Lets us Improve Ourselves

Socrates, the great philosopher was once asked by one of hisdisciples, “Why is it Sir that you tell everybody who wants to become your discipline to look into this pond and tell what he sees?

“This is very simple, my friend, answered Socrates, I am ready to accept all those who tell me that they see the fish swimming around or stones in pond. But those who see only their own image mirrored in the water are in love with their ego. I have no use of them.”

Man’s greatest mystery is man himself. The purpose of life is to have an ultimate knowledge about one self.

The positive response to our behaviour develops confidence in the development of our personality which is being appreciated where as negative response negates the understanding of one’s self and leads to feeling of inadequacy, discomfort, anxiety and tension. The concept of ‘Self’ is formed by behaviour of others towards one self. Whenever an individual interacts, there is a social self. The gap between the self image and social self, determines the effectiveness of the individual. The feeling of inferiority is rooted in the human beings because a man compares his “insignificance” with the immensity of the universe”. This can be overcome by developing social interest.

There is a saying ,“Courage is the health of the soul.” The inferiority complex can be overcome e by developing courage. It can be overcome if we are not afraid of making mistakes. Both making mistakes and learning how to work on mistakes, demand courage, which will ultimately improve both our social self and self image by reducing the inferiority complex. The process of self improvement calls for reducing the gap between social self and self image. 

- Agya Kour is a teacher at DBN SNS School at Jammu, her email is Akr.sns@dbntrust.in

Parent-Teacher Relationship

Image courtesy NoteZone.Net

Building Relational Trust

Here when we speak of parent-teacher relationship, we believe that teachers have far more impact on a kid than a parent. The general role of schoolteacher and family is to teach children certain skills. Since both have the same goals hence they should co-ordinate with each other for the development of the child. Both should keep in mind that each new opportunity can help to establish the relation between school and the parents, thereby improving the situation of the child and their academic performance. It is up to the teachers to establish the first contact, which is, of course, the most difficult task for the teacher. In this task, teachers can be supported by their colleagues and due co-operation of the parents too. Parental involvement can free teachers to focus more on the task of teaching children. We also believe that this two-way communication between parents and school is necessary for students’ success. They should develop a model of co-operation which will bring the best results, thus it is essential to be aware of the objectives of this co-operation e.g. parents participation in the teaching and educational process, raising parents educational awareness and to know the parents expectations from the school which enables a better understanding of students by teachers and parents. One thing we should keep in mind that to achieve satisfactory results both parents and schoolteachers have to co-operate closely. To make the co-operation with parents by the teachers, teachers should take steps towards a good collaboration, engage parents in collaboration, create good atmosphere for conversation, which makes parents feel involved, show understanding and their concern, monitor the students progress and keep informed the parents, offer help where needed, as after all there is a common target of parents and teachers about the development of the child. To have a better understanding of the atmosphere of the school, social meetings should be organised on the occasions of celebrations of an annual day, etc., do not leave parents with problems- offer all possible help so that they are known and understood clearly and timely, ensure parents involvement in school life too. Simultaneously teacher should also know the family background/culture of the children in which he lives and if possible contact with the members of the family, inform parents about the child’s marks, his/her day to day activities on his “school diary” not just negative and also positive of the child should be reported on student diary.

Whereas on the other hand parents instead of hiding any important information about their wards provide correct information of their wards i.e. About their homework, other activities at home, what their Wards like or dislike after the school hours and the contribution the parents provided to their wards in their studies. Parents should strictly follow the suggestions, guidelines of the teachers, as a result their deliberations which took place during parent teacher meet, parent should also help their children in completing their daily homework given by the teacher, tell the teacher honestly the way they are helping their children in their studies at home and also time devoted by them with the children in their activities. Parents should also at their liberty to write any suggestions, which will help the teachers in development of their children, as the effective educational work implies tight co-operation between parents and class teachers.

- Nidhi Sambyal is a teacher at the DBN Amarvilla School and her email is nsl.av@dbntrust.in

The Fear Within

COURAGE TO TEACH - The Fear Within is an exercise being done by the educators at the DBN Centre of Excellence, they are exploring the professional development journey, and trying to find out what was their biggest fear, and how the overcame the moment. 

The Fear Within 

"One of the blessings of teaching is the chance it gives us for continuing encounters with the young, but whatever eventually blesses us may at first feel like a curse! We are more likely to survive the curse and arrive at the blessing if we understand that we may be as afraid of our students as they are of us—and then learn to decode our own fears, as well as theirs, for the sake of creativity in the service of the young".  - Courage To Teach

The Exercise

Ask each teacher to write brief descriptions of two recent moments in teaching: a moment when things were going so well that you knew you were born to teach and a moment when things were going so poorly that you wished you had never been born.

Image courtesy MindTools.Com

I learnt that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

My first experience of fear in teaching was when I had given the class of Air Force Officers to teach them LINUX Operating System. That time I had the experience of instruction for more than four years, but that time I felt that it was my first class. They all were mature persons, and I was younger than most of them. But when I entered the classroom I was blushed with fear my heart was sinking. I gave my introduction to them and started my lecture. They all were listening to me carefully after that their question answer session started. I made their confusions clear about that Operating system. Then practical session started, they all enjoyed that first class. After completion of that day I was relaxed and my fear within was all gone. Their feedback of the first day was all good. Next day when class started, I was more enthusiastic than yesterday and enjoyed a lot in teaching them.

