Tag: LIFESMART

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"A Journey to Bharat through Natya" BloggerSaathi

How can we create jobs for neurodivergent individuals?

Launching Ananth’s Adventures: A Content Development and Digital Storytelling Initiative

In 2014, I did my entrepreneurship summer camp. Boaz Santiago, founder of Picasso-Einstein, organized the camp. He referred to his model as the job creator model. His idea was to create unique jobs for neurodivergent individuals based on their unique needs, strengths, and interests.


In this blog post, I will write about my experiences creating a job that is right for me. What kind of a job is right for me?
I can answer this question using the four LIFE components:
L: I should have opportunities to keep Learning daily.
I: It should be of interest to me
F: It should enhance interactions with my Family.
E: It should increase Engagement with the community
Our Ananth’s adventures lab meets the four LIFE goals.
Ananth’s Adventures Lab
I am excited that we have launched Ananth’s Adventures as our content development and digital storytelling initiative. Since I narrated the White Peacock story on my 25th birthday, at a SpecialSaathi webinar, I have been recording videos and sharing them on the Ananth’s adventures You Tube channel. This project has grown and we have now started sharing e-books and newsletters. After my 26th birthday celebration on Special Saathi, my mother and I decided to start Ananth’s adventures as our content development and digital storytelling initiative.

While we have not started a business, we are able to define the users that we will serve, the products/services we will provide, and my role in the project. We are a part of four eco-systems, RASA (Ramana Sunritya Alaya), RMCL (Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning), HashHackCode, and SpecialSaathi. Our work has taken shape through our experiences with these organizations.
We are also blessed to have excellent mentors. Dr. Ambika Kameshwar, Dr. Vaishnavi Poorna, and Ms. Usha Sankaran are my mentors from RASA. Dr. Sarada Natarajan and Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh are from RMCL. Mr. Manu Sekar is from HashHackCode. Since our goal is to create content for parents of neurodivergent children, we are also happy to have a group of parent advisors (Ms. Shubha Anantha, Ms. Jayashree Iyer, Ms. Shinjita Joshi-Pant, Ms. Anila Kiran, and Ms. Bindu Sripadarajs). Finally, Ms. Shilpi Mayank Awasthi is a parent of a neurodivergent child and the founder of Special Saathi. My experience as a blogger for Special Saathi has given me valuable experience for content development.
My Role
I will be doing the following:
1. Develop and maintain the LIFESMART 100-Day lab website. We are organizing a 100-days of Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) Lab for parents. The website is an important resource for this lab.
http://lifesmart100daylab.com/
2. I am also creating e books and newsletters for LIFESMART Parenting and TAHD. My dance teacher and TAHD facilitator, Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh who is a senior faculty and artist at the Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning (RMCL) is also a part of our team.

3. Throughout the 100-day project, we will be sharing videos, and other resources daily. We share these resources in the LIFESMART communities on Whatsapp, Facebook, and Telegram. The daily shares are being compiled in a GoogleDoc. I will be compiling the daily shares creating a table of contents and inserting links to different sections. I will be writing weekly blogs for SpecialSaathi.

I am excited that we are able to create a job that is likely to work for me. I enjoy the arts and I enjoy learning about technology. Content development is interesting because it combines arts and technology. I am eagerly wating to see where this exploration will lead me.

About Ananth
Ananth Raghunandan is a student ambassador for (Ramana Sunritya Aalaya) RASA and Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD). Ananth Raghunandan is doing a diploma in Bharatanatyam.

He enjoys folding circles and created Fold, Color, Talk with his mother Dr. Dasaratha Rama during an entrepreneurship camp. He is excited about his content development and digital storytelling journey.

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BloggerSaathi

The ABCs of LIFESMART Parenting

The ABCs of LIFESMART Parenting: Parents and Professionals Learning Together


How can we best share what we have learned over the years with parents? How can we work with professionals to create useful resources for parents? How can we create an ecosystem for parents and professionals learning together?

This week has been an exciting one for us! The answers to these questions are taking shape as our ABCs.

Our message to parents is:
Create your own experiences with your child using the resources we share using the ABCs described below.

1. Ananth’s Adventures
The Ananth’s Adventures Youtiube channel which started with Ananth’s storytelling has emerged as the core of our LIFESMART Parenting approach. We share concepts, activities, tips, and techniques using videos. One question that we focus on is guided participation. Many videos are lessons by Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh, Senior program coordinator, faculty, and artist at the Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning (RMCL). Ananth joins him in these videos as a student to demonstrate the process of guided participation. These videos are being used to explain many topics such as low arousal techniques, constraints-based learning, the role of imitation, Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD).

