Live Webcast of Atmiya Parichay

Dear Parents,

Its time for real action now!

Enjoy the Atmiya Parichay experience sitting back in your drawing room and marvelling at the little wonders of Atmiya Vidya Mandir.

Please click on the following link or copy & paste it in your web browser for live webcast of the event that shall begin from 5:30 PM onwards today, the 26th of December.

mms://119.160.192.171/atmiya_parichay

Kind regards,
IT Support
Atmiya Vidya Mandir

Email service outage

Dear Parents and Guests,

Due to unforeseen technical problems, our email system was down during the end of last week.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and would humbly request you to please re-send any emails you may have sent during last week.

Kind regards,
IT Support
Atmiya Vidya Mandir

HDFC Spell Bee Competition – India Spells 2010

To foster the basic but vital skills of students, Atmiya Vidya Mandir had participated in the HDFC standard Life Spell Bee competition – India Spells 2010 held at St. Xaviers School Ahmedabad on 15^th Dec 2009. The objective behind the competition was to motivate the children to learn the language, create awareness amongst the children to learn and improve the vocabulary skill in English. Improving vocabulary skill involved improving their spellings, learn concepts, work on their vocabularies, work on their pronunciations, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives.

There were two rounds in the competition, the written and the oral round respectively. In the written round, there were 100 questions, of which first 50 where multiple choice. In the first round more than 1000 students from various leading schools had participated. Only 10 out of 1000 participating students qualified for the second round. To filter the students the level of questions was set high. Our students had worked hard with help from teachers but did not qualify for the national level. Nevertheless, they had participated in the true spirit of competition and were determined to work on their short comings.

The following students were selected from our school to compete in the competition.

Sr. No	Name	Class
1.	Ashish Amin	VI
2.	Sumeet Chaudhary	VI
3.	Vaishvik Patel	VI
4.	Anmol Kagrecha	VII
5.	Nishit Banka	VII
6.	Sachin Verlekar	VII
7.	Darsh Bhakta	VIII
8.	Pranshu Savani	VIII
9.	Suraj Patel	VIII
10.	Ghanshyam Dabhi	IX
11.	Shevin Patel	IX
12.	Sahishnu Patel	IX

Art Mela 2009 - Helping the Child Discover Art

In order to unearth the potential in every student, Atmiya Vidya Mandir lays a great emphasis on out-of-class activities. Lots of opportunities are provided to the students through MAD (Music, Art and Dance) club, hobbies, and workshops. A three day workshop cum art fair was organized from 26th November to 28th November for the students of class I to class IX, where students were offered training in many artistic discipline:- art and design-drawing, painting and clay modeling. Students were encouraged to showcase their creations, demonstrating their skills.

Experts and artists from PIDILITE, (which is a well known company to build creativity through drawing and painting) were invited to hold a workshop. This three days workshop was coined around the concept of individual development in an atmosphere that is both pleasing and accepted by every child. Students were given hand on experience of mask making, modern art and clay molding which are organized to inspire and instill aesthetic sense.

The various activities like coloring, engraving, paper mache helped students build self esteem as they take pride in the works of art they create. These activities help to develop their problem solving skills, especially when faced with three dimension problems such as sculpting. Moreover, a fifteen days exclusive workshop on pottery making is being conducted for which a special artist is hired and a pottery machine is set up to train the students. Pottery making on the pottery machine help children to improve their sensory awareness and improve their manual dexterity.

Appreciating works of art is as important as encouraging the child to take up art. Regardless of whether a child is a budding artist, or merely likes to look at pictures, this kind of workshop help to get the creative juices flowing. Children, at different ages, are found to appreciate different aspects of art during this workshop.

Gyanodaya 2009

Quizzes are interesting phenomena! The one who is ‘grilled’ enjoys being ‘grilled’ and at the same time gains knowledge and more importantly – confidence out of the process. Perhaps that’s one of the main reasons why quizzes have gained popularity, especially in the field of education.

One such entertaining, grilling, full of learning opportunities event was organised by the Science and Social Science departments at Atmiya Vidya Mandir. The event, held on the 5th of December 2009, was titled as ‘Gyanodaya 09’ – marking the ascent of knowledge.

