Written by Harliv Kaur

 It's Sunday morning and there is a great buzz of activity in our home. Although we're all getting ready to go to Gurduara like any other Sunday, there's a different kind of energy in the air. Then the telephone rings and I hear my mom say with enthusiasm, "Vaisakhi di vadhai hove." Well, that explains all the excitement - it's Vaisakhi today. My family and I will be celebrating by attending a Nagar Kirtan. My mom helps me get ready - I'm wearing a white suit and an orange chunni. From everyone's expressions, I can tell this is going to be a fun and special day.

As we arrived at the Nagar Kirtan I'm suddenly engulfed in a sea of orange - dastaars, chunnis, patkas, etc. It was such a lovely sight. The entire day was filled with listening to beautiful kirtan being done on elaborately decorated floats. We stood in the warm sun and heard inspirational speeches, kavitas and dhadi vaars. Next, there was a thunder of loud Jakaras by young and old. The air was filled with a warm and infectious feeling of pride. Those special days of my childhood will never be forgotten!

Now as an adult, I'm looking forward to celebrating Vaisakhi with my own children. Although I want them to enjoy the celebration and feel the pride - I want a little bit more.
So here's our Vaisakhi plan this year: My daughter attends a pre-school where each family needs to bring a snack once a month. We requested to have Vasakhi day as our snack day. I also mentioned to the teacher that this is a very special occasion for Sikhs so she asked me to come and share some information about Sikhi. I look forward to sharing about Vaisakhi with my daughter by my side.

I also want this day to feel very special for my children so I've planned a special picnic where I'd like to share the sakhi of the first Vaisakhi. Although I think it's important for   them to know the sakhi and know the names of the panj piare, it's far more important for me to teach them the significance of the commitment that the panj piare made. We'll discuss our own commitments to the Guru. What promises am I making to become a good Sikh? What promises can they make? Can we make promises together as a family? After our discussion, we will play team building games, sing songs like "We are the Khalsa" and "Sikhi Meri Jaan Hai" and enjoy a Vaisakhi feast.

This is how we'll celebrate Vaisakhi this year, how about you? What are your special Vaisakhi plans? Please share your wonderful plans with us.

San Antonio, TX-- Sikh Research Institute (SikhRI) is proud to announce that a new lesson plan and related resource materials are available at no charge for download at Sikh Educators Network (SEN). The lesson plan, “The Environment: Recognizing Creator in Creation” is released to correspond with celebrations of Sikh Environment Day, as encouraged by EcoSikh. Of course, it is also a perfect for use year-round in the classroom or at home with the whole family.

The activities in this unit were compiled by a team of SikhRI staff, and can be tailored to any grade level, K-12. A mix of engaging, hands-on projects, discussion questions and sakhis work together to encourage a sense of wonder at the gifts of the natural world, as well as ingraining a desire to protect them.  

Running the entire lesson plan can take 1-2 hours, depending on the age of the students and the activities selected. Some private Sikh schools plan to teach the lesson in “mini-units” spreading the agenda over several days. Supplementary resources that come with the plan include environment-themed word searches, matching games, crosswords, and other fun worksheets, that also focus on language arts and draw from Sikh heritage.

“We designed this lesson plan to make students excited about the long history of environmental stewardship that is part of our Guru’s message,” said Jasmine Kaur, Director of Education at SikhRI. “Our goals is to show that taking responsibility for the natural world can be an easy part of daily life for students, and taking action today ensures a healthier earth tomorrow."

The materials can be found at sikheducatorsnetwork.org. If you haven’t visited yet, SEN is a site for Sikh educators to enjoy access to a variety of materials which inspire creativity and passion for Sikhi education. Be on the look out for new bloggers and resource material coming soon to SEN--there’s never been a better time to join up!

Membership and access to all materials on SEN is free, and requires only a few minutes to create an account.

Sikh Reorganization

Written by Tanveer Kaur (Teacher at Khalsa School Calgary)

Every summer before Gurmat camp we all start feeling that excitement of another week with our friends. But this past year I was feeling less anxious about meeting my friends and more anxious about my students and how I will make this a memorable learning experience for them.