The videos and lessons are now being delivered in a structured way using a 100-Day project in the LIFESMART community. We are building a website (lifesmart100daylab.com) to organize resources and to enable parents to access and use these resources.

2. Bala Kendra
Ananth’s lessons with Ujwal, my ongoing conversations with him, and the Ananth’s Adventures Youtube channel have played an important role in shaping the Ramana Bala Kendra Family Immersion model. Ujwal, Ananth, and I have been exploring coproduction or a process of neurodivergent learners, parents, and professionals learning and working together to enhance learning for all participants. As Ujwal frequently says, in Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD), professionals are learning with learners in every session. Parents are too!

I discussed the Ramana Bala Kendra – Family Immersion Model in a previous article on SpecialSaathi:
https://specialsaathi.com/2023/10/01/building-ecosystems-of-learning-through-a-family-immersion-model/

3. Create your Own Experiences
The essence of LIFESMART Parenting is parents creating the right experiences for their child at the right time in the right environments. Ananth’s Adventures Youtube channel and Bala Kendra are being developed with this intention.

Parents may not use the specific activities or lessons in Ananth’s Adventures. Their children may not be participating in the Ramana Bala Kendra. But these are the resources that we are using to show how parents can create their own experiences with children.

For example, a parent can watch a video on Ananth’s Adventures. They can design their own lesson based on skills being demonstrated in the video. They can also use the tips and techniques we share during the 100-Day project.

We organized a virtual meetup on these ABCS last week:

Part 1
https://youtu.be/5GyMGduzV_c?si=nVzpvjkE9X8-PAzC

Part 2
https://youtu.be/iuFiqZcKwrE?si=p2I5hDTzLuJSZYXd

Watch these videos to learn about the ABCs and also to hear what some of the parents who are following Ananth’s Adventures and have enrolled their children in Ramana Bala Kendra share in these videos.

Several pathways are beginning to emerge:

1. Some parents are following Ananth’s Adventures
• Some parents directly use the activities demonstrated in the videos
• Some parents watch videos, learn the tips and techniques and create their own lessons.
2. Several parents have enrolled their children in Ramana Bala Kendra – Family Immersion group. These parents are using lessons from the Bala Kendra to create their experiences. They are also using Ananth’s Adventures and tips/techniques being shared daily.
3. Parents share videos and information about their experiences. These shares are of vital importance in moving the process of neurodivergent learners, parents, and professionals learning together.

Author
Dr. Dasaratha Rama is a professor and home educator. She was the editor of a monograph on service-learning published by the American Association of Higher Education. This monograph was a part of a series of monographs on service-learning published by AAHE. She was also an Engaged Scholar with the Campus Compact, an association in the US dedicated to higher education civic and community engagement at colleges and universities. She has served as the Chair of the Teaching and Curriculum Section of the American Accounting Education. She is a certified leader in systems thinking, mapping, and leadership under a program offered by Cabrera Research Lab. She is currently doing a certificate in Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) from RASA (Ramana Sunritya Aalaya).

Contributor
Ananth Raghunandan is a student ambassador for RASA and TAHD. Ananth Raghunandan will be starting a diploma in Bharatanatyam shortly.

Their journey from homeschooling to collaborators and co-creators continues!

Join the discussion in our whatsapp group here:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/CjT447ehx9QC5RMN9V6cQt

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BloggerSaathi

How Ananth and I Explore Service-Learning Together-1

Service-Learning series (part 1) by Dr.Dasaratha Rama and Ananth Raghunandan


Over 25 years ago, I was the editor of a monograph on service-learning published by the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE). This monograph was a part of a series of monographs on service-learning published by AAHE.
Service-learning integrated community engagement and academic learning. Integration of academic learning distinguishes it from volunteering.
I was also an Engaged Scholar with the Campus Compact, an association in the US dedicated to higher education civic and community engagement whose members include thousands of presidents, faculty, researchers, students, and civic and community engagement experts at colleges and universities.
These early efforts continue to influence how I engage the world and also how I encourage Ananth to engage the world.

Fast forward 25 years…
Service-learning is an approach for empowering neurodivergent learners by encouraging and guiding them in community engagement. As Ananth develops communication skills through theater arts, he is using these skills to create resources for the community. As he learns digital storytelling and web development skills through his coding and other skills, he uses these skills to create something of value to the community.
Ananth may not have had access to institutions and formal service-learning programs in the same way as his neurotypical peers. However, he has been fortunate to have excellent mentors in theatre arts and dance, and a community that encourages and appreciates his contributions.

