by Susanne Ganns
A lot has happened in the nature school this summer.
Susanne has created a film for you, which gives a short overview and we hope you enjoy it.
Salaries of teachers and employees
For some time now, teachers have been asking for salary increases again and again. The high inflation rate and the huge increase of living expenses brought great difficulties to the teachers and their families. The teachers’ salaries we could pay were always at the lower limit compared to other private schools. Due to the book sale “Everything revolves around you, human being!” it was possible to re-fill the “school budget” and so the teachers could be given a 30 % salary increase.
Deepak – our head of the school
Due to the difficult salary situation, Deepak wanted to resign from the school on 01 September 2022 in order to move to a government school with better salary conditions.
Due to many conversations, new communication opportunities within our school family and the new salary conditions, we all managed to make Deepak want to stay on as headmaster.
However, he has also requested a 5 month unpaid creative break as he has now been working at the school for 8 years continuously without any holidays even during Covid. We have made this break possible for him from 01 September 2022 to mid-January 2023. He is very happy about this break and we are all looking forward to his return in January 2023.
New communication
Since about 3 months a wonderful new way of communication has developed between the teachers, Virendra and Manju and the team in Germany Birgid Rau, Bhagin and Susanne.
Via video conferences many topics and problems could be exchanged and solved. It is a great pleasure for everyone to see each other again in this way about every 3 weeks, to talk to each other and to exchange ideas.
Virendra and Manju are an excellent support in overcoming the language barriers between English and Hindi. This brilliant cooperation has brought a lot of friendship and closeness to the teachers and we are very grateful to Virendra and Manju.
Teaching materials from SHIN
During the many conversations, the teachers repeatedly expressed the wish that they would be grateful for more teaching material from SHIN, which should be given in the simplest form as possible for better understanding.
Susanne had sent some of the material over and over again in the past years.
But now with the help of Manju, this teaching content of SHIN can also be translated into Hindi, which the teachers appreciate very much and can now be better integrated by them into the lessons.
In the last two months, Birgid and Susanne have now prepared a lot of teaching content and already sent it to the teachers. Everything is archived there on special hard disks and managed by Ritu our female teacher.
Now we have formed a wonderful women’s work between Birgid, Manju, Ritu and Susanne and we are all very much looking forward to this joint work.
1000 trees planted in July and August 2022
Due to the inspiration of Dilbar and Rohit for the Garhwali Green Project, 1000 trees were planted around the school grounds by all teachers and staff, the children and their parents.
Everyone had a lot of fun during this often sweaty work in the hot summer and a gigantic work for the future was created.
We thank everyone for this wonderful work. And we hope that there will be enough rain so that all the trees can grow well and flourish. So far, the monsoon has not been so rich.
75th jubilee of Independence Day in honour of Gandhi as well.
This festival was celebrated all over India and so all teachers and children prepared a big cultural festival in weeks of work and presented it on this day in front of guests from politics and parents.
To the great surprise of Bhagin and Susanne, we were invited from the teachers to this festival live via video sharing. It was a great pleasure for us to be able to experience this festival from afar.
Music system
Rohit brought a new music system directly from Delhi for the Independence Day celebration. The teachers were very happy about it, as it had been on their wish list for a long time.
Other activities
About nature lessons, handicrafts, mantra singing and many other things we always get wonderful pictures and films and Susanne has put some of them together in a little film for all of you (see above). We hope you enjoy it.
Wishes of the teachers
During our video conferences, the teachers also expressed the wish that they would very much like to have a music teacher and musical instruments.
Unfortunately, we still do not have the financial resources for this. We would be very happy if we could fulfil these wishes for our teachers. Donate now
This would also be a great further step towards teaching singing-dancing-music, as an important part of SHIN’s vision for this school.
Here is another information
With the buying of this book you can make yourself and others happy (in 4 months it will be Christmas) and at the same time the complete book price – Euro 22 – will be transferred by Susanne to the nature school and can be used there for the maintenance of the school (such as salaries etc.) and various purchases. Click here to order the book.