Education is Not Instant & Ready to Eat Meals!

 A couple of weeks back, I was conducting a training session on  why life skills need to be integrated with lesson planning in front of some 1100 plus teachers for a prestigious chain of school. At the beginning of every training or workshop whether its teachers or students, I keep thinking of innovative ways of engaging my audience and keeping the monotony at bay that generally sets in after first 10 minutes of commencing of the class.

What bothered me was how to engage such a huge audience all the time and help them relate the content of the workshop with their working style. So my little brain suggested that ‘Do not follow the pattern you have predefined’. Best thing is to let the audience give the information they know and slowly weave the same into the content of the workshop. The reason for this is - Thinking is driven by Questioning and when you are thinking your mind is alert & you don’t doze off! So it works well no matter how large the audience is!

During the first 15 minutes, I must have asked them multiple questions and got amazing responses, and we were sailing smoothly into the workshop, when one teacher asked me, “All that you said about life skills is good, but how are we going to integrate it with everyday curriculum?” So it was time to do some impromptu thinking because this question was supposed to come somewhere in the middle of the session and not right in the beginning. So I decided to conduct a simple 10 mins class for them- The question given to them at the beginning of this class was – Why do you think Junk food is bad? We got amazing answers- all facts on calories, fats, proteins and how the calorie count goes up when you have junk food etc etc. Pop came my next question, “If we have eaten 600 calories through the junk food which is actually what a Mc Donald’s happy meal contain, then why do we still feel hungry after an hour so of eating that food?” That’s when there was complete silence.  At the end of the hall a teacher got up and said, “Ma’am why don’t you tell us the answer?  Why are you making us think so much?” Obviously, the Life Skill bug in me smiled again and said, “Well! That’s the exact objective of this workshop Sir. To make you all think”.

The whole point of teaching is to make the students learn to think in a logical manner. Get them to using the information available in abundance to apply & find the answers to their problems and way forward also learn to analyze the same.

As a teacher you should be able to sense when your students start to lose attention, and not become immune to it and tell yourself, “Oh! This generation of students just don’t have the desire to learn. They are useless bunch of students who are ready to do all kinds of antics but are not ready to pay attention.” I suppose, then its time ask yourself a simple question- when was the last time you got bored when someone was speaking or lecturing you, and WHY did you get bored. Probably you might just stumble upon learning core life skill- empathy.

The whole objective of education is to help the children and even we adults learn to ask right set of questions at the appropriate time so that we can solve our problems or take the right decision. It’s not about giving information; it’s about explaining them the process of using that information to make a change in their attitudes and behavior.

Now if you are still wondering what happened to the answer to why do we still feel hungry after eating junk food and have not yet worn your thinking caps, then I will just give you another hint before signing off: What is that most important thing which we need to eat in our food other than carbohydrates, fats, proteins and essential minerals and vitamins. If you have got the answer and still wondering how, then there is another question which you need to ask- what is the property of cotton when it get soaked in liquid... In case you still did not get it then, just think why the example of cotton was given in the last question.

Importance of Healthy Eating Needs to Be Imbibed At School Level- But Is It Really Happening

It was my first Boss’s bday, this time I was in no mood to send her FB greetings, but decided to call her after all  it had been 11 long years, since we last met or spoke. 

No guesses on that, Obviously she was surprised and was super happy that we were talking. 

She is now CEO for a health based organization that deals with preventive heart care methodologies. Ah! Yes my first job was with a health care based organization and I used to meet the top cardiac anesthetist of India in various hospitals. And now I am in a different field all together- education and working with teachers and principal all across the country. To be honest, I am not qualified or certified or have any kind of degrees for any of these fields. I am hard core management graduate, so probably I do know how to manage these fields which were not even my core subjects of the degrees I attained in any way...

Well the discussion we were having was how her organization has devised a protocol to prevent heart attacks and how they were working closely with corporate as well as rural India to make them aware of these problems. My ex boss who is also a certified nutritionist now, and I were just exchanging notes how I have been able to lose over 14 plus kgs of weight in just 4 months time, with a slight change in my dietary patterns... That’s when it struck me if only we could decide to bring this awareness about importance of right eating at school level too. That’s also one of the objectives of education- to be able to perceive or anticipate how a certain action can create problems or solve one; in this case the focus being our health- after all we learn in school only ‘health is wealth’! The point we need to get across to children is WHY?

