In view of increasing Religious Intolerance and Violence in the country there is urgent need to create awareness and develop a culture of peace in the society.
With this objective in view, USO is conducting an Essay Competition in English in memory of their Founder Secretary General Mr. Jiya Lal Jain on the following theme:
The only religion is humanism /No religion teaches hatred.
The details are given below:
Eligibility: Teachers from schools, which are members of USO only,can participate.
Topic:No religion teaches hatred/ The only religion is humanism.
Length of essay:1200-1500 words
Language:English only
Prizes: First prizes of Rs 2000 each
Second Prizes of Rs 1000 each
Third Prizes of Rs 500 each
Consolation Prizes of Rs 250 each.
Last date: The essays should be sent latest by 24th may 2008 addressed to Dr N.D.Kharbanda, Chief Programme Officer,United Schools Organization of India, USO House, USO Road, Jeet Singh Marg, New Delhi-110067.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Minutes of the Meeting held on 29th March 2008
Minutes of Educators Collective Meeting
29th march’ 2008
People who attended the meeting from Pravah: Ishani, Swati
Teachers who attended the meeting: Renu Patel, Anuradha Parashar( Army Public School, Noida), Anjali Sharma( Ramjas School), Kirti Iyer( Springdales School, Pusa Road), Naushaba( Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pragati Vihar), Anuradha Sinha( Delhi Police Public School), Anita Chowdhary( Bluebells School), Shakuntala
The meeting began with a round of introductions as many of the teachers did not know each other. It was felt that the members of the collective must know where each of them were coming from to be able to connect with each other
After the introductions, there was a PowerPoint presentation by Ishani. This was felt to be important as most of the participants of the meeting were attending the first educator’s collective meeting. It was felt that the teachers must know the context, have an understanding of the vision of the collective and know what has happened in the previous meetings.
Kirti Iyer from Springdales school proposed having a blog for the educators collective. She suggested that she couldn’t attend the previous meetings and if a forum such as a blog would have been available, she could have read the minutes and be better prepared for the meeting. Ishani mentioned that a blog is already in place, but it needs to become more functional. She mentioned that it was a great idea and worth exploring further
Anita Chowdhary from Bluebells School shared about the various clubs in her school such as Awaaz (the right to information club), the peace studies club formerly known as the conflict resolution club where children learn about the Israel Palestine conflict for six months and the Kashmir conflict for the rest of six months. In the club children learned about the cultures of the regions and in the end there is a validation ceremony to conclude the work. Renu Patel and some others mentioned how they were very interested in learning about what was happening in bluebells and in the other schools in terms of these clubs.
After this initial discussion on the vision of educators collective and the other interesting ideas that the teachers had, Ishani shared the agenda for the meeting. She mentioned that the two broad tasks for the day were to one do a collective reading of an article on secularism and other was exploring the learning and research fellowships. For fellowships, she mentioned that parameters needed to be developed as to how the fellowship programme should be taken up etc.
After sharing of the agenda, Ishani shared that how learning and growing together is an integral part of the collective. As part of that, it would be good to do some collective thinking and reflection together to build capacities. the educators collective group then read the article called,"the teacher in the time of patriotism" by Nalini Rajan.the paper was read in groups and then there was discussion on what our understanding of secularism is, whether it means refraining to talk about religion, or celebrating all religions. There was also discussion on how the debate on secularism would take into account issues such as atheism and non belief in any faith group or a divinity. After this, there was discussion on if secularism could mean acceptance of all these different point of view on faith and religion.
There was also discussion on how we do not question enough about religious practices of our schools. Practices such as breaking a coconut or lighting a diya are all Hindu practices, while each of us observes these in our schools and rarely question these and question how secular are our public places.
Fellowships had been explored in the February meeting, but since none of the teachers who were attending the meeting had attended the February meeting, the fellowships had to be explored from the beginning. Ishani began by mentioning that the fellowships are of two kinds which are learning and research. She mentioned that there were 8 research and 3 learning fellowships available.
Next, possible topics were explored. Teachers talked of exploring issues such as underprivileged children and their schooling, teacher professionalism, democratic classrooms, how citizenship education could be integrated in subject areas and finally what are the hurdles, impediments that stop teachers from having democratic classrooms. The discussion was not extended and the teachers were asked to think about possible areas they would be interested to explore their research in and come back for the next meeting.
Next, She asked Kirti Iyer to share the format of her research fellowship which she had taken up as part of the Delhi university fellowship offered to teachers.
