Teachers and principals share lessons on how children learn, online and offline

(Representational image) During the pandemic months, teachers and parents gathered a lot of pointers on what works and what doesn't when it comes to online education.

Educators from all over India gathered for three days of talks, debates, workshops, and cultural activities at the Great Indian Learning Festival organised by the Sunbeam Group of Educational Institutions and ScooNews from December 22-24 in Varanasi. The theme was Celebrating Innovation, Resilience and Grit.

“Our fraternity has suffered a lot during the pandemic. Now that we are limping back to normalcy, it is important to meet, connect and build synergies with educators. A festival is more than a conference. It is about having a shared purpose. We need to infuse a spirit of joy and celebration in our teachers so that they can carry the same energy to the students,” Pratima Gupta, Assistant Director, Sunbeam Group of Educational Institutions said.

Here are some takeaways from GILF, attended by 200 school leaders and 116 teachers.

Learning to teach online goes beyond learning to use Zoom, Moodle and Google Meet.

Opportunities: Manju Rana, Director of the Seth Anandram Jaipuria School in Vasundhara, Ghaziabad, listed collaborative learning, flexibility in terms of timings, creating connections with schools across borders, enhancing higher order thinking through complex discussions, hackathons, and social-emotional learning.

Challenges: addressing cultural diversity in online classrooms and tech essentials for agility in work.

Students do not like learning from teachers they do not like.

Neera Singh, Principal at the Rajmata Krishna Kumari Girls’ School in Jodhpur, said children remember teachers who are not intimidating, who are co-learners, who can apologize when they make a blunder, and who do not misuse power.

Exams are not the be-all and end-all of a person’s education.

Shilpa Mehta, Founder of the Paradise School in Goa, spoke about taking the pressure off students by conveying that their examination results do not reflect who they are as human beings. “Our fears and limitations restrict our students. Open the gate, let them out, let them go to the centre of what they see as important, worth learning and discovering,” she said.

Focus on collaboration instead of competition.

By involving volunteers from the audience in variations on a game of musical chairs, Pratish Nair, Managing Director of the Prahlad Kakar School of Branding and Entrepreneurship in Mumbai, drew attention to how students become victims of competition in the traditional education system. He said, “This winner-takes-all mentality is harmful because people begin to face burnout at a very young age. Education needs to communicate that the beauty of learning is not winning but collaborating. We should be training people to work together.”

Focus on developing skills related to what makes us essentially human.

The fear that artificial intelligence might replace human labour makes school leaders think hard about the relevance of what is being taught for the professional world students will enter. Roshan Gandhi, CEO of City Montessori School, Lucknow, said, “We must focus on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, citizenship, character, and the desire to make a positive contribution to society. These cannot be replaced by technology.”

Approach everything – body, surroundings, everyday objects – as a learning resource.

Dr. Anju Chazot and Dr. Pascal Chazot, co-founders of the Mahatma Gandhi International School in Ahmedabad, believe that schools must promote well-being and happiness. This can happen only if school leaders throw out authoritarian practices that make schools like prisons, and prevent students from asking questions about the world they encounter and interact with.

What gets measured gets emphasized.

What is taught in classrooms is closely related to what is assessed either through examinations or projects. Vishnu Karthik, Director of the Heritage Group of Schools in Gurgaon, who is an ardent advocate of experiential learning, said, “If we change what we assess, that will change what we teach. Our frustration with the status quo should not stop us from thinking of possibilities. Most changes require a new mindset rather than money.”

Prioritize inclusion and accessibility.

In keeping with India’s National Education Policy and UN Sustainable Development Goals, Siddhant Shah, founder, Access for All, Mumbai, addressed two areas of inclusion and accessibility schools need to look at – gender and disability. Reforms are needed with respect to infrastructure, curriculum, pedagogy, recruitment, teacher training, and school culture.

GILF was the brainchild of Ravi Santlani, CEO, ScooNews and EdBank. He said, “The pandemic is not over. Educators are going to need each other’s support to thrive during this period. Our festival was an effort to bring together leaders, disruptors and best practices from all over so that successes in one part of India can be replicated in other parts. Content can shift from offline to online easily but the empathy in dissemination needs more attention.”