Last year during one of the Dastak workshops at one of the school, the teachers got us a small plate of aloo chat for me and my colleague. They told us excitedly, “We have hobby classes and one of them is fire-less cooking, children made this today in their class.” That’s when the Questioning Bug in me popped out aloud, “So what is the objective of teaching them in this cooking class.” She replied, “Oh ma’am! Children learn a new skill; you see we are integrating core life skills here! Learning to cook is a very important skill needed to live a good life. So it’s a very important life skill. Our School really works on imbibing life skills. That’s why you see, we are participating in Dastak.” The confidence and conviction, with which this was being said, made me re think if I have really understood the meaning of core life skills till now or not. The persistent and resistant questioner in me popped out again, “Glad to see you all are incorporating life skills in schools, but I was just thinking how do you connect it with your curriculum, because life skills have to be integrated with syllabus also, otherwise its of no use to the students! They need to learn to develop the connecting conduits between these skills and the information, how will they learn higher order thinking skills.” As usual there was an eerie silence in the room as if they had seen something they did not want to come out from the closed doors of their minds. The sparkle along with the beaming confidence in their eyes suddenly turned to a big blank question which they have all been struggling to find since ages.

Somewhere, I felt guilty for this expression on their faces, but on the other side, I felt quite happy, playing  the devil’s advocate had actually set them thinking in the right direction. Though I knew what the answer was, but my objective was to make them realize and face the challenge rather than brush it under the carpet like they have been doing for years.

 I continued with my suggestion, “ Madam, will it not be great if in these cooking classes the teacher in charge also told them why & how the ingredients involved in the recipe were important to making their body healthy. If information from the science books was also included in real cooking I suppose we would be more conscious about our eating and cooking habits as we grow older.” Well this is just one more example of how you evoke self awareness, one of the ten core life skills among students as well as oneself.” Obviously, the answer from them was- we never ever thought that ways.

Well! I think then it's time we start thinking like that if we really want a Strong & Healthy India.

Who's Thinking Skills Need To Be developed First- Teacher or Student

Thinking Skills Are Important!

My 7 year old son was preparing his debate points on ‘books versus electronic medium what is better’- He had to speak for Books. So he was busy jotting his points. I casually asked him ,"Why you are writing everything good about books, in reality you don’t like reading books. You are always glued to some or the other form electronic media. The minute I ask you to Read books, you make a face as I you have been forced to gulp down some uncooked green leafy vegetable.” He said, “Mom I am supposed to speak good about books, and how can I say I don’t like them. So I am just writing what everyone has been saying, why books are good.”
 
So me being a probing mom, and a crusader of developing thinking skills among teachers and adults rather than just focusing on children, I decided to put some extra thrust on my grey matter, and flipped the question the other way, “Ok then dear, why do you like to spend all your time on electronic media?”

He paused for a while and then replied, Mom I love watching electronic media bcoz everything out there comes without me having to strain my mind, I don’t have to focus on phonetics, spellings and how I am pronouncing the word and secondly by the time I would finish reading one story from a book, via electronic medium I would have seen many stories. In the same breath he continued, but then this will make me lazy and I will not like to use my brains at all. Now I understand why books are equally important and I think I should read more often, just to make sure I don’t become lazy and I keep thinking of some new ideas. That’s when he said exclaimed aloud, this what I need to speak in my debate too, as to why electronic media makes us lazy and complacent, how books are helping us from crossing the line.

Well, I suppose we all understand why it’s important to develop thinking skills among children even though they are a super aware breed of GenY, can themselves connect things if probed intelligently. Then what are we trying to prove? Whose thinking skills do we want to develop? What aspect of Thinking Skills do we have to develop?

The teacher training programs blatantly focus on how to develop thinking skills of the children. The high end education- software’s and apps also focus on developing the thinking skills of the child. On the hind sight, I think it’s important for teachers to develop their own thinking skills if they need to keep pace with the current breed of super aware kids. Because learning happens only when we are quizzing our minds, if teachers themselves are not equipped to do that then how are they going to improve their own thought process and evaluate the same?

