Learning Forward Saturday

AI-generated image for representation purposes only.

Quick recap of the introductory session for Early Years and early teachers.

The session began with technical discussions about audio and video connectivity issues, followed by introductions of teachers from Vimukti Girls School and Arthur Foot Academy who shared their experiences and professional backgrounds. The group then focused on storytelling techniques for teaching young children, with participants collaborating on creating engaging stories and discussing the importance of understanding rather than writing for children. The conversation ended with discussions about creating nature tables in classrooms and exploring methods for teaching language to young children, with teachers sharing their challenges and ideas for improvement.

Next steps

• All teachers: Keep cameras on during sessions
• All teachers: Participate actively in discussions by unmuting and sharing their thoughts
• All teachers: Prepare to discuss how children in their specific age groups learn
• All teachers: Prepare short stories incorporating the current season and small animals/creatures for their kindergarten/nursery classes
• All teachers: Implement storytelling techniques in their teaching approach
• All teachers: Bring a notebook and a pen for future sessions
• Shahana: Follow up with Kanika and teachers from the satellite branch in Malvia Nagar regarding their participation
• Kanika: Ensure proper audio setup for better communication in future meetings

Summary

Teacher Introductions and School Roles

The meeting focused on introducing teachers from Vimukti Girls School and Arthur Foot Academy. Shahana, the coordinator for Vimukti Girls School, introduced several pre-primary and primary teachers, including Mamta Sharma, Priyanka, and Ekta Rawat. The teachers shared their experiences and reasons for choosing teaching as a profession. Neelashi emphasised the importance of comfort and preparation for the teachers during the meeting. The meeting also highlighted the school's role in providing education and vocational training to students from slum areas in Jaipur.

Teaching Experiences and Multi-Level Learning

The meeting focused on introducing participants and discussing their experiences working with various age groups, particularly in educational settings. Neelashi led the discussion, encouraging participants to share their experiences and introduce themselves, with several teachers, including Mamta, Rahima, and Lalitha, contributing their insights. The group discussed the importance of understanding and catering to the needs of multi-level learners in India, emphasising the use of games, repetition, and storytelling in educational settings. They also addressed technical issues related to audio and introduced additional teachers who were present but had not yet spoken.

Engaging Storytelling for Kids

Neelashi discussed storytelling techniques for teaching young children, focusing on creating engaging stories that don't require extensive preparation. She shared a story about a family of elephants, including a young elephant named Emily, who gets lost in the jungle. Through a series of events, Emily learns to navigate the jungle and eventually becomes the jungle's queen. Neelashi emphasised the importance of using simple language and incorporating interactive elements, such as songs and movements, to make the story engaging for children.

Children's Story: Elephant in the Jungle

The group discussed creating a story for children, focusing on a small animal or creature in a fictional environment. Neelashi suggested using a story about an elephant and its role in the jungle, while Priyanka and Mamta shared their ideas. The participants agreed to switch off their cameras and collaborate on developing the story, with Neelashi emphasising the importance of engaging children with the narrative.

Storytelling for Children's Understanding

Neelashi led a storytelling session with teachers, emphasising the importance of understanding rather than writing stories for children. Kanika and Manisha shared stories about children interacting with nature, teaching lessons about respecting plants and animals. Neelashi encouraged the teachers to trust children's intelligence, allowing them to understand stories without explicit explanations.

Nature Tables and Language Teaching

The group discussed creating nature tables in classrooms to help children learn through seasonal and natural elements. Neelashi assigned teachers to prepare nature tables using items such as stones, leaves, and sticks, which the children would maintain daily. Nisha raised a question about teaching grammar to young children, and Neelashi suggested exploring methods that don't rely on formal grammar rules. The teachers were asked to share their challenges and ideas for improving language teaching, with a plan to compile their thoughts and send a photo of the list to Neelashi via WhatsApp.

AI can make mistakes—review for accuracy.

A School Called Home: Masterclass Saturday 18th January 2025

Chapter 11: A School Called Home: Shomie Das The Man Who Saw Tomorrow by Naga Tummala 

Q1. The mother in the chapter plays a vital role in shaping the child's learning experience by reading stories and ensuring a nurturing environment. How can schools engage parents more actively in their child’s learning journey? How can teachers collaborate with families to extend learning beyond the classroom?

Q2. Like the one in the chapter, a child learns to read, write, and do arithmetic in a home-based setting for a few hours daily. The routine includes storytelling, exploration, and breaks for creativity. There is a strong emphasis on balancing academics with free play. As a teacher, what strategies (e.g., differentiated learning, project-based learning) can you adopt in your classroom to replicate the flexibility and individual focus of a homeschooling environment?

