Observation and classrooms - Neelashi Mangal

Everything ties back to being a teacher; this "Friday@ EBD" was another thread. We had invited Neha Negi, author of When Birds Talked, to our Meet-and-Greet. An artistic activity was designed in which Neha asked participants to observe and describe mundane objects around them using five adjectives or phrases. Participants shared their observations. There were beautiful connections and observations made by people. It is true, we do forget the mundane. The mundanities that surround us are constant. We discussed a powerful paragraph from her prologue, which noted that we tend to know more about distant lands than about the nature immediately available to us. I was thinking about whether I know more bird names than just crow, maina, pigeon, and bulbul. I do not. 

For me as a teacher, this is a powerful message that I'd like to take to my classrooms and teacher training. In the chaos of learning the alphabet and numbers, we forget the gifts we have received from nature. Can we bring this back to our classroom? It is also a reflection of how little we care or bother. As a result, we can destroy it because there is less connection and affection for it. 

This week, as in any other, reflections continue, and there is a wonderful group of teachers who meet at Learning Forward on Saturday, where there is an invisible love for teaching, dialogue, and shared realities. I'd like to invite my group to think of all the names of the birds and trees around us before we discuss phonetics and its difficulty. 

Teacher As A Researcher

This year's first Learning Forward Saturday session was to set our agenda straight with all sincerity. As a teacher, I want to ask difficult questions of myself and my community about teaching and learning. These questions can unsettle us and push us to the verge of wanting to leave the profession and feeling exhausted. Both these circumstances motivated me to take a challenge to our collective of reading a report done by the Language and Learning Foundation on teaching and learning. 

Teaching is not a regular job. It requires patience, compassion, a kind heart, self-awareness and lots of good cake and coffee (because how else will you survive the burnout?). While these are essentials, we require dedication towards research. The Oxford definition of 'research' as a verb is 'investigate systematically'. When we read a research report with findings and recommendations, we read, reflect and see what we can take from it. In our session, we took up questions and thought of various ways we assume certain things about children, learning and teaching. Can we undo these and feel safe enough to bring it to our group? At Learning Forward Saturday, we are constantly trying to create a space that would invite our limitations and reflections. 

Anyone interested to read this report to find out the ground reality from our classrooms, please have a look at it- https://languageandlearningfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Full-Report_TLPS_2025_December.pdf. 

Neelashi Mangal
Head Training and Development at the Learning Forward India Foundation