Category: Uncategorized

Grade 4C

Activity: Modern day Pandora’s Box

Project Pandora’s Box: Addressing Modern Day Social Issues

Project Pandora’s Box was a student-led initiative aimed at showcasing and raising awareness about the modern-day problems prevalent in society. The project even focused on topics like sexual abuse, dowry, and discrimination based on caste, creed, and religion. The objective was to shed light on these issues and encourage conversations for positive change. These problems coming from Grade 4 students were really appreciable.

MISERIES OR MONSTERS:

1. Sexual Abuse:

One of the key issues addressed in Pandora’s Box was sexual abuse. Students discussed the importance of education and awareness programs to empower individuals to recognize and report instances of abuse. The project emphasized the need for creating safe spaces where victims can seek help and justice while also promoting consent education.

2. Dowry:

Another prevalent social issue addressed in Pandora’s Box was dowry. Students illustrated the harmful consequences of this practice on women’s lives and showcased the plight of many families burdened by dowry demands. The project highlighted the importance of promoting gender equality and debunking traditional beliefs that perpetuate this practice. Solutions such as legal reforms, awareness campaigns were proposed to combat dowry-related problems.

3. Discrimination Based on Caste, Creed, and Religion:

The students also brought to light the prevailing discrimination based on caste, creed, and religion within society. The project urged for the eradication of such discriminatory practices, emphasizing the significance of promoting empathy, understanding, and respect for diversity.

 

Recommendations:(HOPE)

Based on the project findings, Pandora’s Box proposed several recommendations to tackle these social issues effectively:

1. Education and Awareness:  Implement comprehensive educational programs to raise awareness about sexual abuse, dowry, and discrimination. This includes integrating these issues into school’s.
2. Legal Reforms: Advocate for stricter laws and their proper implementation to address sexual abuse and dowry-related offenses.
3. Support Systems: Establish and strengthen support systems for victims including helplines, counseling centers, and safe shelters. Collaboration with NGOs and existing resources can provide the necessary assistance and rehabilitation.
4. Grassroots Mobilization: Engage communities and local leaders to challenge discriminatory beliefs and practices. Empower individuals to confront and reject prejudice based on caste, creed, and religion, fostering an inclusive and harmonious society.
5. Engagement of Media: Collaborate with media outlets to raise awareness and encourage reporting on these issues. Promote responsible journalism that fosters empathy, understanding, and accountability.

 

Learning Objectives:

By providing insights into the damaging impact of these problems, the project aimed to initiate conversations and encourage active participation in addressing and resolving them.

 

Conclusion:

 It is through such innovative projects that we can envision a society free from these social ills and create a better future for all.

Neerja Modi School in Jaipur has been using my books Empowering English, and Language with Ease for a decade now. Their students passing out of 12th have been on the exclusive diet. I take the Principal, Indu Dubey’s testimony of proof of effectiveness with honour and pride with which the best awards need display.

She writes: “We have been proudly using LWE for years now. Visible positive impact on students’ language. Oftentimes, their grammar skills and vocabulary are better than adults. Our graduating students have secured 30+ crores in scholarship this year. 2 Stanford, 2 UPen, 1 Cambridge, Brown, Duke and many more. The students’ grammar and writing skills have tremendously improved. Love the books – LWE, Empowering English and Writing with Ease. Above all your mentorship. We’ve all immensely benefited and thank you for that.”

Thank you Indu. Thank you Arpita Gupta and Saurabh Modi for the trust, the intelligence in making the right choice, the courage to carry it through with conviction and dedication. That is rare. It is not often that schools have staying power and stamina to see a robust curriculum through and reap its rewards. They buckle easily.

Rich and influential students from reputed schools routinely go abroad. The question is how many get paid by the universities to come in? And your students have started earning at 18! How amazing is that!

We can all take a bow! You are a smart school if there ever was one.

How would one judge the best schools?

1.  Children are given opportunities in the classroom regularly to think, discuss, debate, reach consensus, speak and act on outcomes for betterment.

2.  Children are polite but do not fear authority, where they are patient and reasonable and understand the true meaning of democracy is living in and with variety.

