By BIS Correspondent for BIS Mumbai

Don Bosco Senior Secondary School, Seawoods, observed the third day of its four-day Teacher Training Programme, Re-Imagining Classrooms 2026: New Perspectives, Innovative Strategies, Inspiring Learning, on June 3, 2026. Themed “Day with God,” the day brought together the school’s entire staff community: teaching, administrative, office, academy, sports, NIOS and social outreach staff, for a full day of spiritual recollection and professional formation.

The day was facilitated by two Salesians newly appointed to the Don Bosco Seawoods community. Fr Joyston Machado SDB, who serves the Salesian Province of St. Francis Xavier, Mumbai as Catechist, Director of Tej-Prasarini and Province Delegate for Social Communication, will also serve as Catechist and Assistant Director at the Academy here, continuing to shuttle between Don Bosco Matunga and Seawoods. Currently pursuing a postgraduate course in Counselling Psychology alongside a completed year-long specialised training in AI applications for education, Fr Machado brought to the day a formation that is simultaneously pastoral, academic and contemporary. Br Royston Colaco, Vocation Animator for the Salesian Province of St. Francis Xavier, Mumbai, who brings extensive experience in discernment retreats, formation programmes and spiritual accompaniment, will serve as Vice Principal of the school alongside his existing responsibilities. Both were warmly introduced by Fr Allwyn Misquitta SDB, formerly Catechist and Social Ministry Animator at Don Bosco Seawoods and now appointed Administrator of the community.

The day opened not with a talk but with a dance. Fr Machado and Br Colaco led the entire staff through an action song that broke self-consciousness and established the central conviction of the day: joy is not separate from education but lies at its heart.

From movement, the day moved into stillness. Fr Machado offered Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence as a meditative prayer, played twice: first in audio with eyes closed, drawing staff inward; then through its modern visual interpretation on screen.

Participants were then given a reflective worksheet titled Young Enough to Care, Wise Enough to Accompany, with five questions inviting each person to examine what gives them energy, what drains them, what they have neglected in themselves, what they need more of and how full their cup currently is.

The centrepiece of the morning was The Games Field, a session Fr Machado developed from his deep personal love of football. Using that world as a scaffold, he introduced three roles: the Player, the Coach and the Commentator. The Player alone holds the pen and remains 100% responsible for the life being drawn on the page. The Coach accompanies, advises and guides but cannot carry the responsibility. The Commentator has the amplified voice and zero accountability.

Fr Machado named what every person in the room recognised immediately: we surrender the pen most readily to the commentator, to voices that have no stake in our lives. The three reasons this happens are: the need for external validation, the gradual loss of personal integrity and the drift into becoming an echo of someone else’s expectations rather than a creative voice in one’s own right. Applied to institutional life, he observed that becoming a commentator within one’s own school and on one’s own colleagues is not mere cynicism; it is a slow abandonment of vocation.

Fr Machado then reflected on four figures who shaped Don Bosco’s formation, drawing not on familiar narrative but on the specific pedagogical wisdom each figure embodies: Mama Margaret, Don Calosso, Louis Comollo and St Joseph Cafasso.

Br Colaco co-facilitated the sessions that followed with characteristic pastoral presence and animation, helping sustain the energy of the hall through listening exercises, a blind walk activity conducted in pairs across two rounds, and the stick-and-cloth dance.

Before the lunch break, the Headmistress, Ms Jyotsna D’Souza, paused the gathering to offer a word of thanks on behalf of the staff. After the lunch break, Fr Machado facilitated the afternoon’s Prompt Engineering workshop. Drawing on his completed year-long course in Artificial Intelligence for educators and his daily role managing provincial communications through BIS Mumbai, the information service of the Mumbai Province, he noted candidly that BIS editors can recognise when articles submitted from houses have been generated wholesale through AI tools. Technology, he reminded the gathering, functions best as a drafting companion rather than a ghostwriter.

Fr Machado then demonstrated ChatGPT, Notebook LM, and Julius AI live, with staff from all departments generating lesson plans, quizzes, slide decks, trackers and activity outlines in real time.

The day concluded with open reflections from staff across all departments. Several teachers spoke of carrying The Games Field directly into their own classrooms. The Principal, Ms Kalyani Chaudhuri, already using Notebook LM in her own practice, issued a challenge to the staff: to take up at least five AI tools from the session and put them to purposeful use. Fr Misquitta, in his closing remarks, noted that the day had connected seamlessly with the preceding days of formation, that it had energised the community and that the school was glad to have both Salesians now stationed within it.

Don Bosco Seawoods extends sincere gratitude to Fr Joyston Machado and Br Royston Colaco for a day that blended prayer, reflection, accompaniment and practical learning; offering the entire staff community not only new tools for the classroom but a renewed sense of why they chose to stand in one.