Ohio Township’s Chintha Kathiresan crafts a standardized pre-K syllabus
Chintha Kathiresan loves the Girl Scouts organization because it “encourages girls to use their strengths to help their community.” As someone with natural interests in problem solving and children, she did just that with her Gold Award project, aimed at streamlining pre-K education for the nonprofit religious organization ChinmayaMission Pittsburgh.
At the center’s Sunday Hindu lessons, textbooks alone are used for older age groups, but storytelling, activities and crafts are used in addition for the pre-K classes. Chintha’s mother taught those younger students for years, and her daughter noticed something peculiar: Because the crafts and activities weren’t a part of the textbook, each teacher worked independently to create those parts of the lessons. “That’s when I got the idea to create a standardized syllabus for crafts and activities tailored to the lessons in each week,”she said.
She met with local pre-K teachers, including her mom, to get their input. The resulting 26-project book, which mirrors the text -book’s lessons, is now used by all three Chinmaya Mission Pittsburgh locations and is available at the organization’s North American online teacher’s portal for use at its 54 centers across the country.
For her work, Chintha was named the 2021 Girl Scout of Distinction by the Western Pennsylvania Council, which covers 27 counties.
The 2021 Avonworth High School graduate will attend the University of Pittsburgh this fall for biology on a pre-med track. With her sights set on a pediatrics specialty, Chintha’s problem solving for kids is just getting started.