With only a few teaching hours within the week, I wanted to make every minute worthwhile and yet interesting and captivating for the campers. There were quite a few thoughts running through my mind about what I wanted to plan, what objectives I had and how I wanted the material delivered.

What was most important to me was that the students were involved in the learning process. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t simply talking to them for the entirety of the week; this may work for some students, however, it can leave out a lot of different learner types, and frankly become quite boring. So I made sure that my lessons included a variety of different media through which I could deliver the material. This included video clips, PowerPoint slideshows, group brainstorming webs, simple dramatization and hands on activities.

I also wanted to keep the assessment simple and reflective of the students’ work throughout the week. So at the end of each lesson, I had students summarize their learning onto a 3D shape net (download lesson files to see templates), which they finally put together at the end of the week. This created something tangible that they could take home with them, and hopefully wouldn’t end up in another pile of papers.

Throughout the week, I found that these lessons kept the students’ interest, they were engaged, they participated during lessons and asked thoughtful questions. Since students were active in the learning process, I hardly had any off-task behaviour.

What I would change if I were to use this again, would be to apply it to an older age group (I taught this unit to children ages 9 – 11). The summarizing proved a little tough and the younger students hadn’t quite developed that skill yet. However, I found the format of the lessons worked really well.

I used this format to teach the students about Sikh Reorganization during and after Maharaja Ranjit Singh, focusing on one Sikh personality each day. This same basic format can be used to teach a variety of different subjects, perhaps to cover the Sikh Gurus or even Mul Mantr. Be creative, see what works!

A couple of weeks ago I had to do presentation in front a hundred parents.  Usually, this doesn't worry me.  My skill set in my career is to do presentations in front of a large amount of people.  This time I was nervous.  Real nervous.  I knew the topic.  I had done my research.  In fact. I had done a similar presentation like this before.  There was a difference.  I was doing this presentation in Panjabi. 

This is the moment, I wish my parents were even MORE strict than they were in teaching me Panjabi.  This is when I wished that the Boli curriculum was around when I was growing up.  None the less, growing up in two languages, gave me incredible advantages.  Growing up in Canada, you must take French classes. If you have ever learned french, you will know there are incredible similarities in the language.  One is conjugation of verbs.  I loved French.  I excelled in French.  Picking up a third language became easier because I already had grown up in two.  I also excelled in Science, in Math, in Geography, and Music.  I wondered why?  I attribute it to learning Panjabi and English at the same time.  I opened my mind to learning and organizing my brain in ways that were open to learning language.  Chemistry is a language.  Math is a language.  Music is a language.  My mind was already primed to learn language.  So I did.  For a long while, this was just a theory in my mind.  Now there is research to back this up.  The inter-activist approach suggests that there needs to be an environment where there is opportunity to use the language in a meaningful way.  I was using Panjabi at home to communicate with my family -useful, and I was speaking in English to interact at school-useful.  The research also suggests if you are learning two languages, one supports the learning of the other.  So, it was very important to be able to use both languages (especially the mother tongue) if you are trying to learn an additional language when you are acquiring a language.  

Adding English, by Elizabeth Coelho

I remember sitting in the presentation at the Sikh Education conference in Bridgewater, New Jersey in September 2009 when Jasmine Kaur revealed the idea of having a Sikh Educators Network.  What was it?  It stemmed from the idea of the power of communication, collaboration, and creativity as a teacher connects with other teachers around the world to give access to the best quality of Sikh Education to every student...anywhere!  I was hooked.  I needed a way to get involved.  And now this is it: Sikh Educators Network: Nurturing One Sikh Child at a time. This network is a way to share your lesson plans, obtain lesson plans, do group projects with counterparts all over. Most of all, have the opportunity to find relevant and authentic ways to serve our Sikh students by providing the best teaching practices to engage them.  As educators our goal is to inspire young Sikhs to want to learn more and engage in being  responsible global citizens.