Reflections from Learning Forward Saturday sessions

Learning Forward Saturday sessions are held every Saturday at 3:00 PM on Zoom and are open to all members of the Good Schools Alliance

Right vs Wrong

As a teacher, I can utilise this story to teach students important life values along with academic learning. I would use the story to spark discussions about trust, safety, peer pressure, and responsible decision-making, so students can connect the story’s events to real-life situations. 

Through the character of Roma, I would explain how a teacher should be caring, approachable, courageous, and supportive towards students. I can also use this story in value education classes, counselling sessions, and group activities such as role plays, debates, and reflective writing to help students develop empathy, confidence, and moral awareness. 

The story would help me encourage students to speak openly about their problems and understand that seeking guidance is a sign of strength, not weakness. As a teacher, this story also reminds me to maintain a balance between discipline and compassion, to understand students’ emotional needs, and to create a safe and trusting classroom environment where every student feels respected, protected, and guided.

Regards 
Ms. Rekha Sharma 
Sunbeam School Mau

Like vs Unlike

We learn that a teacher should not always react aggressively. 

We also learned that students share their problems only when they trust their teacher. Therefore, teachers should keep such matters confidential and not discuss them with everyone. In the chapter, Roma informed the parents, but the matter was kept private among the counsellor, the class teacher, and the parents.

Overall, the chapter teaches us that a good teacher should understand students, guide them positively, maintain confidentiality, and handle every situation with patience, care, and understanding.

PYDS Learning Academy

Reflection from the Master Class of 6th Dec 2025

It's important to maintain clear personal boundaries — whether at work, at home, or in any other space. Many confrontations and arguments, especially with children or students, can be avoided when elders refrain from imposing their own goals under the pretext of "it's for your good." Respecting individual choices and not intruding into their lives leads to healthier, more harmonious relationships.

We must also learn to untangle complicated situations with fresh thinking, just as the Gordian Knot was resolved with a new approach. And perhaps the most valuable lesson of all: don't fall into the trap of trying to please everyone — because in the end, the only person who ends up unhappy is YOU!!.

Shalini Gupta

Turning Direct Instruction on its Head

Masterclass Session with Sandeep Dutt

As educators, we often face a dilemma: Should we pursue direct instruction or embrace the uncertainty of productive failure?

Pressed for time, and sometimes driven by the belief that students can't learn without explicit guidance, many of us default to direct instruction. But in doing so, are we boxing their thinking, limiting their potential to explore, connect, and construct meaning independently?

Can productive failure truly work in all situations?

Which approach actually leads to deeper, transferable learning?

We will explore these questions together as we delve into Chapter 2, "The Solution—Productive Failure,"  from Manu Kapur's acclaimed book Productive Failure.

The dynamic book discussion will help you reflect, rethink, and redesign learning that empowers students to think beyond instructions.

Summary of the session

Sandeep introduced the Teachers Academy Blog and discussed the concept of productive failure in learning, contrasting it with direct instruction and explaining its potential benefits for students' conceptual understanding and problem-solving abilities. He outlined the key elements of designing robust experiments to compare teaching methods and emphasised the importance of statistical significance and effect size in research findings. The session concluded with a discussion on the effectiveness of combining inquiry and direct instruction for deep learning, and the importance of how foundational knowledge is acquired for creativity and understanding.

Key Takeaways

Chapter 2: THE SOLUTION: PRODUCTIVE FAILURE 

1. Direct Instruction trumps pure discovery learning. But that does not make Direct Instruction the most optimal learning model.

2. Productive Failure designs for and bootstraps failure for learning. Even though students fail at solving problems targeting concepts they have not learned yet, the failure is designed to prepare them to learn from subsequent instruction.

3. Productive Failure trumps Direct Instruction. Robust evidence shows that Productive Failure produces significantly better understanding and transfer outcomes than Direct Instruction.

