Letter from Grade VI to GCC

Dear GCC,

This is Class VI H. I’m sure you know us, we’re from Oakridge International School, Newton Campus, Hyderabad, India! We’re really grateful to you for all the help you gave us. We learned from this challenge that ‘a healthy inside starts from the outside!’ We developed our PYP profile of Balanced from you, as you taught us to both study and play. Your pedometers provided us with motivation to get higher and higher step-counts each and every day. Had it not been for you, we would’ve probably just studied all day and watched TV or played videogames all night! Exercise was simply not an integral part of our routine- we did about half an hour a day till GCC showed up. The sense of competitiveness- to beat our classmates, the other classes, our whole school, and finally, perhaps the world! The knowledge that schools from Asia to America were competing gave us a sense of the world’s togetherness- the fact that the whole world had come together to stay fit, gave us a sense of oneness, of being part of a vast, united world. We learned about cultures as we moved across the world, learning of continents, countries, cities and towns. We saw the Unity in Diversity that prevails on Earth- though we may be dark or fair, short or tall, we might speak different languages, we might dress in a variety of clothes- yet we are at peace with each other. We also saw how little we know and have seen of our wide, wonderful world. You have helped us to see the world sitting in our very own classroom, with pictures, maps and more, it felt like we were really using many modes of transport- airplanes, buses, trains, boats, helicopters- we saw every inch of the world with our own eyes, sitting on our comfy chairs in a place that was just a tiny dot on the world map. It showed us that life is a two way street- there are good and bad sides to everything. For example, in Kenya, half the children don’t go to school. Yet NGOs are helping the other half to learn and make their own life successful. 

What we love about your awesome challenge is that it gave us everything we needed- motivation to exercise and knowledge to gain. GCC has truly changed our lives, homes and school- but it has also changed another thing- our attitude towards exercise. We used to think, ‘Oh, exercise is a boring thing…who wants to do it?’ but when this challenge began, we started saying, ‘Well, maybe exercise isn’t that bad after all…” and now, almost at the end, we say, “Exercise is Excellent! We love it!” Pedometers and GCC made exercise fun for everyone- it wasn’t just boring old exercise anymore, it was energetic, it was fun, it was to increase our steps so we could show we were fittest… the list goes on and on. I think we pretty much told you all that we love about your rocking challenge, but here is one sentence that sums it up-

‘GCC truly made us Healthy, Wealthy and Wise!’

Thanks,

Grade VIH

(Oakridge  International School)