3.   Children aid, support, care for their juniors, smile and nod at visitors, help peers to attain their potential, are proud to be of service around the campus without instruction and are acknowledged by observing teachers for these random acts of building a culture of kindness, care and mindfulness.

4.   Children keep diaries of gratitude, acts of social and political comment, resolutions to act on those solutions, link these to their current studies, recommend sources of interest to view and read, listen to, suggest ideas on teaching and learning, seek counsel with their own emotional issues. They share widely and have realised private citing is wasteful.

5.   Children enjoy jokes, puns, value humour, wit, satire, as intelligence and know not to use it at the expense of hurting others.

6.   Where language, literature, math, science, history and technology are taught in fluid integration with expert shared lessons and research. Where curricula is shaped by students’ need and demand amd guided by teacher mentors. Where art, music, and sports are intrinsic at all times as part of life and learning. Where preferences are respected and innovations encouraged. Where risk taking is not frowned upon.

7.   Where teachers are also marked during assessments and resolutions are passed for change in both. Where a changing environment is seen as progress, hope and reflects to mimic life that must move in growth, not stagnate in comfort zones.

8.   Where the governing body has a representation from an articulate and reasoning student body who in turn are informed by their student groups. Where the leadership training here cradles the larger lives they will lead in a democracy.

If you ask what about infrastructure and facilities, student board performance, parent’s perceptions, teachers’ degrees, public opinion on the school, and other such parameters, let me remind you that the school exists for children. The pulse of the child is the health of the school. You will recognise that the present parameters are all about adults and “others” who populate that school to make a living. Until we focus on the child there can be not much truth in those best school surveys.

So next time you see one of those surveys, ask how many children were interviewed and what systems were observed and evidenced as proof of excellence, to establish their veracity and relevance.

 

 

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Here are a few key takeaways from the two Online Courses I conducted for over 300 Primary and Secondary English teachers on “Teaching Creative Writing” in the last 3 months.

 

1.  We have some brilliant writers amongst our English teachers who can compete with the best in the world.

 

2.  Writing well does not automatically lead to speaking well or teaching well. They require different skill sets. The teaching methodology even in the best schools has shown paucity. Hence training is critical. If children learn with excellent teaching strategies, they carry the learning with them into the future.

 

3.  When teachers work on assignments during the Online Course, it becomes clear that they are significantly undertrained to teach writing. They are stretched beyond their comfort zones and to deal with this is courageous. When we work hard at something, the efforts are not wasted and in the end children benefit.

 

4. The areas where improvements are required are: understanding genres, analysing multi-layered questions, making rubrics. Teachers must break away from the traditional “test taking” mindset and shift to “learning mindset”.

 

5.  Participants are quick to see the benefits of the big picture when they experience it. The assignments make them more empathetic to children’s needs. They realise how much there is to learn and practice and they acknowledge it. They realise how our professional courses fall short in providing them the necessary skills.

 

6. Traditional Workshops are a failed model of training, leading to waste of money, time and effort. There are no assignments, and no rigorous engagement required for effective learning. It’s a feel good model that is tick boxed by schools as professional development.

 

7.  Instead of individual feedback on assignments, collective feedback allows collaboration in sharing content produced by other participants. They generate immense classroom resources and exemplify pedagogical strategies for success. It paves the way for a new mode of collaborative learning and corrections in the classroom that is modelled by the course. This will create a paradigm shift where the teachers are released from the punishing wasteful yoke of traditional corrections and are free to teach instead. No one believes this till they experience it.

 

8. Teachers have benefitted from the question papers they encountered and have seen how students can be invited to recount, comment, use materials for application, make questions, research to share content, and generate own content.

 

9. Teachers experience the inter-relationships between the various arms of English like comprehension, grammar, poetry and reading to impact writing. They practice integration of subjects to economise on time and effort through self-generated questions. Integration is now a definite possibility in the 21st century skill called collaboration.

 

10. Teachers must use volume, frequency and context to teach. They witness the benefits of layering as they journey through the course. It is more than writing that they learn. The course is also about pedagogy, strategy, planning, terminology, corrections and philosophy of learning through practical work. It is both a personal and professional journey.