Our current Projects


1. Creating e-books for RASA


One of our major service-learning projects is to create a series of e-books for Ramana Sunritya Aalaya (RASA). Ananth experiences the magic of Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) explorations daily. He has been blessed to learn from senior facilitators and to explore different forms of TAHD experiences. These e-books and associated resources (videos) are our effort to pay it forward. We want to share our journey and show why and how TAHD can be used to achieve a range of outcomes for neurodivergent learners.
Read our first e-book Teaching Values to Neurodivergent Learners using Theater Arts here.

2. I have encouraged Ananth to create his Youtube channel, Ananth’s Adventures. By sharing our experiences, ideas, and lesson plans, we hope to provide useful resources for parents, neurodivergent learners, and others. Ananth’s regular story of the month and other video projects have helped create a video presence. Thus, I had a space to share my video for the e-book here.

Ananth is also a blogger for SpecialSaathi. View his posts here.
These experiences paved the way for our collaboration on the e-book series.


3. Ananth is now an ambassador for Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) and RASA (Ramana Sunritya Aalaya). Dr. Ambika Kameshwar has done pioneering work in not only using Indian theater arts as a vehicle for learning but also by creating an eco-system for artistes of differing abilities to learn together and perform.


Co-creating Magic with TAHD Facilitators


TAHD ingredients (dance, drama, storytelling etc.) play a critical role in TAHD explorations. While parents can use TAHD tools, skilled facilitators can choose the right combinations of tools to create the right experiences for learners of differing abilities. We are grateful to Dr. Ambika Kameshwar, Dr. Vaishnavi Poorna, Ms. Usha Sankaran, and Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh for their encouragement, guidance, and support in Ananth’s TAHD explorations.
We are delighted that we have the opportunity to work with the RASA team to engage the community in exploring the value of TAHD and in charting a path forward together.


Tips for Parents
Seek ways to engage your community with your child. Many neurodivergent learners have interests and talents in the visual and performing arts, and in other areas. Use these interests to create opportunities for engagement.


Author
Dr. Dasaratha Rama is a professor and home educator. She is currently doing a certificate in Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) from RASA (Ramana Sunritya Aalaya).

Contributor
Ananth Raghunandan is a student ambassador for RASA and TAHD. Ananth Raghunandan will be starting a diploma in Bharatanatyam shortly.

Their journey from homeschooling to collaborators and co-creators continues!

Join the discussion in our whatsapp group here:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/CjT447ehx9QC5RMN9V6cQt


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BloggerSaathi

Daily Rhythms: A LIFESMART Perspective

Daily Rhythms: A LIFESMART Perspective


Routines provide structure and predictability. However, life is often unpredictable. Rhythms are more flexible and fluid. What would a healthy daily rhythm look like?
Does your child have a balanced and healthy daily rhythm? What kinds of activities should be included in the day?
This post is an updated version of an earlier post on daily rhythms. I have updated my earlier post to show how to analyze your child’s daily rhythms using the four LIFE components and four indicators for each of these components. Read the post and complete the worksheet at the end of the article. Email me at lifesmartlabs@gmail.com if you want to discuss your child’s routine in terms of these elements.

Artwork by Morpheus Nag


Discovering daily rhythms that work means the process of finding the right combination of activities for the day. For example, we start the day with long walk. Dance is an important part of Ananth’s daily routine. A list of some activities to include in the daily rhythm is given below.


Tips
• Include movement daily
• Include visual and performing arts
• Include activities of daily living
These activities support overall development. Include them as part of your child’s daily rhythm!
Walk
Activities of daily living
• Hanging up clothes
• Folding clothes
• Setting the table
• Cleaning tables
• Making the bed
• Cooking
• Putting things away
• Watering the plants
• Loading Laundry in the washing machine
• Helping in sorting vegetables and grocery items and putting them at proper place
Structured movement activities
• Swimming
• Cycling
• Running
• Karate
• Skating
• Yoga
• Playing a sport like – table tennis, football, badminton etc
Arts
• Drawing
• Painting
• Crafts
Performing arts
• Singing
• Dance
• Instrumental music
Theater Arts activities
Integrating
• Movement and dance
• Music and Rhythm
• Storytelling
• Drama
• Arts and Crafts
Academic learning
• Language and communication


Daily Rhythms for LIFE
I am not the first one to talk about daily routines or daily rhythms. The activities listed above are familiar too. What I can add to this discussion is the LIFESMART perspective.