Kirti mentioned how she had taken up a six month fellowship from DU to look at the inclusion policy in her school. She talked of how the fellowship was structured she mentioned that in the first month the 5 fellows did a literature review on their relevant topics. Next, they wrote their drafts and submitted them. If these were selected, they were called for an interview. If selected, they were then assigned a mentor. They worked closely with the mentor meeting every 15 days or so. In the second month, the research methodology was designed (such as interview schedules/questionnaires). In the third month, a midterm report was submitted, reporting on how much of the action plan has worked. Then, there was a group meeting of all teachers fellows along with all mentors. This was done to bring about a thread of commonality. Here, the group read and reflected on a set of readings compiled by the university. There were also film shows and presentations that the teacher fellows attended. Finally, the report was to be submitted and presentations made.
The meeting was concluded by finalizing that all the discussion of the meeting would be penned down and then shared with the teachers and then teachers could provide feedback on the same.
29th march’ 2008
People who attended the meeting from Pravah: Ishani, Swati
Teachers who attended the meeting: Renu Patel, Anuradha Parashar( Army Public School, Noida), Anjali Sharma( Ramjas School), Kirti Iyer( Springdales School, Pusa Road), Naushaba( Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pragati Vihar), Anuradha Sinha( Delhi Police Public School), Anita Chowdhary( Bluebells School), Shakuntala
The meeting began with a round of introductions as many of the teachers did not know each other. It was felt that the members of the collective must know where each of them were coming from to be able to connect with each other
After the introductions, there was a PowerPoint presentation by Ishani. This was felt to be important as most of the participants of the meeting were attending the first educator’s collective meeting. It was felt that the teachers must know the context, have an understanding of the vision of the collective and know what has happened in the previous meetings.
Kirti Iyer from Springdales school proposed having a blog for the educators collective. She suggested that she couldn’t attend the previous meetings and if a forum such as a blog would have been available, she could have read the minutes and be better prepared for the meeting. Ishani mentioned that a blog is already in place, but it needs to become more functional. She mentioned that it was a great idea and worth exploring further
Anita Chowdhary from Bluebells School shared about the various clubs in her school such as Awaaz (the right to information club), the peace studies club formerly known as the conflict resolution club where children learn about the Israel Palestine conflict for six months and the Kashmir conflict for the rest of six months. In the club children learned about the cultures of the regions and in the end there is a validation ceremony to conclude the work. Renu Patel and some others mentioned how they were very interested in learning about what was happening in bluebells and in the other schools in terms of these clubs.
After this initial discussion on the vision of educators collective and the other interesting ideas that the teachers had, Ishani shared the agenda for the meeting. She mentioned that the two broad tasks for the day were to one do a collective reading of an article on secularism and other was exploring the learning and research fellowships. For fellowships, she mentioned that parameters needed to be developed as to how the fellowship programme should be taken up etc.
After sharing of the agenda, Ishani shared that how learning and growing together is an integral part of the collective. As part of that, it would be good to do some collective thinking and reflection together to build capacities. the educators collective group then read the article called,"the teacher in the time of patriotism" by Nalini Rajan.the paper was read in groups and then there was discussion on what our understanding of secularism is, whether it means refraining to talk about religion, or celebrating all religions. There was also discussion on how the debate on secularism would take into account issues such as atheism and non belief in any faith group or a divinity. After this, there was discussion on if secularism could mean acceptance of all these different point of view on faith and religion.
There was also discussion on how we do not question enough about religious practices of our schools. Practices such as breaking a coconut or lighting a diya are all Hindu practices, while each of us observes these in our schools and rarely question these and question how secular are our public places.
Fellowships had been explored in the February meeting, but since none of the teachers who were attending the meeting had attended the February meeting, the fellowships had to be explored from the beginning. Ishani began by mentioning that the fellowships are of two kinds which are learning and research. She mentioned that there were 8 research and 3 learning fellowships available.
Next, possible topics were explored. Teachers talked of exploring issues such as underprivileged children and their schooling, teacher professionalism, democratic classrooms, how citizenship education could be integrated in subject areas and finally what are the hurdles, impediments that stop teachers from having democratic classrooms. The discussion was not extended and the teachers were asked to think about possible areas they would be interested to explore their research in and come back for the next meeting.
Next, She asked Kirti Iyer to share the format of her research fellowship which she had taken up as part of the Delhi university fellowship offered to teachers.
