World Cities Day - Kusum Sharma

The 31st of October is celebrated as World Cities Day. The aim is to promote the international community’s interest in global urbanization, enhance cooperation among countries and cities in meeting opportunities and addressing challenges of urbanization, and contribute to sustainable urban development. The overall World Cities Day theme is Better City, Better Life.   However, every year a different sub-theme is selected. The sub-theme is in such a way to either promote the success of urbanization or address specific challenges from urbanization. 

Significance

The theme is selected to discuss how urbanization can be used to achieve sustainable development. It aims at implementing the New Urban Agenda.

New Urban Agenda

The New Urban Agenda was adopted in Quito, Ecuador at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in 2016. The conference is also known as the Habitat Conference. The Agenda set global standards for the way the cities are to be built, managed and inhabited. Also, it aims at implementing SDG 11 which deals with making human cities and towns inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

The Habitat conferences happen once in every 20 years. The habitat I was organized in Vancouver in 1976, Habitat II in Istanbul in 1996 and Habitat III in Quito in 2016.

Need

Over half of the world populations now live in cities. The number is to double by 2050. It possesses great challenges related to the environment, housing, infrastructure, climate change, basic services, infrastructure, food security, jobs, education, safety and natural resources. 

Courtesy- https://www.unenvironment.org/events/un-day/world-cities-day

Kusum Sharma

The Fabindia School

ksa@fabindiaschools.in

Making Thinking Visible - Bharti Rao

Life as a teacher begins when we realize that we are learners. Learning is a lifelong process

which continues until the end. The period of COVID -19 has given ample opportunities to the Educators to enrich themselves in many ways through webinars, workshops, personal development programs and training. This experiential learning has brought a great change in them and also helped them to bring in a transition in their kids too. 

  

Transition in Kids from ‘I can’t do it!’ to be proactive that ‘I can do !’ is necessary. For this it is necessary for students to think why they are stuck and what should they do to get out of this? For this, they need to learn to think about their own thinking. This can only be possible with the proper guidance from elders. Teaching reading to students will help to make thinking visible. 

How can students’ thinking be made visible? This can be made visible by reflecting on our thoughts. Reflecting and thinking are a powerful tool which helps a student to overcome obstacles, be more resilient and successful. Educators should organize activities and give a text to them to read. After reading the text the student needs to relate it with any instance similar to it. 

Then he needs to think and answer the questions so the best ways to think is by reading, listening, questioning and documenting. This helps a student to make his thinking visible and understand his learning. Some examples of to think visible are field trips, learning through theatre,   engaging activities, exploring etc. 

Courtesy:  Re-Orienting English Curriculum by U Catapult

Bharti Rao

The Fabindia School

bro@fabindiaschools.in