Akanksha introduces the Didi Diaries! This series will feature stories and anecdotes of note from our teachers, and provide insight into their daily challenges and triumphs. For our very first diary, we’d like to feature Archana Rao. Archana is an amazing teacher at Matoshri English Medium School in Pune, and at the beginning of the year she challenged her class to be excellent. She then took the top 7 students to visit the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad to inspire them further. Here’s an excerpt from her blog on the experience, click here to read the whole story! You can tune in every few weeks to read a new entry in the Didi Diaries!
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Somehow this quote by Walt Disney has stuck with me since I was a child. It seems to be very obvious and that of belonging to common sense. The true power of it can be really felt only when you see your dreams come true before you. Something similar was felt by 7 kids from my classroom who were selected for a trip to the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad…
As their teacher I feel that this trip has left them more confident and independent individuals. I want you leave you with a very long sentence that tries to capture a fraction of the day we experienced on 28th July 2012.
Starting off with interaction with everyone at the airport including the Indigo staff, wishing every didi and bhayya there and chatting with them about their school and them going to ISB, flying to Hyderabad in a pretty cool airplane, picking our luggage, loving the Rajiv Gandhi international airport, driving home, having a dinner party, waking up the next day to play Ultimate Frisbee at 6:00am, jogging around our colony, having yummy home cooked breakfast, exploring the city by road on our way to ISB, reaching the magnificent gate entrance, running ourselves towards the sprawling grounds, being in awe of their library with thousands and thousands of books, learning paint on desktops, being personally tutored by ISB students, walking around the humbling atrium, checking out the oh so wow swimming pool, gym, basket ball courts, recreation center, walking up confidently to every single person on campus and starting a conversation, talking to the Dean of ISB oh so casually about how we think there should be more children on your campus because it is too quiet, sitting in one of the classrooms watching Sai bhayya’s sky diving video on the magical automatic projector screen, wishing every single facility staff on campus bringing a big smile to their face, meeting the international salsa dancer for a personal dance class and teaching him some of our dance moves, having high tea with the admissions team at ISB, winning ISB sipper bottles for dancing fabulously, playing foot ball in slight drizzle and scoring goals, taking Sai bhayya around on his wheel chair in heavy rain on the beautiful ISB campus back to his bike, giving didi a big group hug in the middle of the rain just us telling her how much we LOVE her, running back to the car in the rain washing away all our inhibitions about where we come from, who we are, what we do, to knowing deep in our hearts that we too can and have the option of doing anything that we want to do and that the choice is always ours to make, to finally sleeping like babies in the back of the car while didi drove us back 50 kms in the rain and traffic all the way home smiling sillily to herself all along knowing that some dreams come true…
sending...