 

We owe this learning journey to our children.

This is the story of my Pre-Primary book production. November end 2019, I was let down badly by the last of the book designers who promised the stars and delivered zilch! I was close to shelving the project.

Come December, there appears on the scene, magically, a design guy – fickle, unreliable, shirking but supremely, wonderfully talented! I imprison him in my office, and we work like maniacs raving and ranting, biting the bullet. The books get designed in a record of 3 months of which one is wasted in the man’s procrastination. The books are ready for print in the raw by March 15th. We lockdown the office and soon the country is locked. Touch and go! Skin of the tooth timing!

I am a human child. I am a miracle.

I am small but I am very bright. In two years, I moved from a near vegetative dependent state to an independently mobile, wilful, emotionally expressive, and socially empathetic being. On my own!  Don’t you think that’s awesome progress?

I have come to discover this planet. I have people who love me immensely. I can’t read but my mum, teacher and dad can. Please read to me because I can understand, especially if you show me pictures, and gestures, and facial expressions. I would love it if you make me act out the actions. Give me lots of that!  

I will learn to recognise those squiggles you call words very soon. No hurry.  Just let me play with them. I love to play. Play is exploration. That is how I learn. Give me games. Put me in a team and I will learn social skills. Give me labels for my emotions so that I can tell you how I feel.

I can think. Let me problem solve. Invite me to think critically. My moral compass is strong. Activate it. Let me choose what is right. Question me, and I will learn. I like to imagine. Let me make up original stories and objects and spaces. I am curious. I question everything. The world is big. Expose me to it. Don’t fix me in one spot. I’m active. Move me on to various experiences. Give me access to your wondrous world.

Do not limit my little life to reading and writing. Fill me with ideas instead. I’m more than ready for that. If I can’t read and write easily, and with joy, it just means my brain is not ready yet. Didn’t I walk and talk differently from my brothers and sisters? Yet, none of the delay left any of us behind. See how we all run around, and jabber away at the age of 4!

I am part of the world’s heartbeat. I am the rhythm. Make me sing and I will learn anything. I can sing forever.

Tell me stories. They contain so many lives that I cannot possibly live. Ignite my senses. Introduce me to people. Put me in impossible to reach places. Let me share in the magic of other lives and adventures. Let me meet creatures of fantasy.  Read to me please. I must hear the language if you want me to pick up English. Maybe, you can let me view stories on Youtube. My mind makes special pictures that are made of feelings.

I’m a digital native. I will live in the world of Artificial Intelligence. My sense for technology, and my excitement over building things is inborn. Let me experience it. If I fail, I will learn why I failed. It will teach me how to be successful. 

I love to laugh. It is part of my intelligence. Make me laugh a lot. It will build my resilience. I have noticed only we humans laugh.  I’m a natural language learner. I learnt a language with no adult “teaching” me before I was 2. Isn’t that a miracle? Mother Nature is a good teacher. She will teach you how to teach me. Follow her.

 I am very observant. I will put together many things and come up with my own. I can synthesise. Don’t teach me a lot. Just show me a lot. I can link things. Show me the links. My creativity will burgeon. I am in a hurry to learn about how everything works. Technology will help you to help me. The digital world is like an endless ocean where so much knowledge is instantly served up.

Didn’t you notice my speed as a little baby after I learnt to crawl? Did you notice how I abandoned the colourful toys you got me after I had played a bit, and broken a few? I made a beeline for the shoe cupboard, for the waste basket, for the pail of dirty water… they were all at floor level and within reach! I was showing you how I learn. I reach out to everything I can access without discrimination. Don’t over select my learning materials for me. If it is not for me, I will abandon them.

If I could follow my spirit, would I be sitting in a classroom? Would I not be a bird in the air, a fish in the sea, a flower scattering fragrance, a tiger on the prowl, the wind in the mountains, the gurgling of rivers and the stars in space?   Please don’t box me in. I’m small. Let me discover the world and myself. Give me time….

Usha Pandit

Taken from the Preface to my Pre-Primary series being introduced this year called “The Magic Box” series. Take a look at the e-brochure.