Kirti mentioned how she had taken up a six month fellowship from DU to look at the inclusion policy in her school. She talked of how the fellowship was structured she mentioned that in the first month the 5 fellows did a literature review on their relevant topics. Next, they wrote their drafts and submitted them. If these were selected, they were called for an interview. If selected, they were then assigned a mentor. They worked closely with the mentor meeting every 15 days or so. In the second month, the research methodology was designed (such as interview schedules/questionnaires). In the third month, a midterm report was submitted, reporting on how much of the action plan has worked. Then, there was a group meeting of all teachers fellows along with all mentors. This was done to bring about a thread of commonality. Here, the group read and reflected on a set of readings compiled by the university. There were also film shows and presentations that the teacher fellows attended. Finally, the report was to be submitted and presentations made.
The meeting was concluded by finalizing that all the discussion of the meeting would be penned down and then shared with the teachers and then teachers could provide feedback on the same.
Minutes of Meeting held on 23rd Feb 2008
Minutes of educator’s collective meeting
23rd February 2008
People who attended the meeting from Pravah: Ishani, Swati
Teachers who attended the meeting: Namita, Dimple, Santosh (BNPS School), Hemlatta, Padma Shankar, A.S. Lakshmi, A.V.S.Lakshmi (Andhra School)
Agenda for discussion
It was decided that we could explore the agenda for the next 6 months with the teachers. It was felt that the teachers should be encouraged to come up with the plan for the next 6 months.
The second issue which was thought to be useful was exploring what kind of support the teachers were expecting from Pravah and what kind of support structures were available with Pravah which could be provided to the teachers.
Next, it was decided that during the meeting, the fellowships and their scope would be discussed with the teachers.
After this, the teachers initiated a discussion on assessment and how they are facing a lot of problems with it. The concerns expressed by teachers included implementing innovative assessment techniques with large student groups, addressing parent’s concerns, how to work more effectively with respect to individual attention in assessment. Teachers expressed the need to learn more interesting techniques other tha exams for assessing children in non threatening ways.
It was felt that we could consider looking at interesting experiments in evaluation such as those happening in the centre for learning, Bangalore, Mirambika etc and borrow from them their achievements. Namita Mam added that the heritage school didn’t have any exams till class 8. She also expressed that her school starting this year was going to follow the same practice and she was not sure how she was going to assess children in ways other than exams (summative tests).
This was followed by collectively deciding that the teachers were interested in exploring the following things as part of the collective:
visiting each other’s and others schools to learn
learn more about non competitive environment
nurturing parent teacher relationships
teaching techniques
share worksheets
learning workshops arranged by Pravah
observing other’s classrooms
participate in film festivals relevant to education and their classrooms
Exploring fellowship (learning and research)
Research fellowship
Learning fellowshipIshani initiated discussion on what teachers would want to take up as part of research fellowships. She mentioned that there were 8 research and 3 learning fellowships available. The teachers gave responses such as:
looking at the national curriculum framework
integrating theatre in pedagogy
adolescent issues
how conflicts in classrooms be resolved in non violent ways
alternative methods of teaching
addressing use of abusive language, bullying and aggression in classrooms
gender in classroom
social class and materialism
peer pressure leading to reactions such as suicide
Ishani while introducing learning fellowship asked Lakshmi from Andhra school to share her experience, which had took up the Pravah learning fellowship to take up a course in theater at IMAGO. Lakshmi shared her experiences of how her own rigidities have resolved and some of her own limitations have reduced. She said that earlier her entire focus was on completing course and now is much more on looking at each child’s concerns. She said her facilitation skills have also improved and she doesn’t get irritated easily, gives space for physical movement to children and does not restrict them and is not necessarily always looking for the perfect answer, but even the nearly perfect answer is fine. Also, she said she feels the need to encourage children who are interested in theater who may not even be doing academically very well.
After Lakshmi finished sharing her experience, Ishani talked of the different learning fellowships that have been taken up and that could be taken up in the future. She said there was someone who took up a fellowship to do a course in needs of special children. She mentioned how the Programme was an open one where each individual teacher decides for herself what her learning need is.
There was also some talk on how the fellowships would be chosen. She mentioned how the fellowships were earlier selected by Pravah personnel, but they would now like the collective itself to choose the needs and projects. Also, some discussion happened on whether the fellowships should be restricted to the members of the collective or should be open to teachers outside. Finally, it was decided that to begin with the collective is who the fellowships should be restricted to.