The creative teachers had carefully chosen interesting and challenging questions related to both the subjects, with students being the ultimate beneficiary. The event was quite lively and there were many moments like those in the final overs of a 20-20 match! There were two divisions in the event – the Juniors (Std I to IV) and the Seniors (Std V to IX). For each division there were four teams selected with a student from each class of the division. The teams were named after inspiring people who made their mark in the history. Below are the enthusiasts that took part this time around:
Juniors Competition
Aryabhatta: Smit (I), Taarak (II), Nirav (III), Suraj (IV A), Sneh (IV B)
Galileo: Niel (I), Harshil G (II), Kashyap (III), Nimit (IV A), Het (IV B)
Neil Armstrong: Manav (I), Megh (II), Viraj (III), Smit (IV A), Dhanvin (IV B)
Rakesh Sharma: Niramay (I), Param (II), Smit (III), Yathansh (IV A), Pranesh (IV B)

Seniors Competition
Aryabhatta: Jay (V C), Prashant (VI B), Love (VII B), Sagar (VIII A), Parth (IX)
Galileo: Dhwanit (V A), Vaishvik (VI B), Deepak (VII B), Abhishek (VIII A), Purva (IX)
Neil Armstrong: Taran (V B), Sumit (VI A), Anmol (VII A), Vinay (VIII A), Ghanshyam (IX)
Rakesh Sharma: Nikunj (V B), Utkarsh (VI A), Nishit (VII A), Karma (VIII A), Aniruddh (IX)

The quiz had five rounds - General, Mixed Bag (that contained a plethora of questions), Clue, Visual and Rapid Fire.

The participants were full of passion – both for gaining knowledge and for setting higher benchmarks of winning. In the Juniors Competition, quite interestingly, the Aryabhatta and Galileo teams shared the winners’ position. In the Seniors Competition the Neil Armstrong team emerged as the winner while the Aryabhatta team had to be satisfied by the runner’s up position. It was a nail-biting finish in the Seniors’ as both the teams were tied till the last round - the Rapid Fire which proved to be the decider!

The show was impressively handled by the quiz masters, Mr Anand and Ms Samidh who by their humour and presence of mind held the audience captive throughout the event. This event also formally inaugurated the state-of-the-art Auditorium of the School.

Invitation - Atmiya Parichay

Atmiya Invitation

Atmiya Swajan Shri,

Through a system wherein, values are integrated with education, His Divine Holiness Hariprasad Swamiji Maharaj’s dream of nurturing global citizens equipped with the 21st century skills who would whole-heartedly serve their parents, society and souls, has taken shape at Atmiya Vidya Mandir.

We feel glad and honoured in inviting you to intimately experience the dream manifested. This event will be graced by the presence of His Holiness Hariprasad Swamiji.

ATMIYA PARICHAY
Empowering leaders of tomorrow, today

Time: 5:00 PM onwards

Date: 20th December 2009

Venue: Atmiya Vidya Mandir

After the event, please join us for the dinner with your family and friends. Also, please wear suitable clothing as the event will be celebrated outdoors.

Note for parents: You are kindly requested to meet the children only after the event.

This event will be webcast live, for more information, please log on to Atmiya Parichay or contact us via email on event.parichay@atmiya.org.

Cordial Invitation from

Sadhu Premswaroop Das, Sadhu Guruprasad Das, P. Vitthaldas Patel

Atmiya Vidya Mandir Family

Parents News Letter - Website updates and Contact Information

Namaste Parents,

With the New Year approaching, we are sure you have much to look forward to and so do we!

In line with that, we are glad to inform you that we are in the process of upgrading our school website. This will be a phased project and we are shortly bringing in new and exciting interactive features especially keeping in mind the requirements of the parents and the students’ community. Since we will be updating the site, you may face difficulties in accessing the site. Therefore we will be temporarily posting all our updates on another site. You will be able to find all updates related to the school on www.avmfact.blogspot.com.

We sincerely apologize for any missed opportunity to communicate with you in the past and would request you to kindly note the updated contact details. We would like you to continue sending us all your questions, comments, feedback and/or suggestions at the following addresses:

Vitthaldas Patel (P. Fuva): param@atmiya.org
Ashish Tanna: ashish.tanna@atmiya.org

We will try and get back to you promptly.

Thank you for your kind and continuous support.

