From the Senior School Principal Mr. Alexander Abraham

The third month of this year has dawned upon us and six busy weeks of this semester have already whizzed past with academics and the flurry of activities and sports that make each day filled with new things to look forward to. It was none other than Albert Einstein who once said that “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” We as nurturers at Pathways are therefore excited with the plethora of opportunities that are available for every student to develop their gifts and abilities in the various platforms provided at school.

Our Forms 10 and 12 are at the cusp of their Mock exams and the students have geared for these preparatory exams which allows them to experience exam conditions and to know their strengths and weaknesses. We are confident that our students with their hard work and under the mentoring of our teachers will use these exams to work towards the final exams both IGCSE and IB Diploma which begin in early May.

We have had a very successful Student Led Conference (SLC) for Form 9 which was in the first week of February. This was the first time we were doing it for Senior School. There were four subject areas that students could choose from and share with their parents their own learnings, areas where they needed to improve and the goals and action plans they have set for themselves where they need to work at. What was really heartening was to see that students responded very well to the structure of the SLC and the process was of huge learning for them. We were also glad to be able to see that parents saw the utility of the process and that above all it is a process of reflection for the student to work on areas of strength and others were more focus is needed.

The Digital Citizenship week while being a vertical school event was also very heartening for us to see the involvement not just of the staff but more so of the Secondary Council Technology Coordinators, the other Council members and by the student community on a large scale whether it was through Assembly presentations,

Group discussions on being a responsible citizen, through movie making or the very valuable Tech tip of the day. This Week gave us great pride and joy to see our students take leadership. Creative ideas were planned and executed and the activities while they informed also served to creatively enable our community to be more responsible citizens.

The school firmly believes that our students need to be given opportunities for leadership and the student council is a platform where this is done abundantly. To enable the new council which took charge in the last week of January to be able to plan for the New Year, there was a leadership workshop held on Saturday, 14th February and facilitated by Mrs. Smita Bhattacharya

and Mrs. Sonali Joshi, our staff advisors to the Council. This workshop was meant to enable our student leaders to get a feel of what leadership necessitates and what some of the areas are of influence that a student council member has and what kind of school culture makes for a better school community. It was remarkable to see the very perceptive and thoughtful suggestions and ideas that came in from the student council members who were all enthusiastic about being the leaders for change for the student community.

Another major area where our students have been true leaders has been the Interact Club where through various social projects and fund

raisers, students have been over the years working together with the community at large for the underprivileged and those afflicted by natural calamities and thus having a sense that education is not just about scores but a commitment for society, something that mere knowledge can and will never successfully do. The new Interact committee was badged on 25th February and we are confident that the new committee will have many more plans and ways by which our school can be more socially aware and contributing.

March is an exciting month with “Jharokha” and the Adventure Camps slotted where our students of F9- F11 head out for the hills to experience education in a totally “cool” environment where through the “roughing” it out, our students learn to appreciate the blessings of life and the joys of camaraderie and learning in a non-formal environment. We are grateful for the partnership that we have with our parent community which helps in nurturing our children- our greatest treasure.

As we look at the months ahead we would like to take this forward and enable more avenues where our young minds will be able to discover the potential and uniqueness each one has and be thus better people for tomorrow.