Time: 4:30pm-6:00pm
Esteemed Panelists
Mr. Sankalp Khanna
Ms. Priya Patil
It was an insightful session on ‘How SEL looks like inside classroom’, hosted by Jayshree Iyer, who herself is an experienced educator with her rich educational background aptly introduced, conducted, and summarized the ideas presented by two esteemed Panelists, Priya Patil and Sankalp Khanna. Though they come from schools of diverse backgrounds, yet they echoed the same concerns and solutions to make the classroom a safe, non-judgemental learning space through incorporating SEL in the subject teaching as well as giving separate space in the school timetable where the teacher’s role is that of a facilitator. A structured curriculum, complete with objectives and outcomes was designed along with constant support in the form of resources and capacity-building programs. These SEL sessions are important for all stakeholders, students, teachers as well as leaders under all circumstances, more so during pandemic times when people need a sense of belongingness and a feeling of being cared for. If on one hand, Sankalp supported his ideas through research data then Priya took to a more emotional tone of helping everyone feel confident to share their feelings with others. She admitted that during activities conducted during Jeevan Shikshan- an ideal name given to her SEL program-she would get involved in the varied expressions of children in Marathi medium, Pune Municipal Corporation school.
Sankalp advocated the idea of using software like mood meters to judge the energy levels in the classroom and flexibly modify the pedagogy according to it. He exemplified his well-structured curricular design as per his training at Heritage Xperiential School and at Mirambika as an educator and coordinator of SEL. Priya on the other hand started her journey as a facilitator from being ‘clueless’ as where to begin to designing the whole program through her interactions with various stakeholders and ultimately designing the curriculum which is meant to be a journey of discovery of self-worth for others and it became a journey of self-discovery for herself and other teachers.
The whole time, the waves of ideas kept flowing and so were questions from the guests. There seemed to be a major concern for the fate of SEL during online classes but all doubts were put to rest by the assurance that once a relationship of trust is built by interweaving SEL activities through subject teaching, the medium of these classes would not matter. Overall, it was an extremely engaging session and more such interactions are desired in the future- pandemic or no pandemic.
Click here to watch the full session.