Atmiya Vidya Mandir

National Spelling Bee Competition

12 students from the Atmiya Vidya Mandir school will be participating in the national level spelling competition which is called Spell bee competition tomorrow on 15th December 2009 at Ahmedabad.
This will be the second round of the competition where students from different parts of Gujarat will compete to secure a place in the next round which will be held in Mumbai early next year.
Here is the list of the students participating from our school:

About the competition
To test such basic but vital skills, The Times of India Group brings to you a unique and scholarly, yet fun filled quiz contest - HDFC Standard Life Spell Bee - India Spells 2010.
The objective of the exercise is to help and engage Indian students improve their spellings, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts, work on their pronunciations, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives. This concept would offer novelty and freshness, & engage them through the mechanics of spellings; a first time initiative. The city rounds would entail usage of various methods to test students on spellings offering proper and repeated pronouncing of each word as well as its etymological meanings. There would also be a lot of fun woven around pictures, symbols etc. used as props to help students spell correctly.
For more information please visit the following website. http://natgeotv.co.in/spellbee/Default.aspx

We wish them all the best on behalf of all the teachers and staff of Atmiya Vidya Mandir.

Submitted by:

Purvesh Sir and Prabhudarshan Sir

Where’s the teacher?

The global meltdown may have hit India, but one sector that has weathered the storm so far is school education. No other country perhaps displays such a wide range of school within the system. There is the government sector with it’s municipal schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas and non government sector with its playschools in larger cities, missionery schools and finally top- end private schools, last but not least conventional public schools.
These all schools have one thing in common, they are desperately crying out for teachers. We may have our periodic overabundance of doctors, engineers, MBAs and IT professionals, but we never seem to have enough teachers. Though everyone knows that the bedrock of any country is its education system but no one is unduly concerned about this glaring lacuna. Little wonder that we are docile or better say paying a heavy price in terms of the quality of our leadership.
This pitiful state of affairs (teaching profession) has much to do with the way we, as a nation, view the teaching profession. Teachers are not considered frontline professionals in the same manner as, doctors, lawyers or engineers. It is believed that anyone irrespective of qualifications or training can teach. And that is exactly what happens. From the village schoolmaster who could be a labour contractor (teaching when time permits) or a disheartened chap who has found teaching as the last option as a breadwinner, to the bored or desperate urban housewife who is more eager to earn something rather than contribute, teaching is open to all. Add the fact, it is a relatively poorly paid profession, and you have a deadly mix (various and ambiguous reasons to join teaching). Teaching then generally becomes the domain of the ‘bored’ or ‘failed’ individual. This is not to suggest that we do not have some of the world’s finest teachers. Ranging from NGOs to private schools we have extremely competent and motivated teachers. But when you consider India’s billion one population, their number appears disappointing.
Another area of concern is the dwindling number of men in the profession. It seems all the men have hopped off to greener pastures (the other so called luring or challenging vocation). The IT sector has recently claimed a larger number. While women do make great teachers but they also have the role of homemaker. Being a teacher for a woman is not as professional as, say being a corporate executive. And the men, who remain, have largely embedded themselves in the tuition market, as opposed to being genuine mentors as school teachers. The most sensitive issue in this sector is there are no top-of-the-line teacher’s training institutions, certainly not one of the statures of a St. Stephen’s and IIT or IIM. What we do have is an excess of ‘fly-by-night’ B.Ed courses, in most cases not worth the paper the degree is printed on (mostly in Bhopal and in U.P). Nothing in the higher education scenario will attract bright young boys and girls to enroll for a teacher-training course. Yet all we can do is to talk of increasing the number of IITs and IIMs!
Career growth in teaching profession is also very slow. Surprisingly, not too many teachers today aspire to be principals. Women feel it puts too much strain in their role as homemakers: men feel the seat is not worth the trouble it brings. Moreover, the system does not provide for any systematic grooming of principals. Most are there either by accident or ‘teachers on promotion’, certainly not as a result of some long term scientific plan. So where does one go as a teacher? Becoming a head of the department may well be the end of the road for most. The profession itself suffers from a sense of low self esteem. Teachers do not see themselves in the same category as lawyers, doctors, civil servants or engineers. How many of us are being proud as teachers? Are we less than those engineers who construct building while we construct future of the nation? Are we less than those doctors who are to stand guard against fatal diseases while we are to safe guard our society against social hitch (through making students a better individual). Do we need to be less proud than an IAS who governs and deals with state affairs; whereas we direct the thought process of a child who can be tomorrow’s Vivekanand or Sardar patel. We are no less than an industrialist who manufactures the most expensive product as we are in the exertion of MAKING OF MAHATMAS. What do you think friends? How noble but vulnerable this profession is? It is nothing apologetic about being teachers. The irony is that we are still supposed to be the epitome of all that is noble and good. A redefinition of our attitude to the profession is highly required.

Submitted by: Seema Joshi