Also, Ishani mentioned that learning and research fellowships could be combined. Also, mentoring support would be provided to the teachers, along with monetary support in the form of a contingency grant of Rs 30,000 in case of research fellowships and Rs 20,000 in case of learning fellowships, which would be given in a phased manner.
The teachers also suggested taking the research fellowships in groups of 2 or 3. It was decided that the maximum members in a group would be restricted to 3 in order to ensure ownership of the project.
It was decided that the collective would meet once every month till it gets formulated, post which we could explore the idea of meeting very 3 months.
Also, the idea of traveling together or independently to an educational experiment/ conference outside Delhi was explored. The teachers were very excited about the idea and it was discussed of how we could plan the trip in advance to go to places such as NBA, SIDH, Digantar and Mother’s School in Pondicherry.
The possible timings of the trip were explored and 3rd week of may and the December break emerged as two possible timings.
Teachers were asked if they wished to know anything more, had questions/comments on fellowships or any other issues. After this, teachers were given a folder containing an article on formation of religious identities in children and a magazine on educational issues. With this, the meeting ended.
23rd February 2008
People who attended the meeting from Pravah: Ishani, Swati
Teachers who attended the meeting: Namita, Dimple, Santosh (BNPS School), Hemlatta, Padma Shankar, A.S. Lakshmi, A.V.S.Lakshmi (Andhra School)
Agenda for discussion
It was decided that we could explore the agenda for the next 6 months with the teachers. It was felt that the teachers should be encouraged to come up with the plan for the next 6 months.
The second issue which was thought to be useful was exploring what kind of support the teachers were expecting from Pravah and what kind of support structures were available with Pravah which could be provided to the teachers.
Next, it was decided that during the meeting, the fellowships and their scope would be discussed with the teachers.
After this, the teachers initiated a discussion on assessment and how they are facing a lot of problems with it. The concerns expressed by teachers included implementing innovative assessment techniques with large student groups, addressing parent’s concerns, how to work more effectively with respect to individual attention in assessment. Teachers expressed the need to learn more interesting techniques other tha exams for assessing children in non threatening ways.
It was felt that we could consider looking at interesting experiments in evaluation such as those happening in the centre for learning, Bangalore, Mirambika etc and borrow from them their achievements. Namita Mam added that the heritage school didn’t have any exams till class 8. She also expressed that her school starting this year was going to follow the same practice and she was not sure how she was going to assess children in ways other than exams (summative tests).
This was followed by collectively deciding that the teachers were interested in exploring the following things as part of the collective:
visiting each other’s and others schools to learn
learn more about non competitive environment
nurturing parent teacher relationships
teaching techniques
share worksheets
learning workshops arranged by Pravah
observing other’s classrooms
participate in film festivals relevant to education and their classrooms
Exploring fellowship (learning and research)
Research fellowship
Learning fellowshipIshani initiated discussion on what teachers would want to take up as part of research fellowships. She mentioned that there were 8 research and 3 learning fellowships available. The teachers gave responses such as:
looking at the national curriculum framework
integrating theatre in pedagogy
adolescent issues
how conflicts in classrooms be resolved in non violent ways
alternative methods of teaching
addressing use of abusive language, bullying and aggression in classrooms
gender in classroom
social class and materialism
peer pressure leading to reactions such as suicide
Ishani while introducing learning fellowship asked Lakshmi from Andhra school to share her experience, which had took up the Pravah learning fellowship to take up a course in theater at IMAGO. Lakshmi shared her experiences of how her own rigidities have resolved and some of her own limitations have reduced. She said that earlier her entire focus was on completing course and now is much more on looking at each child’s concerns. She said her facilitation skills have also improved and she doesn’t get irritated easily, gives space for physical movement to children and does not restrict them and is not necessarily always looking for the perfect answer, but even the nearly perfect answer is fine. Also, she said she feels the need to encourage children who are interested in theater who may not even be doing academically very well.
After Lakshmi finished sharing her experience, Ishani talked of the different learning fellowships that have been taken up and that could be taken up in the future. She said there was someone who took up a fellowship to do a course in needs of special children. She mentioned how the Programme was an open one where each individual teacher decides for herself what her learning need is.
There was also some talk on how the fellowships would be chosen. She mentioned how the fellowships were earlier selected by Pravah personnel, but they would now like the collective itself to choose the needs and projects. Also, some discussion happened on whether the fellowships should be restricted to the members of the collective or should be open to teachers outside. Finally, it was decided that to begin with the collective is who the fellowships should be restricted to.