At the end of one month, of the training session with them, they appreciate my teaching and patience to tackle them to understand the practical on LINUX. That was one of the experiences of mine when I fear most in teaching.

- Komal Bali is a teacher at the DBN Mubarak Mandi School and her email is mm@dbntrust.in

The Heart Tree - Venus Upadhayaya

VISION AND LEARNING: Have you ever observed that anger exists before the reason for that anger exists? Just like awareness or knowledge exists before the language in which we express it. Poets would understand emotion exists before the expression.

There's a great choice and an opportunity available in expression. A language's destiny depends upon how refined emotions does that society/community/civilization cultivates and how refined are its skills of language to express it. Language is very important for the synthesis of learning and skills of language are very important for creating a learning community.

Language is not just identification of sounds and skills of decoding. Language is a refined process of awareness of oneself and the world around. The world you create inside is the world you experience outside and language is a part of that experience.

While in auto to office today I was thinking of a word 'Suryakamal'. A sanskrit word, this word is a combination of two words 'Surya' that means Sun and 'Kamal' that means 'Lotus'. I was wondering how powerful this word is! When you chose this word in your expression you make a powerful choice, you undergo a powerful cognition process that's because of a powerful synthesis of two experiences of sun and lotus and their legacy. There's beautiful poetry in their combination.

The beauty of Sanskrit as a language lies in the way the language combines distant words to create new words that heighten emotion, comprehension, cognition, expression, poetry and exchange. Knowledge is the fundamental on which is built human consciousness and language is the medium that carries that. Imagine your experience of ganga without the word ganga.

Imagine the experience of your beloved without his/her name. Imagine the experience of your country without its name. Imagine the experience of truth without the word truth; it would become so difficult to contain and express our experience of truth without the word 'truth'.

Now imagine how long it would have taken the human civilisation to come to this point where each word denotes a process of refinement and each word carries a legacy of human experience and knowledge.

There lies the vision of my research and center of learning. Dear friends, let me introduce you to the Heart Tree. #thehearttree

(Heart Tree is based on my research into learning, teaching and learning/knowledge communities. This endeavour is supported by few individuals who are my friends. Heart Tree is not a legal, commercial entity currently. Welcome to the spirit of Heart Tree.)

Building Relational Trust

There are a lot of relationships in our lives, in this world like – a relationship between friends, parents, school children, classmates, workmates and even neighbours. A relationship is easy to make, but it is so hard to make that relationship stronger and lasting. A long lasting relationship is very easy to establish if we put the spirit of trust.

Here we are talking about a relationship of teachers with their students that how to build a good rapport with students by winning their confidence. Building trust is a process. In schools/colleges and even universities and other top educational institutes, it is not just; about trust between teachers and students, but between faculty and other faculty and their supporting staff of his institute too.

Improving student’s relationships with teachers have significant, active and long. It is seen that students who have close contact with their class teachers having active and supportive relationships would attain higher levels of achievement than others, students must talk to their teachers frequently without any fear, tell them their problems and receive guidance. The student is likely to trust their teacher more show their engagement in learning rather enter into conflict, show their better behaviour in the classroom, with their classmates, school staff. Positive teacher-student relationship draws students into the process of learning and good manners.

The teachers win the students trust by showing their love for them, sorting out their day to day  problems helping them in their daily school learning activities, devote their time so that students feel home like atmosphere in the school and make the best relationship with their students, as trust within a relationship encompasses much more, as relationship always based on trust. Without trust, there would be no connection we can build with the students.

Teachers who have healthy, positive relationships with their students create a healthy environment which meets students developmental emotional and academic need. Teachers who create a good relationship with their students and win the trust of the students brings success as students attended their periods in the classroom regularly, remained cooperative and show good results in the examination. Teacher must adopt good relationships with their students by showing their pleasure, interact with responsive and respectful manners, avoid showing irritability aggravation, avoid negative attitude, teacher have to make an efforts to spend time individually with each student especially who are weak in their studies, shy in nature & who remained in stress by one or the other reason. This will help to create a more positive relationship with their students, encourage students to participate in games, yoga and give them best possible health tips, give them meaningful feedback, take them in a picnic in some historical, spiritual places.

Trust them so as to create/develop the best relationship among teachers and the students in this new era.

- Anita Sharma is a teacher at DBN Amarvilla School at Jammu, her email is Asa.av@dbntrust.in

Arti Sharma of DBN SNS School shares her thought, you can email her asa.sns@dbntrust.in

It is a very beautiful and awesome thing in the world. Without it we do not proceed in life. To make my notion clear, I take the example of a child who feels secure in the arms of his/her mother. He knows that my mother will not fall me that is called relational trust. Here is an example of  a blood relation, to explain the idea. But I like to make it clear by giving the example of teacher & student. Students usually follow the command of his /her teacher. Toddlers always feel that my teacher is right. He imitates the teacher, not his /her parents. In class 1st of our school, student name (Pragun) follows the command of Shobha Ma'am no one else that is called relational trust. Relational trust is just like a pearl which dazzles when we care it. Otherwise, it looses its charm.
- Meenakshi Sharma is a teacher at DBN Amarvilla School at Jammu, her email is msa.av@dbntrust.in

How the DBN School Teachers define 'Trust'

Teachers in search of Trust

As a part of the Learning Forward Professional Development Exercise, the educators at the DBN Schools at Jammu set out in the quest for Trust...the expression was fantastic, and we share in their very own words and art too!

They express themselves with visuals and writings and work to build a relationship of trust and confidence with all the stakeholders: Management, Parents, Students and Teachers.