Round Square News Letter: December 2022
Republic Day Celebrations 2023
The Tiranga was unfurled at the School campus, celebrating India's 74th Republic Day. The celebrations filled the atmosphere with patriotic pride as the parents and students performed. This year the celebrations had an added flavour of Basant as the School also celebrated Basant Panchami. The Saraswati Puja was performed marking the beginning of the new season of learning with love. Our students, parents, and staff members came together to be a part of the celebrations.
On Boarding of the New Parents AY 23-24
An orientation session was organised for the New Parents of Nursery. The session is designed to give them a platform to interact with the Senior Leadership and aims at building a shared understanding of our vision, values, and establishing a lasting connection with the child's alma mater.
The orientation began by welcoming the new parents, followed by sharing an overview of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, its philosophy, and ethos and its journey from the inception of the first educational initiative in 2012 to the new addition of Shiv Nadar School at Chennai this year.
A brief about the Parent Partnership program was also shared with the parents, emphasizing on the strong connection and association between the school and the parent community, which has been a testament to the founding principles of Shiv Nadar School.
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Author Visit - Samina Mishra
Grade 5 students at the Shiv Nadar School, Noida got an opportunity to meet and interact with Delhi-based author Samina Mishra. Speaking to a full house, Samina conducted a storytelling session on Jamlo Walks, a picture-book that tells a story of the migrants walking back home during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker, writer and teacher based in Delhi, with a special interest in media for and about children. Her work uses the lens of childhood, identity and education to reflect the experiences of growing up in India. Her other works include Nida Finds a Way, a chapter book for early readers that follows a young girl as she explores the world around her including a citizens’ protest, and Happiness Class, a documentary film on the idea of happiness for children, examined through the Happiness Curriculum in Delhi government schools.
The author underlined the importance of reading on a regular basis and stressed the need for reading a diverse range of books. The engaging session helped the young minds understand the complexities of the issue and connections between the story of Jamlo- a migrant worker and the various forms that migration has acquired including climate-related displacements. The students grabbed the opportunity to engage, inquire and discuss a range of socio-economic and socio-cultural questions on migration and its repercussions on all countries and societies. The session was lively and enlightening. As Samina tirelessly answered all the questions of the inquisitive minds, the entire class lit up with ideas, suggestions and innovative solutions to migration and its various manifestations.
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Parents’ Trident - 6th Edition
Parents’ Trident is only an effort to engage parents productively and to acknowledge their creative thoughts and expression. It is a magazine by and for the parents. We intend to publish the magazine 4 times in a year.
This is the Sixth Edition of the Parents' Tident.
Editorial Members Mrs. Neelam Narula and Mr. Madhur Prabhakar
VUCA Chronicles, October 2022
We are delighted to share the October issue of VUCA Chronicles.
VUCA stands for - Volatile.Uncertain.Complex.Ambiguous.
For us at SNS, VUCA also stands for Visionary. Understanding. Caring. Agile.
The theme for the month of October was 'Teachers- Leaders in crisis. Students fervently participated and shared insightful essays and poems!
EDUCATION FOR LIFE THEME: Sustainable development.
We at Shiv Nadar School believe that apart from academic excellence our children need knowledge, skills, and attitude to face a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Keeping up with the same idea we relaunched our education for life programme after two years. This programme aims at providing exposure and engagement to navigate and succeed in life beyond school for Grade IX and IX students.
A workshop based on our EFL theme of sustainability was conducted by Ms.Jayati Talapatra focusing on sustainable development goal 12 i.e: responsible consumption and production in order to understand how individual thinking processes impact an individual’s as well as the community’s chances of surviving in the face of resource limitations. Ms. Talapatra’s been working on Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change. Her focus is on generating awareness within corporates on the impact of business actions on the Planet and consequently, Humans. She teaches Business Sustainability in TERI School of Advance Studies and her course on Businesses and Biodiversity is a first of its kind in Indian Business-schools. She started Dilli Meri Jaan Walks, an initiative to restore Delhi’s ecology. These are designed for creating awareness of ecosystem services and taking action to regenerate biodiversity. The walks ensure that each participant takes back a concrete action item, to reduce their carbon and resource footprint and another to improve the quality of air, water, and soil of their city.
The session started by collecting a wider understanding of how fast fashion has over-consumed and how as responsible consumers we can promote both economic development and social and environmental improvement side by side. She reflected upon the basic idea of bringing small lifestyle changes to move towards a larger goal and help the earth regenerate.
She explained how the greatest global challenge is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth and doing more with less. Resource decoupling and impact decoupling are needed to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns and to make the transition toward a greener and more socially inclusive global economy.
