The leadership at Eklavya School, Hyderabad identified a need for professional development for their teachers in the area of creating safe, secure and considerate classrooms, displays for learning and using collaborative learning strategies in the class.
The 5 days of intensive training session with a duration of a total of 10 hours with additional 7 hours of asynchronous work demanded a lot from the teachers. Before the sessions began teachers had made a list of areas they would want to explore. One of the critical one being class management. The workshop commenced with teachers experiencing the process of setting collaborative norms for working together, implementing simple strategies for building a safe, open learning environment in the classroom. This was then taken by the teachers to their classrooms where they created norms along with their students, ensuring ownership lies with the students.
When you begin working in a democratic setup the role of a teacher changes to that of a facilitator. Together we worked on understanding the role and responsibility of a facilitator which took us to the next level of learning. These discussions further lead the teachers to begin planning strategies for effective pair and group work. While the teachers were soaking in all this, they worked on implementing all this in the forth coming lesson plans. Some teachers reworked their classes to implement their learnings from the workshop
The final session was modelled around the importance of questioning, understanding how to formulate questions to ensure learning is maximised. All this led to answering the burning question – class management. There was the eureka moment, one of the teachers shared her experience from her class, saying, “all my students were engaged” I did not have to discipline them. Well, the battle is won.
The hard work and dedication of the teachers and the desire to ensure change was evident from the fact that the teachers were enthusiastic to apply their learning, embracing change.
One step at a time is all it takes to get you there – Emily Dickinson
