"We are here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to people through dark."

In my effort to discover myself, I found my calling is to bring changes in the education field and decided to establish a school of my dream. A school, where children come with a smile, carry lightness and brightness in their heart and become torch bearers when they graduate from the school. Now, as I sit on this Director Principal's chair to reminiscence the path I had trodden to reach this position, so many memories flash through my mind. Some of them gave me courage to forget ahead; others gave wisdom to meet the challenges. Whenever I doubted myself, my father's words "Alpa, you can do it!" resonated in my mind and I never wavered from my decision.

From Pre-Primary to Upper Primary and Secondary to Senior Secondary, Vapi Public School grew in to amazing heights within a short period. It is the first CISCE affiliated school in Vapi as well as the first NABET accredited school in this area. Besides having a vibrant ambiance and radiant infrastructure, it has also won the Best Safe School Award.

It follows a holistic curriculum stipulated by the Statutory and Regulatory bodies' and has a well-designed Year Plan that enhances intellectual, physical, social, emotional and spiritual development of students. While we make our students' academic enhancement through innovative and interesting pedagogies and activities, we equally work to improve their bodily and mental wellbeing too. We make sure that all three domains of learning get equal importance in our curriculum.

We have many resources and labs that help hands on learning by students. Our Astronomy lab programmes include star gazing sessions for students and scheduled workshops train students in making can satellites, robotics and create interest in space science. Our Rifle shooting range has already produced state champions. Vapi Public School is a vision oriented and system driven institution with its mission to make its students global citizens and future leaders of one world family.

Students play an active role in school as they spend a significant part of their lives here. So each day is designed to make it profitable for students enrolled here. We instil in our students the value of hard work, self-discipline, punctuality, teamwork and unity to prepare them for the future challenges. I urge my students through workshops, group and individual interactions to be an active participant in all the programmes intended to develop their physical, academic, emotional and moral strength.

Age appropriate Sexual Health and Wellbeing workshops are conducted to create awareness among students. Buddy learning, mentor teachers, circle-time and counselling are provided to nurture in students, leadership qualities and problem solving abilities. Due to this conducive learning environment, our students are empathetic, respectful, polite and helpful to the needy. I congratulate my students for greeting everyone with a smile on their faces and complying with the school culture.

Continuous professional training helps the teaching faculty to be abreast with the latest Teaching strategies and pedagogies. This has helped our educators to become competent facilitators.

It is also vital that the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of an educator is also maintained.

Parents being important stakeholders in education, several orientation programmes, workshops and individual consultation are regularly conducted to keep the parents well-versed in the activities of the school and the performance of the students. Good parenting techniques are equally important to avoid being helicopter parents which indirectly creates unwanted pressure on young children.

Various parents partnership programmes like 'Samyukta' are conducted, in which parents share with our students the culture and traditions of different states of India.

The success of a great school is the equal ownership and shared responsibilities of management, staff, students and parents.

Sudden attack of the pandemic COVID-19 brought a standstill to all school activities and immediately we started with online teaching. Many workshops were conducted to gain knowledge of different platforms, strategies and the technological expertise needed for it. I really appreciate the collaboration and dedication of the educators, staff, students and parents for making it a smooth change over. Vapi Public School is the first school in this area to successfully begin online classes and we continue with innovations to make teaching learning process easy and interesting.

My message to all parents and educators is, "Every Child is rare, unique and original Master Piece....Master's Piece, Don't mould him/her into a Show Piece."