolutionary subject for me. 

Why do we offer a continuous barrage of choices to our young children?  Why do we think that the child has to offered many choices in order to be happy?

Why do we find the need to always be asking our kids, How are you doing?  Are you happy?  Are you having fun?  Are you okay? 

We live in a culture where we think that the child has to be babied, taken care of delicately, in case they get upset or their feelings get hurt.

Have you been to the supermarket lately?  The mere cereal aisle is completely packed with lines of different types of cereal and you walk away wondering, did I pick the right box?  Will another taste better? 

By offering too many choices, we are increasing the material desires of our children.  We are weakening their soul qualities of acceptance, satisfaction, sense control.  Every time they pick one choice, they think of, “hmm.. what if I picked the other one?  Would I be happier?” 

She did a funny roleplay with Mother Yashoda:  “Would you like oatmeal or a samosa for lunch?  Do you want me to pack your lunch?  Or do you want to pack your lunch later?  Do you want to wear your green shirt or your new blue shirt?”  A whole barrage of questions in the morning and the kid hadnt even opened her eyes.

We offer choices because we feel it helps to entice our child to be excited about what the next endeavor is.  We wish to offer choices to give control to the kids.  She explained, while a regulated intelligent set of choices every now and then is helpful, it is important that we not overdo it.

We need to instill upon our children that they need to do things, not because they *want* to do it, or because it will be *fun* to do, but because these activities are duty and must be done.  If we say, “Today there will be oatmeal”, we should expect our child to say ‘thank you’ and not whine and say, “… but but I wanted ceeereeeaaalll!”   The child needs to be continously reminded and made to develop soul qualities, acceptance, respect of authority, tolerance, satisfaction.  He will not develop these qualities if we are always giving him options and over careful to make sure he is happy or his mind is okay.  That will be counterproductive to developing peace in the heart.

If we are offering so many choices at every step, or if we are trying to guide our children in a life where we need to convince them that an activity will be fun, we are actually showing that we dont trust that they are capable of accepting and tolerating and loving to do activities just for the sake of the activity.

She gave the example of the mom who offered her son a cookie from the store, but had him hold it in the car and wait until he reached home to eat it.  This developed the soul quality of tolerance, sense control.  It got him to be excited about getting home.

Especially as devotees, rising early, taking cold showers, chanting our rounds, serving the Vaishnavas.. all these activities intrinsically require that we not be focused on the gratification of our senses.  We need to foster the same qualities in our children and students so they can enjoy the internal happiness and joy that comes from soul qualities deveoping in the heart.  And we can raise children who do not need external gratification for their satisfaction, but find happiness internally. 

5.  Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.

This topic is pretty obvious, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

There were more topics she presented in an excellent manner which fostered so much discussion amongst the teachers and valuable information for us to use practically.

In the afternoon, more discussion with Sara on how to implement the best of Montessori in our school.

Friday July 9th:

With Mother Ananda Vrindavan’s guidance, we developed a code of honor for the teachers, a set of agreements that we will hold each other to, in order to increase the quality of our education and to keep each other in line.

On the last day of the seminar, we all sat in a circle and shared our sense of accomplishment and wonder.  We are beginning the new year with so much purpose and very attentive to the needs of the little Vaishnavas that will be entering our classrooms.  It was eye-opening and very exciting for all the teachers to begin preparing their hearts, their minds and envisioning their classes for the next year. 

Now we are all focusing on setting up our classrooms, preparing curriculum, studying newer methods of increasing attention and motivating your children to want to learn and be ideal citizens.  We cant wait to see you and your children when school starts!  Hare Krishna.  :)