Critical thinking relies on universal intellectual values like clarity, relevance and consistency, if the teacher is not clear why her subject is so important and cannot relate its significance in everyday life, then how will she end up developing the thinking skills among children.

Core life skills can be imparted not as a quick fix measure, packaged in a beautiful training program or an app but have to help teacher first wear her thinking cap and realize the benefits of developing thinking skills. Once she has experienced WHY they are important, it will be easy for her to impart and have an impact on her students. The goal should be to first maximize the educators ability to think rationally. In turn, it leads to increased overall intelligence and improved test performance of the students too.

All Teaching, No Play, Make Schools a Dull Place to be in!

In the last post, I had talked about why is it important to build a bridge between the 19th and 21st Century teaching styles...This post will focus on highlighting the key component which is required to make this bridge...

Well according to me its called interactive learning. By interactive learning, I do not mean virtual classes, app based learning or smart classes or any kind of technology based teaching...  They are just replacing the medium of teaching which in our era were called books (coming in various shapes and sizes and available in every place under the sun)...


In this blog, my focus is on how the efforts put in by the two stakeholders (in this case Student & Teachers) are directly proportional to the results which are the outcome of the interaction between these two stakeholders in a classroom. Until now, that is till the twentieth century, all the focus was on the efforts being put in by students and teacher, could get away by being, just another book reader. But the scenario has changed or needs to be changed, because our goal of 21st century education is sustainable development & living. For this both stakeholders need to put in equal efforts and in a different direction all together. The challenge is daunting because we as teachers don't know what lies in that different direction and how we need to create a path to reach the unknown goal. Thus, we also have conveniently taken up the old method of teaching and are moving with the impression that the students will find their own way.  But then is challenge not what make things exciting and keep up the excitement and interest levels high for all of us.

Therefore, it is finally the job of a teacher in the classroom to make the lesson interesting for the students via the various mediums he or she has at her disposal.

The question is how is she going to make it interesting...
For that she too should find the lesson or content equally interesting and should have the opportunity to learn something new while teaching that same syllabus again & again over the year...
So what's the answer to that..

Its very simple, develop a live social project. When I say social project, I mean a project which will ultimately give answers to real time problems which are being faced in the society. If teaching concepts are used for finding solutions to these real time problems, you will definitely be able to get teachers interest in the subject and she will be able to excite the student as well... After all its“interest and enthusiasm" which thrust us to continuously evolve as humans and keep us connected.

Here I would like to take reference to a small a core life skill project which we had done last year in a village school in the outskirts of Gurgaon, the millennium city of India. The project was about developing all forms of communication by taking a social problem in this case teaching children the importance hygiene and sanitation.(This is our annual program which we run every year in multiple formats in multiple cities and call it Dastak- a clarion call by young minds and this year plan to make it an online competition)

When we went to the school last year, I remember the initial response I got from the teachers. They were highly disinterested lot, thinking we are just another NGO or program being funded by some NGO who will just do some trivial activity or show children some movie and go away.
But when it was explained to them that we will teach children how to write stories and they will then act on their stories, we got a complete nay from them, signalling that its a complete waste of time and effort. The response from teachers was that these kids are a highly disinterested lot and will not be able to do anything.

We knew where this was coming from.These teachers had missed something crucial in their teaching style, which we had and knew could win their hearts. The result is here to see what we got from them, a beautiful play on importance of cleanliness all conceived, scripted and enacted by these kids themselves over a period of three months.

The art is not in making them learn  or understand,it lies in catching their interest. Albert Einstein's famous quote states,"I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

Now that is possible only when the teacher also has a challenge in front of her which she has to solve alongside students and has no instant answers available in any book. If the teaching assignment has all ready made answers which remain the same over years then why will teaching not get monotonous for the dear teacher.

Don't we get bored with same thing being repeated again again, then why will this rule not imply on teachers...

The next blog will focus on how to develop these programs and thus end up creating an ideal value based integrated project