Learning Time at Jhamtse Gatsal

By Kunsang D., Class 10

After a hearty breakfast, we take some time to get our things together, and then we we all gather for the school assembly. Every day in the week has a different theme around which we center our assembly. Every week a different class performs. We always make sure that all the children in the class get the opportunity to perform on stage. After the assembly, we all head to our classrooms with our teachers.

Kunsang D

Kunsang D

Immediately after the assembly, we have 30 minutes set aside for reflection. During this period, we reflect on the previous day using the Karmayaan practice taught by Lobsang Phuntsok and set our intentions for the new day ahead of us. This helps us focus better on our day and learn from our past.

After that, our regular classes begin with our subject teachers. After about an hour, we have a short break in which we play and refresh ourselves for the next classes. Our lunch break is around 1:00 PM, which we all eagerly look forward to!

Lunch is a sumptuous meal for all of us, after which we feel quite sleepy! Thankfully, we have enough time before our last class for the day begins so that we can rest and get our energy back! Once this class is done, we are geared up to go for our sports class. We change into our sportswear and rush towards the different sports we have chosen. In Jhamtse, we have table tennis, football, badminton, carrom, and basketball to choose from.

The rest of the evening is split between independent time, library, computer classes, and self-study time. We have these spread across different days of the week so that we have free time to relax as well as a lot of opportunities to learn new things that we are interested in!

At the end of our day, we spend some time meditating to train our minds and to learn to manage ourselves and our emotions. It helps us calm our anger or other negative emotions and allows us to develop our positive habits.

With this, our afternoon at Jhamtse Gatsal comes to a close. Hope to tell you more soon!

Jennifer DeGlopper