To ensure sustainable consumption and production practices necessarily entails respecting the biophysical boundaries of the planet and reducing current global consumption rates in order to fit with the biophysical capacity to produce ecosystem services and benefits. Bringing minor changes in our lifestyle right from sending acknowledgment emails to sustaining gadgets and electronics and switching to brands that promote sustainable consumption will eventually limit the depletion of resources and trigger the process of regeneration at a much faster pace. The session was enthralling and gave a lot of insight into the best practices for making sustainable development more impactful.
Experience Shiv Nadar School’s “Education for Life” Philosophy at Chennai!
The intrinsic value schooling adds to a young learner’s life goes beyond classroom interactions. As our Director of Education, Dr. Shashi Banerjee, surmises, “Our approach (must be) rooted in doing the smallest things with true intent”. Every child’s learning journey follows a unique fingerprint; therefore, a pedagogical approach that nurtures their capabilities and skills is best suited to realize their true potential.
At Shiv Nadar School, we pride ourselves in creating unparalleled learning experiences for young minds. We encourage individual expression, challenging the status quo, and imparting value-based lessons rooted not only in winning but also in learning from our failures. As World Champion in Public Speaking, Mr. Dananjaya Hettiarachchi stated, “Shiv Nadar School permits students to fail safely”.
Two weeks ago, our one-of-a-kind Experience Centre in Chennai welcomed its first set of parents and students. Parents were guided through the school’s decade-long journey in education, which has resulted in our time-tested process to create lifelong learners.
Interacting with various members of the SNS Community, including the students, educators, and senior leadership, parents further learned about our holistic curriculum and other avenues through which Shiv Nadar School encourages knowledge co-creation alongside our young learners to nurture them into responsible changemakers of tomorrow.
In her welcome address Mrs. Padmini Sambasivam, Principal of Shiv Nadar School Chennai, assured parents that her team would leave no stone unturned; until every child entrusted in (their) care grew into a confident, responsible, committed, empathetic, and contributing citizen of the globe.
The key highlight for parents and students was an assisted tour into the Shiv Nadar School Metaverse. The Metaverse tour allowed parents and students to experience and visualize the Chennai campus as planned in the near future.
Our Experience Centre is an interactive and self-exploratory space that allows parents to experience and familiarise themselves with the school and our ecosystem. It showcases the evolution of Shiv Nadar School’s approach to creating meaningful and individualized learning journeys for young minds.
Parents gained exclusive insights into the SNS pedagogy and practices. One of the parents mentioned, “I am not looking for the conventional streamlined education; hence I have opted for Shiv Nadar School. I am enjoying the outlook and the approach that this education will give. It is going to be a very transformative educational experience. I am looking forward towards a journey where my son will be nurtured into who he really is.” - Dr. Sandhya.
From engaging storytelling sessions to learning how to draw and sketch, the young ones were engrossed under the expansive shade of the Banyan trees on campus.
Parents who wish to know more about the school can plan a visit to the Experience Centre by contacting the Parent Partnership Office.
You catch a glimpse of the highlights here:
Readers make Leaders
The library at Shiv Nadar School is much more than a quiet place to read. They are our knowledge hubs, where children learn to explore, investigate, empathise with the characters, question, and express themselves. To help our children continue to enjoy themselves on their reading journeys, the junior library puts out new contests each week and provides assistance in navigating the literary world. Each month, the contests aid in the exploration of various forms of literature through poetry, prose, and films. Please find attached a document outlining all of the Junior Library's initiatives and activities during the month of September.
The SNS Chennai Campus
The school reflects the values a society imagines for its future. It is a space to set children up with the tools to question pre-conceived norms and construct new, un-imagined realities. Design can make a critical difference in achieving this. The Shiv Nadar School, Chennai, is envisioned to be the epitome of environmental sustainability.
The design stems from the dense vegetation on the beautiful site, ensuring that no single tree is cut. A biophilic design allows a seamless connection indoors and outdoors for the students to be with nature. A banana leaf-like parasol roof unifies and shades the different blocks of the school that doubles up as a skylight and solar power generation.
Designed and engineered for climate responsiveness, the school structure is an appropriate combination of passive measures, optimized active systems, solar energy generation, and various innovative building strategies. The objective is to improve well-being while reducing the carbon footprint of the building. The design promotes hybrid tempered ventilation, a combination of air-conditioning and natural ventilation while ensuring natural light during the daytime. The building material palette highlights the raw and natural characteristics with refurbished wood panels, steel, and AAC blocks, with radiant barrier insulation to keep the indoors cool.
The overall landscape is integrated with the built form by using existing trees and plants to reduce irrigation requirements. It activates the existing waterbody with effective rainwater harvesting and wastewater treatment strategies. A blend of simple yet effective passive and mechanical strategies, optimized and engineered using building physics simulations, contributing toward a net-zero built environment.