4. Making learning easy does not necessarily make it easy. There is a time for failing and a time for telling.

Hope and Friendship - Monika Vaishnav

Hope is a feeling of expectation for something to happen. Hope gives wings to our desires. Without

hope, life will be sad as hope gives us the strength to face the challenges and stand again after failure and move forward towards our destiny. Hope is a positive feeling about something we desire for. It builds trust within one's self. It can help a person to start from zero and reach to the top. The person who is hopeful in life, will never lose his confidence and never be frustrated. We also need patience and hard work with the hope to become successful in life. Hope is the only thing which can relax our mind in difficult situations. It creates a second chance for us to get what we want and win in life. The people whom we love also contribute to stay hopeful in life and help us to come out of frustration. Our family will always be with us which is quite natural but friends which we make in life also bring sweetness in our life. It is the pure relation which is beyond selfishness. It is the relation which is made up of love, care, support, understanding and trust and can last long to eternity. Friends must have enough faith in each other that no one can create misunderstanding between them. A real friend is one who stands with us, no matter if hundreds of people are against us. There is no life without friends. Friendship is the only relation which reduces the differences of caste, religion and financial status. It is the relationship between two souls. We can't open our hearts with anyone except whom we trust. We can laugh, cry, share happiness or grief, good or bad experiences and have fun with friends. Life becomes more joyful with friends. At the same time, friends should correct our mistakes and help us to avoid bad things instead of being quiet even if we are on the wrong path just to make us happy. It is better to have few friends who are true rather than having many fake friends. Monika Vaishnav The Fabindia School mvv4fab@gmail.com

Hope and Friendship - Ajay Vijayvargi

In today's world, each one of us comes across situations when we need some help or support, which person/persons come to your mind first – definitely your FRIENDS who are hope in the day. A Friend in need is a friend indeed.

Each one of us has friends, but it is difficult to have/find true friends. Each one of us have a different definition of a friend, let us some of them – he is a person who understands us, makes us feel good, trustworthy, not judgmental, always keep in touch, listen to us when the world has left us, keeps communication uninterrupted and clear, accept you like yourself. Though it is difficult to find all qualities in a single person even if he has few of these in him, he will be our friend - our Hope in life. Whenever an incident happens to show our solidarity and our concern we light candles (Nirbhaya case) similarly when we light diyas on Diwali we do it to show our hope to remove the darkness of ignorance, fear etc. Hope can be our map to success, making our journey easier, helping us to cope up with stresses, it will help us to ignore hardships and sufferings, and give us inspiration, motivation and a mindset to achieve our goals. It helps us in making our lives better and is the essence of life. One we choose hope everything is possible, it is a belief that things will be alright and a small ray of hope helps us to fight immense darkness. Ajay Vijjayvargi The Fabindia School avi@fabindiaschools.in

Courage and Patience - Shivani Rao

Courage and Patience are wonderful tools for solving the problem in our life. Life has its ups and downs. Many times it too shovels dirt on you. But with courage and patience, we can remove all. Courage is the act of doing something whilst knowingly putting yourself in danger of some sort or other. Patience keeps us healthy. Anger and stress are two things that are enough to ruin a person’s health. And patience is the antidote to both these illnesses.

Being patient, you can overcome any challenging situation with more flexibility and in a better way. Being stress-free and happy helps you stay healthier. These two values are very important in a student's life. Every day they experience these values. Sports display these values in a beautiful and effective manner. While playing any game, we must have the courage to stand against the opponent and with patience to accept the end decision.

Patience helps us accept other people as they are and makes us tolerant. If things are not going the way you want them to, instead of getting frustrated, you must learn to be patient. You need to see things and situations in a positive light to make your life happier. And to get that positivity, you need to be patient. 

Shivani Rao 

The Fabindia School

Courage and Patience - Jitendra Suthar

It is very good to be courageous. A person who never bows down to something wrong and

raises a voice against it is said to be courageous. But having patience is much more important for a person. There can be situations where time plays an important factor, where we have to keep patience for things to get back on track. If we don’t do so, things might go wrong, and our being courageous may affect us badly if we don’t stay calm in some situations. 

Courage and patience go with each other simultaneously. We can say how courageous and hardworking the Ant might be, who tries to climb long-distance walls, falls much time keeping patience trying again and again, and finally reaching the desired destination. 