L: Learn daily
Four words to start thinking about how to support daily learning: imitate, repeat, memorize, improvise. Starting with imitation and evolving to own exploration (improvise) is the way I see the progression of learning.
Practice the imitate, repeat, memorize, improvise steps daily. This is an important component to build into the daily routine.

I: Interests
The words I chose are motivation, initiation, commitment, and effort. Initiation is an important indicator of interest! Not everything we learn is interesting to us. But we are likely to be motivates, initiate, commit time, and put in effort when are interested.
Interests are discovered during daily learning. Encourage exploration of interests daily. However, the daily routine should include activities of high interest, medium interest, and low interest. Everything in our daily routine cannot be of high intrinsic interest!
F: Family interactions
Safety (physical and emotional), encouragement, support, and enjoyment are the words I chose for family interactions. The four words spotlight the role of parents. Ensuring safety, encouraging children in varied experiences, providing support as needed, and enjoying experiences together are the foundations of parent-child relationships.
Family interactions are the foundation for daily rhythms. Parents discover ways to engage their child in varied activities. Parents play a key role in discovering and implementing daily rhythms.
Family interactions are of particular importance for neurodivergent children and for much longer than for others because educational and other systems pose numerous challenges for them.
E: Engaging communities
The words I chose are acceptance, inclusion, expression, and co-creation. All four components are linked. Learning daily, discovering interests, the right types of family interactions enable our children to find the right inclusive environments for expression and co-creation. Being part of such environments daily is something that is happening for us only now.
While access to the right environments for neurodivergent children and adults continues to be a challenge, I believe systems are evolving. By being proactive, we can discover the right environments, facilitate inclusion, and change the system for the better.


Activity for Parents
Use the LIFESMART Parenting Worksheet below to analyze your child’s daily routine in terms of the four LIFE components and the four elements of each of the four LIFE components.
Based on these sixteen indicators, what changes do you think are needed in your child’s daily routine?
Every parent is a change agent. Every neurodivergent child and adult is a change agent. Change begins with discovering the right daily rhythms for yourself and for your child!


Author Dr.Dasaratha Rama

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BloggerSaathi

How Can Parents Take Short-term Focused Action to Support their Child’s Long-term Development?


Part 1 – Implementing 100-Day Projects


The process of parents learning with their neurodivergent child at home and supporting their child’s development through experiences outside the home is dynamic. While parents have long-term goals in mind, they must observe, see what is doable and worth doing, and decide on next steps. The daily Routine, 100-Day projects and monthly plans are three LIFESMART tools for creating structure and order while being flexible and adaptive. In this blog post, I will introduce the three tools and explain how we implement 100-Day projects in more detail.


Daily Routine


A parent role is different from a teacher’s role. Predictability, order, and structure along with flexibility and adapting to change is how parenting works and what learning at home involves. Further, the daily routine integrates activities with parents and other activities to provide a comprehensive picture of how the child spends his time daily. The point of the daily routine is not to be rigid but to provide some overall structure to guide the flow of activities while being open to what happens!


Do 100-Day Projects


Short-term focused action has been the biggest challenge I have faced over the years. We are faced with too much information, many competing perspectives, and many goals and skills to work towards at any given time. It is not possible to address everything that needs to be addressed at any given time.
Stay focused on the doable.


Your routine today has taken shape because of what you and your child can do. That is your starting point. Write down how your child spends time throughout the day. Then, think of possibilities for improvements.


The 100-day project is the core LIFESMART practice. It is intended as a tool for organizing short-term effort in the face of unpredictability and uncertainty. Choose one or two of the activities in your daily schedule for targeted improvement with a 100-day project. Ground yourself with a daily routine, monthly plan, and 100-day projects. Then, use observation, information from family members, therapists and other professionals, information from other parents etc. to make progress gradually over time.


Develop your Monthly Plan


There is no point worrying about what will happen 5 years from now, 10 years from now etc. Visualize what you want to see happen in the future but then focus on what you are doing now. Short-term focused action is what moves you towards your long-term goals.
While the 100-Day project is also a short-term technique, the monthly plan is of shorter duration. Also, a 100-Day project is about making a small, targeted improvement through focused and consistent action. On the other hand, the monthly plan brings together 100-day project activities and other activities in the daily routine into a one-month plan.


