Report on the Personality Development Workshop

School plays an important role in the personality development of students. This is the need of the hour as it is essential for the holistic development of children and their survival in this competitive world.

On 16th October, 2015, twelve students of our School went to Moolchand Medicity to attend the Capacity Building Programme conducted by "Expressions India". Students from other schools also participated in the workshop. The workshop was taken by Ms. Sukhmeen Cheema, the head of our School's Psychology department.

She started the workshop with a very creative introductory session, where students had to introduce themselves in a novel way. They had to either mention an adjective or a quote or song which best describes them. They could also explain the meaning of their names ( without revealing the names) thereby giving an opportunity to the others to guess the names! It was an enjoyable ice-breaking exercise and it was observed that students were quite engrossed in the exercise.

This was followed by a discussion on The Self, ones desires, dreams, passions and motivations. Students were told how important their dreams and desires are for developing the personality. It was stressed that they need to have a passion in life. Students were also given tips on how to increase their self-esteem. They were also encouraged to be optimistic and to have a positive approach about everything in life. Most importantly, it was emphasised that they should love themselves and never lose confidence.

Next students were shown clips from the Will Smith movie - Pursuit of Happyness. In the clip, Will Smith tells his child, Dont ever let someone tell you that you cant do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people cant do something themselves, theyre gonna tell you that you cant do it. You want something go get it. Period. The clip carried the message that we should never give up and should always have a strong will. We must persist to pursue dreams regardless of what may happen and not succumb to the negativity around us. The students were shown other motivational clips as well.

The next activity was an interesting game called the animal game. In this, the students were asked to write down the names of their three favourite animals in order of their preference. They were also supposed to write the reasons why those particular animals were dear to them. After the students had completed the task, they were told that the characteristics of the third animal that they had named describes the reality of what they are! The characteristics of the second animal is what we try to present and the traits of the first animal is what we idolise and pine to become. Most of the students were able to identify themselves with the activity.

In the next activity, the students were divided into 4 groups and each group was allotted a topic for role play. Each group had to conceive an appropriate skit representing their topic. All the members of the group had to participate in the role play and in the end one member from each group had to speak about the life skills portrayed in the play. It was indeed fun for all the students as they got an opportunity to display their acting prowess!

In the end, students were shown a movie clip from the Aamir Khan movie - Lagaan. It depicted how under the British rule, Indians managed to escape the oppressive tax demanded of them by winning a cricket match. It set an example for the students to always be hopeful of good things happening in the future and to achieve the goal by taking on head-on, all the obstacles in the way.

To sum up, it was a well thought-out workshop of motivating the students to discover themselves.