Whenever a person develops the habit of saying the truth and stands by it no matter what the consequences are, they will develop courage automatically. It is the power to stand by the truth and tackle things without any hesitation. At times, there are a lot of people who work for something and expect results immediately. A kid at an early age goes to the gym for a workout with the feeling that someday he will transform himself into a bodybuilder.

He goes to the gym daily, has a hard workout, and returns home.  After 2 months, a kid starts getting depressed because he couldn’t achieve that stage and leave that gym, while others who continue to work outcome out of great results later on. That was the time when he realized that things would have gone into the correct lane if he would have kept patience. So, stay focused on whatever we are doing, learn to say right or wrong without any fear and stay calm, results will definitely go on a good track.

Jitendra Suthar

The Fabindia School

Honesty and Respect: Urmila Rathore

The yearly examinations were going on and children had come to take their exams after preparations and were very curious to give. On one unusual day(as it turned out later), after the morning assembly, it was announced by the Principal Ma'am that today's examination would be discharged as soon as early. Lockdown was announced by the government in view of the increasing transition of COVID-19.

While the children were taking their exam in the examination hall, I got the information that the remaining examinations will be given by the students from their home, which was surprising to me as to how this would be possible?

After that, Principal ma'am called an assembly again and the students were told that the papers of the remaining three exams shall be given from home and that they should check the answer book after completion. Whatever marks they get, shall be sent to their respective subject teachers.

In this way, the students were given papers and were instructed by the Principal Ma'am that they should give them with honesty and trust, and not cheat(rather with themselves) in any way.

After this, a staff meeting was called by Ma'am and told that we have to trust our students and this is the right time to know the student-teacher relationship. It was also said that the marks updated by the students will be compared with that of their half-yearly marks to reassure their authenticity and then prepare the results.

Even after reaching home, the same thing was coming in my mind that will the children be able to follow these instructions? Is it appropriate to give papers at home like this? Or will the parents of the children take it in a positive way? And many such other questions.

Two days later, students started sending their marks on WhatsApp. Five to six days later almost all the students took the examinations, checked the answer sheets and sent their marks. As we had decided in the past that their marks will be matched with the marks of the half-yearly examination so we followed the same and in fact, these marks were around their half-yearly scores!

The students did their work with all their dedication, faith and honesty and it was on this basis that their result was prepared. Everyone's report cards were downloaded from Fedena and uploaded to the next class.

This work-ethic was possible because of the integrity of the students, the directions of the Principal ma'am and the trust of the teachers. Thus, it set a unique example of honesty and mutual respect.

This experience has a major lesson in itself. We can only win through difficult situations if the virtues of cooperation and honesty are performed. At the same time, trust and respect for each other take us to infinite heights.

Urmila Rathore

The Fabindia School

"FRIENDSHIP- TRUE OR FAKE" : Prerna Rathod

"Friendship" is the most beautiful bond that can exist between two or more people. It is born at that moment when one person says to another, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” It is a relationship in which a person genuinely cares for the other. The person may or may not be of blood relation. Even if they are not in blood relation, they will be there for you in difficult situations and in your happy moments till last breath. That is the reason why it is said: "Hard times reveal true friends".

Since every coin has two sides or every situation has pros and cons, so does friendship. Thus, there exist some friends, who will act like they care for us but in reality, they don't bother to do so. They are known as "fake friends". Fake friends are like shadows, always near you at your brightest moments, but nowhere to be seen at your darkest hours. Once your fake friends stop talking to you they start talking about you. True friends will always find a way to help you, but fake friends will find an excuse. According to me, it is better to walk alone rather than walking surrounded by fake friends. True friends are like stars, you don't always see them but you know that they are always there. They will always show you the correct and right path.

Fake friends are like pollutants for friendship. Thus, we should be careful of fake friends, as we know that pollutants are not good and can be injurious to health. So, it's better to choose our friends wisely and should not trust blindly on anyone, because "Even our shadow leaves us when we are in the dark".

Prerna Rathod

prd4fab@gmail.com

The Fabindia School, Bali