Q3. Drawing from the idea of a "home-like" atmosphere, what elements (e.g., comfort, emotional security, a sense of belonging) can you bring into your teaching space to support your students' growth and well-being?

Q4. What are the key advantages and challenges of homeschooling compared to traditional schooling, especially regarding academic growth, social skills, and emotional well-being? How can traditional schools incorporate elements of homeschooling to address these areas?"

Gurdeep Kaur
The Teacher's Academy
GK@LearningForward.org.in

Importance of Fair Play - RP Devgan

In all my years as a Principal and an educator, I have taken great care to make sure that educators at all levels are very sensitive and conscientious about fair play and justice. Children must be treated fairly, especially in their last two years in school when their efforts start to bear fruit in terms of leadership and talent.

The injustice of any kind is unacceptable, be it in the form of nepotism, favouritism, or sheer high handedness.

It is a pity when educators at all levels right from the top to the junior-most concerned, favour the undeserving and cause bitterness and frustration to the deserving ones.

Educators have to be very sensitive and thoughtful when it comes to school appointments and awards every year. The deserving must get their due. Ever so often even in the best of schools, injustice is done during the appointments of school prefects, sports and activities captains and nomination of awards for the Best Debater, Artist, Actor etc.

I remember at one of the schools I headed, the Best Artist’s prize had been awarded to a boy who was nowhere near the best. I  had to intervene and finally convince the Art Teacher that a girl in the same class was far more deserving. He agreed but said that the Founder’s Day list was already at the printer’s and it was too late, but I persisted. it was finally decided that the prize would be shared, saving the girl from bitterness and frustration. Had this not happened, she would have graduated with bitter memories of her school life.

This kind of injustice can be stopped by conscientious and sensitive educators. The worst kind of nepotism in a school is when staff members favour their own and when the educators try to please influential parents.

It is imperative for educators to realise the gravity of their decisions as such decisions leave lifelong feelings of bitterness and scars in the deserving ones, the ones who have been overlooked and their talents and competence ignored. Unfair decisions make the atmosphere of a school most toxic. It would be interesting if today's adults paused and asked themselves how they were treated in school or their experience of justice and injustice in their schooldays.

I am sure even today some of them nurse scars inflicted on them in their school life and the bitterness and frustration still linger. This too happens when Managements of schools overlook the deserving and appoint people in top positions, including  Principals, through nepotism, lack of advice or sheer ignorance and complacency. Many such appointments have changed the history of institutions.

Justice and Fair Play should be the hallmark of every school and institution for the security and happiness of its individuals. It should become the culture of all schools.

-Rajinder Pal Devgan
Chairperson Learning Forward India, over five decades of experience as an Educationist and having served as a School Leader for schools in India and overseas.

Arpan Rai: Challenging times demand challenging measures

A message from a Teacher/Parent/Citizen

As the country enters into the 2nd day of the nationwide lockdown, one cannot help but wonder, 'What on earth are the children going to do?'

Then one realises that the digital platform has provided everyone with an interface to proceed with classroom learning.

Actually 'these days' that children can stay at home will indeed be a blessing because they have access to not just the digital world but also to their families, 'their own institution'. Probably every child who lives in a residential school couldn't have dreamt of a better opportunity than this 'lockdown'.

Yes, they might not be able to 'hang out' with their friends 'physically' but they do 'hang out' with their peers online, so much fuss about 'social distancing'.

For the parents who are wondering, ' How will we keep our children engaged at home?', I believe the best answer can be found in Roald Dahl's famous poem, 'The Television' which encourages parents to replace the Television with a bookshelf, but we all can do better than that.

Parents could use these 21 days or whatever number of days that might be necessary to combat this 'pandemic', to 'listen' to children, plan 'a future together'. 

We all could use this enforced lockdown to 'listen' to our children, encourage them to meditate, teach them basic survival skills, teach them about money that is very important.

We could talk to them about age-related issues, such as infatuation, hormonal changes in the body, aggressiveness, drug-related matters, dangers of physical intimacy, or all those things that we have always wanted to talk about, but haven't or didn't have the time to do so.

We all know that children in classes 9-12, already know their syllabi. They could proceed with their content.

Children could mark out the difficult concepts, try and identify chapters they would need help from their teachers. So that when they do return to their schools, the lesson plan could be arranged to accommodate difficulties first, prioritise the challenges.

