It's that busy time of the year again for the India Association of New Hampshire Education Committee, with the regional education bees scheduled in March 2008 to be held in collaboration with the North South Foundation. The organization conducted math workshop on Saturday January 26, at the Kumon Center of Nashua, NH to help students prepare for the upcoming education bees, in which about 30 showed up. The organization is thankful to Archana and Shashank Dubey for providing the facility to conduct the workshop and for sponsoring the trophies for the winners of the NSF regional education bees organized by IANH every year.

As Dr.Tej Dhakar, the secretary of the association rightly remarked," Learning becomes easy when you know what you should learn", the workshop paved way for the students to understand what they need to work on to improve their mathematical skills. It was a math program based on 3 levels, namely level 1 for the first and second graders, level 2 for third, fourth and fifth grade students and level 3 for sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. The program allowed the students to work independently at different developmental levels, with Mrs.Archana Dubey of Kumon Center, Dr.Kishore Pochampally,professor at the Southern New Hampshire University and Dr.Venky Venkatachalam, professor at the University of New Hampshire, demonstrating the procedures, the way children learn here.

" The workshops help us get to know where we are and work on those concepts which we find hard,' said Lasya Thilagar, IANH youth volunteer and a former champion of the NSF math bee. Sharing her experiences with a couple of students at the workshop, Lasya mentioned, "It's a big challenge. Even if you could get a 6 out of 20 difficult problems, that's just going to be great!"

Some of the parents present there opined that the workshop gave them an opportunity to gage their children's ability precisely which will help them work with their kids on the areas they need improvement.

A third grade student,Madhumitha Sriram,who participated in the workshop said," I'll now get to work on those hard problems which I didn't do well today and it will make me feel good about myself for being able to do those that I couldn't do earlier."

The IANH Education Committee members Mr.Prithvi Kumar, Dr.Tej and Vandana Dhakar have been a great source of strength in organizing this workshop, by compiling the resources they received from the North South Foundation, in finding the facility, getting the instructors for the workshop, registration and so on, to help the Indian American children of the community to excel academically.