Every year our school organises “Creative Mela” as an event, which helps students explore and develop their artistic skills through various art workshops. From “Origami” to “Thought process in drama”, various such workshops take place to encourage students to grow better and quicker in their interested area of art. This also helps them improve their visualisation and imagination. 

This year the event took place at 20th September, 2019. Through a student volunteer form, I had filled up the form to be part of the team that explores the role of being a teacher. All the student volunteers were supervised by one of the art teachers, Pooja Bhatt. The school was divided into 3 groups, A, B and C. We were asked by our supervisor to think of ideas based on which we will be conducting workshops for Group A(Grade 3 and 4) and Group B(Grade 5 and 6). I decided to conduct a card making workshop for grade 3 and 4 with one of my friends, and a lantern making workshop for grade 5 and 6, on my own. 

Planning and initiating are two completely different experiences I faced during this event’s journey. In comparison to initiating and implementing my planning, the earlier step, planning, was more easy. I felt it more easy as I am someone who likes to work alone and do things usually on my own and in my way. While, the card making workshop did not require much planning, the lantern making workshop involved a lot of planning, I had to search a quickest and easiest, yet creative way to make a lantern. Estimate and order the amount of resources I would require.  AT last, try making it on my own. The most hardworking part was trial. It required a lot of concentration and hardwork. This experience has helped me understand how a person feels and works, when he/she has to lead a class, meeting, workshop, etc. This understanding will definitely help me a lot in future, as now I know how to carry on my process from planning to implementing. 

While I faced difficulties in planning, I even faced difficulties while implementing. When I was conducting the workshops, few of the students were not too co-operative and a bit rude too. I am someone who does not appreciate such behaviour, while someone has really put in efforts to plan and implement a whole workshop so that you can explore and enjoy. Though, I controlled my anger it made me feel a bit disappointed. This has also taught me how to behave while I am on the receiver’s side. Working with my friend for the first workshop was near to perfection. We did not have any conflicts. In fact, we were really happy by the way we lead this workshop and representative ourselves in front of our juniors. It was very necessary for the cooperation between us to work smoothly, otherwise the kids would have gotten upset and all the time, energy and hard work would have been wasted upon arguing or solving our conflicts. 

In conclusion, it was a wonderful experience throughout the journey. This experience has taught me life learning lessons while having fun and enjoying myself. I am someone who always receives happiness by helping others, because I believe a small amount of hardwork and effort from my side can really bring a smile on other people’s faces.