TEA Workshop

Teacher Exchange Achievement(TEA) two day worshop was conducted by our teaher,Mrs.Mahalakshmi Ramjee (TEA Alumna) and her US counterpart Mr.Daniel Greenstone on February 11 and 12 of 2010 at school's administrative block. The program was a part of International Research Exchange(IREX) reciprocal visit. The workshop dealt with various topics connected to education methods, material and management.

Prasanna Dhamodharan of Bhavan's Rajaji Vidhyashram had the following to say about the workshop:

"Namasthey and good evening to each of you who have gathered here. Let me begin to record my comments from the beginning of the program yesterday. Right from the moment Dr.(Mrs.)YGP entered the room all of us waited with a sense of anticipation. Te novelty of the two day workshop began with a prayer song sung by the students of PSBB. I am sure all of you here too, like me, kept wondering of the duo were suitors or twins and that was the mood of the whole workshop- suspense and revelation Frankly speaking, when I opted to attend the workshop to my HOD I was mentally prepared for the run of the mill kind of workshop. I expected a lot of what we learnt in B.Ed theory classes –most of which were easy to preach but difficult to practically implement in a classroom situation. But to my pleasant surprise I enjoyed the 2 days here and have learnt a lot of skills checking out which I can now go back to my classroom and practice Mr.Greentone and Mrs.Ramjee have opened up a Pandora’s box for us. There was never a moment of boredom because both of them had thoroughly prepared for their presentations.Some of what was spoken is already practiced by us . But most of the topics had a lot of improvisation and instructions, which will help us, become better teachers.Mr. Greenstone’s rich experience in the US school gave us a perspective of how lucky we are to be teaching in India and not it the US! But nonetheless, we should heed his advice because in a comparative study we found that our Indian student generation are fast catching up with their American counterparts and the is not far off when we too will be in his shoes. They say fore warmed is forearmed, so thank you Mr.Greenstone for mentally preparing.As PSBB’s counselor Mrs.Ananthi Karthic said “Yesterday, all of us had at some point of time have also been counselors in our classrooms, schools, home and society”. Yes, it is very true ma’am. This morning’s session with Mrs.Hemalatha Seshardri was really interesting. ‘Civics‘as we were taught through the open was really boring. But now tih the introduction of ‘Democratic Politics’, our daily life has stepped into classroom teaching, especially for those of us who are able to correlate the news items to our daily teachings.The GIS in developing map skills by Mr.Jaganathan took us back to our geography classes as students – ‘It was mind blowing!’. Mrs.Vaidehi’s presentation on the use of Rubrics and the presentation on scientific literary and English education obey Mrs.Vasanthi was interesting and educative.Let me conclude by congratulating Mrs.Ramjee, Mr. Greenstone and all the other speakers for sharing their thoughts with us. Yesterday and today have definitely been a learning experience for all of us. Thank you so much.On behalf of all the teaching faculty, I take this opportunity to wish Mr. Daniel Greenstone all the best in career. Wish you Good health and happiness always .i hope that you will carry back beautiful memories of Indian students and teachers back with you to the US.Good luck and Thank You. "