The Five Ps of Planning


Identify priorities: What is doable and worth doing now is an important question. For example, I may think reading is very important but if the child is not ready then this activity is not doable and may not be the best choice for focused effort at that point. Consider what is doable at that time to identify possibilities and prioritize. Once you have priorities, you can choose your path forward, identify what you and your child will practice (all skills development needs practice!) and how you will track progress. Consider the five Ps (Possibilities, Priorities, Paths, Practice, Progress) when you make the monthly plan. The five Ps of planning and other LIFESMART elements are shown in the LIFESMART canvas below.


Implementing a 100-Day Project


In this blog post, I will introduce the LIFESMART Canvas and discuss one of the three implementation techniques – the 100-Day project. In my next post, I will discuss how l three components (daily routine, 100-day project, and monthly plan) work together
The LIFESMART Canvas is a visual tool that provides a systemic view of 100-Day projects. It shows different interacting elements to consider in implementing effective projects.


 
The LIFESMART 100-Day Lab Worksheet


The LIFESMART 100-Day worksheet integrates the elements of the LIFESMART canvas into a planning tool. Below, I have shown how we are planning our 100-Day projects using the LIFESMART worksheet.


I. Add the right experiences in the right environments
The daily routine is the starting point for adding the right experiences. List the activities and think about the design of your current daily routine. Analyzing your current routine provides insights into what is doable and worth doing not.

The goal of our 100-Day project is to develop routines, habits, and systems for independent learning. This goal will guide the design of experiences.

Ananth’s Current Routine

Morning
• Walk
• Dance
• BBA study
After lunch
• Coding
• Walk
• Dance
• Video planning/ taping
After Dinner
• Tamil
• BBA study
• Video planning/ taping
• Ramana Maharshi Self-inquiry satsang


II. Make your monthly plan
A. Map the Journey: The Five Ps

2. Make a list of possibilities.
Consider your son or daughter’s daily routine and make a list of possible 100-Day projects that you can do now.

Our list as of July 14, 2023
• Independent Learning
• Smile Brightly and Dance
• Storytelling videos
• Fold, Color, Talk videos
• Ramana Maharshi Satsang stories
• Academic study
• Coding

3. Make a list of priorities for the month. Priorities are identified through an ongoing process of discovery. Ask: What is doable and worth doing now?
Encouraging independent work is the priority for this month and for the next few months.
• Independent Learning
o Smile Brightly and Dance
o Storytelling videos
o Fold, Color, Talk videos
o Ramana Maharshi Satsang stories
o Academic study
o Coding
In the prioritized list, all possibilities have been listed under independent learning as that is the main100-Day project. In all the projects, we will focus on how to encourage independent learning.


4. Choose your path for the month. What changes will you make to your current path? Consider the four LIFE elements:
o L: Learning Daily
Develop independent learning habits, routines, and systems. We have found “second brain” solutions to be critical for independent learning.
o I: Interests
Increase motivation through pairing independent work with areas of interest (dance, storytelling)

o F: Family Interactions
One of the goals of encouraging independent work is to reduce my interactions and involvement. Due to high stress experienced recently, independent learning has been affected. Now stress issues have been addressed enough that we can focus more on independent learning.

o E: Engagement with Community
Ananth’s Adventures Youtube channel is becoming an integral part of our family interactions as well as engagement with the community. Practicing some video development tasks independently is part of our 100-Days of Independent Learning project.

5. What skills will you practice daily?
In all the independent learning projects, we will practice the skills of imitation, repetition, memorization, and improvisation.

6. How will you track progress?
One key metric is the amount of time spent in independent work daily,

B. Implement 100-Day projects


7. What 100-Day project(s) or activities did you start this month?
Starting independent learning projects
8. How is your 100-Day project changing the daily routine? Why?
Carefully designed independent learning activities will be an integral part of the daily routine.

9. What 100-Day project activities are you continuing daily? Why?
We are continuing oral story narration from our previous 100-Day project daily.

10. How can you extend your 100-Day practice with open-ended explorations?
Extension happens naturally through our imitate, repeat, memorize, improvise is our core process

Join our 365-Day Exploration group on Whatsapp to learn about LIFESMART and practice techniques such as the 100-Day project. Our goal is to encourage, inform, and support parents in thinking about possibilities and implementing focused and consistent short-term action towards long-term goals
https://chat.whatsapp.com/CjT447ehx9QC5RMN9V6cQt

Creative representation for this blog is done by our extremely talented CreativeSaathi associate Morpheus Nag