Also, Ishani mentioned that learning and research fellowships could be combined. Also, mentoring support would be provided to the teachers, along with monetary support in the form of a contingency grant of Rs 30,000 in case of research fellowships and Rs 20,000 in case of learning fellowships, which would be given in a phased manner.
The teachers also suggested taking the research fellowships in groups of 2 or 3. It was decided that the maximum members in a group would be restricted to 3 in order to ensure ownership of the project.
It was decided that the collective would meet once every month till it gets formulated, post which we could explore the idea of meeting very 3 months.
Also, the idea of traveling together or independently to an educational experiment/ conference outside Delhi was explored. The teachers were very excited about the idea and it was discussed of how we could plan the trip in advance to go to places such as NBA, SIDH, Digantar and Mother’s School in Pondicherry.
The possible timings of the trip were explored and 3rd week of may and the December break emerged as two possible timings.
Teachers were asked if they wished to know anything more, had questions/comments on fellowships or any other issues. After this, teachers were given a folder containing an article on formation of religious identities in children and a magazine on educational issues. With this, the meeting ended.
Minutes of the first meeting held on october 6 2007
Minutes of the first Educators’ Collective meeting:
October 6, 2007
Participants: Kirti Iyer (Springdales’ School, Pusa Road), Alpana Rastogi (Social Worker, Springdales’ School, Pusa Road), Anjali (Ramjas School ,Anand Parbat), Anita Choudhary (Bluebells School), P. Hemlatha (Andhra School), Krishna Kumari (Andhra School, Prasad Nagar), Krishna Kumari (Andhra School, Prasad Nagar), AS Lakshmi (Andhra School, Pushp Vihar), Vijaya(Andhra School), Anita ( KRM world school ), Kirthi Adhikari (Vistaar Mother’s Own, Bijnore, UP) and Reena Bhasin (KRM world school)
The meeting began by sharing ‘…An exciting thing that happened to me recently…’ (30 mins) .Meenal invited everyone present to share one recent exciting episode from their lives with the whole group to get people connecting with one another.
AVS Laxmi shared that her 15 day visit to Bangalore for yoga class had energized her tremendously. Vijaya was particularly excited about her recent educational trip to SIDH, traveling alone in the train for the very first time!
AS Laxmi felt that the ‘Pravah Methods’ she’d been introducing in her classes had resulted in different students starting to open up and respond receptively, leaving her very happy. Hemlata revealed that she was vicariously living her child’s excitement at having been selected for the Citizenship Learning and Action Programme (jointly run by Pravah and Sanskriti School) for the very first time!
Reena mentioned how inspired she was by the interaction with Sunita Williams that students from her school had been invited to. The maintenance of decorum and how the program was conducted and organized left her with a sense of awe. For Anita, meeting with her parents after so long, without having her husband and children along was a treat!
Kirthi shared that she always felt joyous on the translation of her work into action. She could feel the shift in youth, teachers, peer group she had interacted with, and that to her was most exhilarating. Alpana’s highlight of the recent weeks was taking her kids for a swim and joining them in the pool. It was just the kind of relaxation she was looking for.
Kirti enjoyed going around the city with Alpana, exploring every gully and nook and cranny for what felt like the first time. Anita was overjoyed when the students of her school that participated in Project citizen this year with an intervention on the Right to Information, were awarded a prize for outstanding performance.
Anjali’s moment of excitement came with a series of theatre workshops that she conducted with her students that got received very well.
Krishna Kumari smiled and shared that she was waiting for something exciting to happen to her this month!
Ishani’s moment of excitement came with being asked to write the entrance exam that she was required to take as part of her son’s admissions procedure. She was tickled by the whole thing! Neha’s grandmother coming to live with her for a while was a great source of energy for her, and she particularly enjoyed the relish with which stories about her father when he was a little boy were told!
Meenal brought the sharing of stories to a close by recounting her own thrilling experience at SIDH and of how it is a unique space for educators to learn and share, that continues to inspire her.
This initial interaction served to get participants feeling comfortable with one another, connecting on a level outside of their identities as teachers and getting started on a positive, friendly note.
