By Madhava Smullen
After a successful school year of keeping all students safe during the Covid-19 pandemic, the TKG Academy in Dallas, Texas held a graduation ceremony on May 27th that felt “triumphant,” according to Vice Principal Gopi Gita Dasi. During the event, three students who had attended TKG Academy since preschool graduated from Twelfth Grade, while the rest of the school’s thirty-three students received end-of-year certificates.
Throughout the year, Covid safety protocols such as masks, social distancing, hand washing, and air filtration systems inside the classrooms were in place. “The school Principal Nrtya Kisori Dasi and I really firmly believe that Kalachandji protected our students, and protected our community, as not one child got Covid during this entire time,” Gopi Gita says.
At the end of such a challenging year, it was a relief to be able to hold the outdoor Graduation Ceremony without masks, as local mask mandates have been lifted and most of the adults in the school community have been vaccinated.
The ceremony was held at the stage in Kalachandji’s Park, situated near the ISKCON Dallas temple, and between TKG Academy’s Krishna House campus for Lower Elementary and Early Childhood students, and the Gaura House for Upper Elementary, Middle School and High School students.
Honored guests included ISKCON Dallas Temple President and Chairman of the School Board Nityananda Das; former Principal Jayanti Dasi; School Advisors Rtadhvaja Swami and Visvambhara Das; and Prabhupada disciple and former teacher Bir Mala Dasi.
Opening the event, MC and Principal Nrtya Kishori Dasi recognized each teacher and volunteer for their year of service during Covid, while Nityananda Das welcomed everyone. Students from each class, beginning with Early Childhood and going all the way up till Twelfth Grade, then ascended the stage one at a time to receive a certificate from Rtadhvaja Swami along with words of recognition and “qualities” from their home room teacher.
Gopi Gita explains the “qualities” system: “One of the core principles at TKG Academy is to encourage cooperation rather than competition. By encouraging cooperation, you increase a child’s internal motivation, while by making a competitive environment, you decrease a child’s internal motivation, because you're extrinsically rewarding them. So children end up doing an activity or excelling in an area because of the recognition for it, instead of the sheer pleasure of it. That’s why we decided that instead of giving students rewards for highest achiever or best in math, we would recognize their soul qualities.”
Thus at the ceremony, each student was recognized for a prominent quality they had displayed during the school year, such as tolerance, humility, kindness, compassion, perseverence, effervescence, ingeniuity, affability, or chivalry. Along with recognizing the quality in their student, the home room teacher also described how the child had shown the quality throughout the year, recounting specific acts such as, “I noticed how every time another child had difficulty with such and such, you would go and take care of them.” This practice encourages teachers to really “see” their students rather than just recognizing them for external success, and blossoms positive qualities within the child.
“While project based, inquiry based, and thematic education that encourages internal motivation is the focus of every lesson at the school, external outcome are also shown,” Gopi Gita points out. “Standardized Test scores from 2021 have returned and from an initial glance, results are higher than the past eight years statistics: one out of three of our students are in the top 5% of the country. Three out of four students are in the top 10% of the country.”
At the end of the ceremony, three students who had attended TKG Academy since Pre-K, all the way up to sixteen years old in Twelfth Grade, graduated from High School – Arjuna Penate, Gandiva Penate, and Nitai Prana Schomaker. The three were also completing dual enrollment, and were the school’s first group of graduating students in many years.
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/tkg-academy-holds-triumphant-graduation-ceremony-after-successful-pandemic-school-year,7901/
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