HOW I LEARNED SURAH RAHMAN WITH MY FAMILY DURING RAMADAN USING KAIZEN LEARNING MODEL
“Kaizen? What is that?” I asked my friend who is a teacher at a school. While discussing the workshop that she recently attended, she mentioned this word.
“Kaizen is a learning model”. She began telling.
“It is a Japanese word which means “Good Change”. This model stimulates continuous improvement through new and better ideas. One of the main aspects of this model is peer-to-peer accountability. Sharing the same task and responsibilities and being accountable to your peers is a powerful method of self-improvement.” She added.
“It’s a wonderful idea, we all should try to benefit from such techniques”, I replied.
Ever since I talked to her, I was really excited to implement this technique in my daily life. Since Ramadan was around the corner, I thought why not learn a new Surah with my family this Ramadan while following the Kaizen Model.
First and the foremost task was to select a surah that was manageable within the time constraints and delivers a beautiful message that could bring the most wanted improvement in our lives.
After some consideration, I finally chose Surah Rahman. Surah Rahman is a wonderful surah. It has 78 verses (manageable). It teaches us humbleness and to be thankful to Allah (S.W.T). The way Allah (S.W.T) pens down his favors upon us is remarkable. This surah allows us to have a broader perspective of life. It makes us understand the underlying favors of Allah (S.W.T).
Surah was being selected but the real challenge was to bring innovation and improvement as per the Kaizen technique. I began thinking. But soon, I was there with a really unique and interesting idea.
I talked to my family and everybody showed their interest in this unique idea of learning and understanding Surah Rahman.
We decided that we would cover 3 verses daily. Everybody was asked to learn 3 verses and understand its meanings, the message of the verses and how we could comprehend those verses in our daily lives. We agreed on a time that was convenient for everybody. We decide that we would sit together and will repeat the learned verses in front of everyone and discuss what we had learned from these verses with each other.
But where is the innovation? What exactly my idea was that attracted the interest of everybody in the house? Okay, so I decided to assign points. Positive marking on learning 3 verses daily and negative marking in case you fail to do so. To make things more interesting, I decided to arrange a quiz at the end of every week containing the questions from the verses that we had learned that week. The marks of the quiz would add up to the total marks. Since we are all competitive by nature, I thought it would be a great way to keep everybody going.
I think the quiz was the highlight of the plan. It intrigued us to not only learn the verses but to also focus on the main theme of those verses allowing us to have a bigger impact of Surah Rahman all our life.
To keep motivation levels high, we decided that the winner will get a gift hamper of his/her choice sponsored by the rest of the family members. Don’t ask me who won the competition as I still grieve my precious Eidi (Eid gift).