‘Why an Educators Collective, at all?’ (15 minutes)
Ishani proceeded to pick up on that note and share a brief and simple presentation of the vision and hope with which the space for an educators’ collective was envisioned and why. She then let the discussions flow openly, with participants sharing very briefly why they were keen to be on board as well. (The details of the next activity capture this in some detail.)
‘Recipe for the ideal open space collective-‘(40 mins)
Neha Naqvi then conducted a small activity requesting the participants to sit in pairs across schools, preferably with someone they didn’t know very well as yet.
She then handed them a sheet that had cartoons running through it around the theme of a Café.
The activity required the pairs to brainstorm around ideas for the ideal collective (Café), List the skills, values, qualities the collective should look at engaging (ingredients), a list of aims and objectives (the menu) they would like the collective to satisfy and finally some brainstorming on things that could possibly harm the integrity and purport of the collective (poison).
The activity was met with a lot of enthusiastic discussion and threw up the following ideas:
Potential name for the collective
Aims of the educators’ collective, collective hopes and aspirations
Contributing factors we would like to see brought in to ensure that aims are met
Things we shouldn’t bring into the collective/ Things we will actively avoid.
Taking things forward together- (20 mins)
The meeting came to a close with the circulation of a reader friendly form that asked certain specific questions about how each individual envisioned the smooth functioning of the collective.
October 6, 2007
Participants: Kirti Iyer (Springdales’ School, Pusa Road), Alpana Rastogi (Social Worker, Springdales’ School, Pusa Road), Anjali (Ramjas School ,Anand Parbat), Anita Choudhary (Bluebells School), P. Hemlatha (Andhra School), Krishna Kumari (Andhra School, Prasad Nagar), Krishna Kumari (Andhra School, Prasad Nagar), AS Lakshmi (Andhra School, Pushp Vihar), Vijaya(Andhra School), Anita ( KRM world school ), Kirthi Adhikari (Vistaar Mother’s Own, Bijnore, UP) and Reena Bhasin (KRM world school)
The meeting began by sharing ‘…An exciting thing that happened to me recently…’ (30 mins) .Meenal invited everyone present to share one recent exciting episode from their lives with the whole group to get people connecting with one another.
AVS Laxmi shared that her 15 day visit to Bangalore for yoga class had energized her tremendously. Vijaya was particularly excited about her recent educational trip to SIDH, traveling alone in the train for the very first time!
AS Laxmi felt that the ‘Pravah Methods’ she’d been introducing in her classes had resulted in different students starting to open up and respond receptively, leaving her very happy. Hemlata revealed that she was vicariously living her child’s excitement at having been selected for the Citizenship Learning and Action Programme (jointly run by Pravah and Sanskriti School) for the very first time!
Reena mentioned how inspired she was by the interaction with Sunita Williams that students from her school had been invited to. The maintenance of decorum and how the program was conducted and organized left her with a sense of awe. For Anita, meeting with her parents after so long, without having her husband and children along was a treat!
Kirthi shared that she always felt joyous on the translation of her work into action. She could feel the shift in youth, teachers, peer group she had interacted with, and that to her was most exhilarating. Alpana’s highlight of the recent weeks was taking her kids for a swim and joining them in the pool. It was just the kind of relaxation she was looking for.
Kirti enjoyed going around the city with Alpana, exploring every gully and nook and cranny for what felt like the first time. Anita was overjoyed when the students of her school that participated in Project citizen this year with an intervention on the Right to Information, were awarded a prize for outstanding performance.
Anjali’s moment of excitement came with a series of theatre workshops that she conducted with her students that got received very well.
Krishna Kumari smiled and shared that she was waiting for something exciting to happen to her this month!
Ishani’s moment of excitement came with being asked to write the entrance exam that she was required to take as part of her son’s admissions procedure. She was tickled by the whole thing! Neha’s grandmother coming to live with her for a while was a great source of energy for her, and she particularly enjoyed the relish with which stories about her father when he was a little boy were told!
Meenal brought the sharing of stories to a close by recounting her own thrilling experience at SIDH and of how it is a unique space for educators to learn and share, that continues to inspire her.
This initial interaction served to get participants feeling comfortable with one another, connecting on a level outside of their identities as teachers and getting started on a positive, friendly note.
‘Why an Educators Collective, at all?’ (15 minutes)
Ishani proceeded to pick up on that note and share a brief and simple presentation of the vision and hope with which the space for an educators’ collective was envisioned and why. She then let the discussions flow openly, with participants sharing very briefly why they were keen to be on board as well. (The details of the next activity capture this in some detail.)