Thereafter, children could ask the school to help them to get through to their respective teachers who in return could help with those chapters, either online or offline.

Children in class 8-12 could use this time to 'iron out' the difficulties that they had in their lower- classes. They could try to revise those lessons/ chapters that were challenging, confusing or difficult. Since they all have access to different digital platforms.

Children in the primary half of schooling could focus on foundational principles, such as: 
For maths-addition, subtraction, multiplication, for eng-parts of speech, tenses, one word for many, HCG- maps of the world, timelines in history, identification and differentiation in science, etc.
Children should draw, dance, sing, make a craft.

But most importantly, children should learn and be taught manners, courtesy, discipline. 

Please ask children to help with household chores, teach our daughters to ride a bicycle or drive while teaching our sons to cook, wash dishes, clothes etc.

Children should be handheld through religious discourses,  but ensure they can differentiate between 'a truth' and 'a lie'.

Kindly encourage children to stay fit, eat right. Read a book before they go to sleep. Encourage them to sleep early and wake up early.

Assign duties to children, such as fixing their bed, giving medicines to their grandparents, feeding the pet, watering the plants, etc.

Additionally, encourage them to maintain personal hygiene.

We all understand that children will fray our nerves but be patient, treat them with kindness. Be forgiving. Be encouraging, make them feel loved, appreciated and wanted

As teachers, we all want to return to schools, children too, but this pandemic is life-threatening, so hold on.

We have heard stories of how resilience works, this might be our great flood.

I am sharing what was shared by a cousin, hope it won't violate any copyright issues:

1- When the flood came, where were Noah and his family?
At home

2- When the three angels visited Abraham, where was he?
At home.

3- When the two Angels went to Sodom and Gomorrah, where was Lot?
At home

4- When the Angel killed the firstborn of Egypt, where were the Israelites?
At home.

5- Where were the apostles of Jesus when they received the Holy Spirit?
At home

6- Where are we because of the coronavirus?
At home.

Pray, Believe, Repeat.

- Arpan Rai <mozaisarp@gmail.com>

The Power Of Plan

Join me at the Global Educators Fest 2019

Where would you go out to play, if every park in the city would throw you, and your friends out – on the reason that playing in a playground, will ruin the grass. To the 16-year-old Chirag, that didn’t fit well, and somehow under the influence of the internet, he started a campaign on Facebook, reached out to his other friends, and started a community playground development project. By working with their hands and converting a wasteland in their residency – a bunch of kids ended up changing the rules of play – and got featured into a daily local – sharing the story, how Chirag started a Football academy for over 50 players in the city and running it for free.

The passion only grew, when he decided to drop out of the Chartered Accountancy program and shift to Bangalore to study Psychology. Only a few months in Bangalore, and having missed working with the kids, he joined a Youth Football Academy as a Coach and picked up bringing play to kids as young as 4-year-old. His next Eureka moment came. when he realised that the immersion while playing increased for kids when he started to address cones as trees. He kept his experiments running, and soon, when the other discourses in his University challenged his way of thinking, he did the next big thing. For a mere proof of concept, he cycled all the way from Bangalore to Jaipur, a journey of 2300kms in 11 days. This was followed by another epic, where he ended up cycling from Jaipur – West to East India – Bhutan – Myanmar – Thailand – Cambodia – Laos – Vietnam, around 13000kms in 8 months, alone, by crossing all land borders. The journey concluded as a researched understanding learning patterns across cultures and later translated into designing and facilitating noncompetitive sports and play sessions for a Kindergarten in Bangalore. Luckily, in 2017, he was back in Jaipur, and this time got summoned by Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, to head Rajasthan in a program called Mission 11 Million, in collaboration with FIFA, to host FIFA U17 WorldCup in India, and bring the joy of Football to 11 Million kids around the country.

Find out more https://globaledfest.com/

Currently, Chirag Singal runs a project called “Giraffe Uncle”, which gets kids to have more efficient time playing outdoors, in a non-competitive, inclusive, and emerging design. He has been invited to TEDx, IIM A, NITs, BITS, numerous schools, and colleges to share his story and insights for the work, and promotes his stand for the practices we bring to the playground for our toddlers.

#HappyTeachers #BrewingKnowledge #SGEF19

Bhawna Sharma: Speaks about the Joy Of Learning

Listen to the post and figure out how the child will find the joy of learning.

Click here

Bhawna Sharma from The Iconic School shares her experience of using simple games to strengthen social and emotional learning. Remember, the child will learn only when the games give him an experience of the joy of learning. #HappyTeachers #MyGoodSchool #SchoolsCanChange