Sojhī
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The Widow Colony

  Sojhī
    Milestones  

Since the inception of this project, a number of activities have been successfully accomplished.

Needs Assessment (November 2004)
Field research was conducted by Harinder Singh to address community needs regarding Sikh education.  A comprehensive proposal to address the challenges faced by the community in the area of Sikh youth education was compiled. Further information was taken out into the community as a means to share our findings, raise funds for the project, and to better understand challenges facing existent Sikh educational programs.

Curriculum Development (January 2005)
Naindeep Singh, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University with a Master of Arts in Teaching and an emphasis in Educational Administration was hired as a Curriculum Developer. He completed the first draft of the standards for Kindergarten to Grade 12 and also developed the curriculum plan that provides a schedule and timetable for each grade. After an intensive review process, the final drafts of standards for Language Arts and Sikh Virsā for K-12 were completed.

Education Symposium (March 2005)
A Sikh Education Symposium was hosted in San Antonio, Texas on April 2-3rd, 2005. The purpose was to enlist the Sikh community’s support, counsel, and assistance for development of Sojhī’s standards, curriculum, and lesson plans. The workshops focused on the details and processes of the project.  The three workshops highlighted the critical evaluation of Standards, lesson sharing and planning processes, and an opportunity for participants to provide their feedback and submit key names and contacts that might help push the project further towards completion.

Curriculum Project Lead (September 2005)
Jasmine Kaur, a graduate of Wheelock College with a Masters degree in Human Development with a specialty in Family Studies was hired as the Sojhī Project Lead. She serves as the project Communication Coordinator, and Elementary Content Coordinator. Jasmine is also a Courseware Developer.

Document Collaboration Database (November 2005)
Parambir Singh, a graduate of Penn State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science and Information Systems, was brought on as a Technology Coordinator. Parambir was able to implement a Collaboration Database, which can be used to develop, edit and review Lesson Plans.

Lesson Plans for K-5 (January 2006)
Lesson plans for Kindergarten through fifth grade were developed based on the finalized Standards and Curriculum. Harliv Kaur, a graduate from The Upper Iowa University, with a Bachelors degree in Elementary Education and an endorsement in English as a Second Language, developed lesson plans for Kindergarten and Grade 3. Jasmine has developed lesson plans for grades 1, 2, 4 and 5. While Harliv Kaur developed lesson plans for kindergarten and grade 3.

Review (March onwards)
Harinder Singh, Naindeep Singh, and Simran Singh will review all documents internally.  The Sojhī project team has identified a team of experts, consisting of a Sikhi expert and 2 curriculum specialists to validate suitability and effectiveness of lesson plans.

Community Review (April 2006)
After a completion of an internal review and a review by the Review board, a sample of lesson plans will be available for community review.

Sikh Education Symposium (June 2006)
The Second Education Symposium will showcase material that has been developed by the project thus far. This will give individuals a chance to familiarize themselves with the development process, and enable open dialogue with members of the community.

Develop Curriculum Kit K-5 (June 2006)
A Curriculum kit will be developed including the following materials:

“Guide to Classroom Management”
“How to use the curriculum kit”
Finalized standards overview
Curriculum overview
Finalized Lesson plans
Resource materials lists
Assessment tools

Implementation Program (July 2006)
An implementation program will be created to include Teacher training criteria and session dates, Licensing of Curriculum Kit, and Pricing of packaging for non-sponsors.