‘Recipe for the ideal open space collective-‘(40 mins)
Neha Naqvi then conducted a small activity requesting the participants to sit in pairs across schools, preferably with someone they didn’t know very well as yet.
She then handed them a sheet that had cartoons running through it around the theme of a Café.
The activity required the pairs to brainstorm around ideas for the ideal collective (Café), List the skills, values, qualities the collective should look at engaging (ingredients), a list of aims and objectives (the menu) they would like the collective to satisfy and finally some brainstorming on things that could possibly harm the integrity and purport of the collective (poison).
The activity was met with a lot of enthusiastic discussion and threw up the following ideas:
Potential name for the collective
Aims of the educators’ collective, collective hopes and aspirations
Contributing factors we would like to see brought in to ensure that aims are met
Things we shouldn’t bring into the collective/ Things we will actively avoid.
Taking things forward together- (20 mins)
The meeting came to a close with the circulation of a reader friendly form that asked certain specific questions about how each individual envisioned the smooth functioning of the collective.
Concept Note
The Citizenship Educator’s Collective - Connecting – Expanding- Reflecting
Rationale
The idea of initiating teachers’ collective emerges from the much desired need of teachers to belong to a professional community, to be able to share, to seek opportunity to advance mutual respect, cooperation, and exchange ideas for the sake of their students and for advancing the professionalism of education. While teachers are expected to be change makers, they are rarely in a position to change/influence spaces, which matter, in the larger educational and social concern. As a response to this need Pravah would facilitate a platform for like minded teachers with a shared vision and commitment towards active citizenship.
Vision
To build a membership based educators’ collective of school teachers, educators, and teacher trainers, who are committed to be catalysts for moving towards justice and equity in our communities, through their engagement with young people.
Goals
1. Maintain a network of lifeskills and citizenship educators to develop an environment of support and professional development.
2. Provide opportunities for self-transformation, leadership, and community building to educators in order to affect meaningful change in the classroom, school, community and society.
3. Sustain a membership that is engaged in a continuing process of critical self-reflection and growth.
4. A membership with a level of competency in creating empowering learning environments for citizenship action.
While initially, we believe that Pravah will play a key role in facilitating the formation and running of the collective, we also intend to do this such that, over a period of time, the collective is self driven. Processes will be set in place so that ownership for this is placed with the members.
Some possible ways of operationalising educators’ collective are as follows:
Setting up (2-3 months): Each year a group of teachers/ educators will be encouraged to become a part of an educators’ collective. Initially, collective will comprise of teachers who are trained through 'The World Is My Classroom' initiative and/or are a part of teachers learning center and have shown commitment to engage with social justice issues in their school and/ or with society at large. Later, membership could be extended to any educator, who may be interested to promote citizenship education. In the first year, the collective will be brought together through regular meetings and other processes facilitated by Pravah to enable them to develop their vision, agenda and strategies. Once the group is set up the members will meet regularly to plan, critique and evaluate the collective's activities.
a) Regular meetings: Members of the collective will meet monthly to share experiences, respond to readings, exchange ideas and develop plans of action. The themes (around social justice issues) of the meetings for each year will be decided by the members. These meetings would more closely resemble discussion groups, allowing educators to reflect on their own classroom practices from the perspective of assessing the way they make connections through their teaching with the real world.
b) Action groups: One of the activities of the collective will be to develop action groups of teachers who would design and initiate social action in schools around social justice issues. The group will be encouraged to document their action and ultimately a compilation of the action group’s projects and their outcome could be shared with other teachers.
c) Thematic Workshop (each of 6 days): Workshops and training sessions for members of the collective as well will be organized to further the development of curricula that help educators and students resist the social and educational injustices that are shaping out world.
d) Fellowships (6months -2 yr duration): The collective will support and promote action research undertaken by teachers around educational and social justice issues especially with regard to policies and practices that promote equality, justice and democracy across all sections of the society. Such initiatives may include developing and implementing curriculum on social justice issues, research on social conflicts and their impact on education processes, development of effective teaching learning practices to promote democratic values/ remove impediments to the practice of these values, or initiating projects in the school to promote citizenship action. To enable this we propose to support fellowships for 3 teachers per year through financial and non-financial support in forms of mentoring, training, access to resources. These fellowships will be available to collective members and the criterion of selection will be framed by the group. The modalities of selecting fellows, nature of engagement of the fellow teachers and the themes will be determined by the members of the collective. Once the selection criterion is decided by the collective the core members will manage the fellowships. The core members will be identified on the basis of their experience of running citizenship education, understanding of social justice issues and mentoring ability and time commitment.
e) Skill Development workshops ( 1-2 days duration ): The members of the collective will design and deliver workshops for colleagues on developing citizenship education as integrated with the study of social sciences and language.
f) Publication and newsletter: To disseminate ideas and reflections generated by the collective a quarterly newsletter for teachers will be published. Simple hand books and booklets with ideas for classroom activities to initiate citizenship action and promote social justice education in the school system will also be collated, published and disseminated among teachers.
g) Learning Fellowships (1 week – 6months): To help teachers to see themselves not only as teachers but also as life long learners and to become more self directed and learning oriented in their approach to development, we seek to institute learning fellowships for 12 teachers over the three years. Our objective is also to encourage educators in the field of citizenship education to become active seekers of excellence rather than passive recipients of training interventions.
h) Interface with main stream education: In the light of the new National Curriculum Framework where civics is redefined from the lens of citizenship education, teachers' learning center will actively engage in developing training modules for teachers to expose them 'to foster multiple perspectives as well as inter and trans-disciplinary perspectives in examining social realities, conflicts and concerns’. An outcome of this initiative will be a compilation of citizenship action projects that can be used by the teachers in the classroom to transact social science curriculum in an experiential way.
Expected Outreach: The core team (intensive engagement) will have 10-15 teachers and they will reach out to 50 teachers each year.
Role of Pravah vis-a-vis school based learning center and educators collective:
Pravah would facilitate the formation of the learning center / collective through including identification of teachers, developing systems and processes, supporting the envisioning and ongoing planning, developing monitoring and review mechanism and conducting the same. It would continue to lend its expertise in training and mentoring of the group for this period. The learning agenda of the members will be developed in partnership with the members and implementation will be facilitated.
Rationale
The idea of initiating teachers’ collective emerges from the much desired need of teachers to belong to a professional community, to be able to share, to seek opportunity to advance mutual respect, cooperation, and exchange ideas for the sake of their students and for advancing the professionalism of education. While teachers are expected to be change makers, they are rarely in a position to change/influence spaces, which matter, in the larger educational and social concern. As a response to this need Pravah would facilitate a platform for like minded teachers with a shared vision and commitment towards active citizenship.
Vision
To build a membership based educators’ collective of school teachers, educators, and teacher trainers, who are committed to be catalysts for moving towards justice and equity in our communities, through their engagement with young people.
Goals
1. Maintain a network of lifeskills and citizenship educators to develop an environment of support and professional development.
2. Provide opportunities for self-transformation, leadership, and community building to educators in order to affect meaningful change in the classroom, school, community and society.
3. Sustain a membership that is engaged in a continuing process of critical self-reflection and growth.
4. A membership with a level of competency in creating empowering learning environments for citizenship action.
While initially, we believe that Pravah will play a key role in facilitating the formation and running of the collective, we also intend to do this such that, over a period of time, the collective is self driven. Processes will be set in place so that ownership for this is placed with the members.
Some possible ways of operationalising educators’ collective are as follows:
Setting up (2-3 months): Each year a group of teachers/ educators will be encouraged to become a part of an educators’ collective. Initially, collective will comprise of teachers who are trained through 'The World Is My Classroom' initiative and/or are a part of teachers learning center and have shown commitment to engage with social justice issues in their school and/ or with society at large. Later, membership could be extended to any educator, who may be interested to promote citizenship education. In the first year, the collective will be brought together through regular meetings and other processes facilitated by Pravah to enable them to develop their vision, agenda and strategies. Once the group is set up the members will meet regularly to plan, critique and evaluate the collective's activities.
a) Regular meetings: Members of the collective will meet monthly to share experiences, respond to readings, exchange ideas and develop plans of action. The themes (around social justice issues) of the meetings for each year will be decided by the members. These meetings would more closely resemble discussion groups, allowing educators to reflect on their own classroom practices from the perspective of assessing the way they make connections through their teaching with the real world.
b) Action groups: One of the activities of the collective will be to develop action groups of teachers who would design and initiate social action in schools around social justice issues. The group will be encouraged to document their action and ultimately a compilation of the action group’s projects and their outcome could be shared with other teachers.
c) Thematic Workshop (each of 6 days): Workshops and training sessions for members of the collective as well will be organized to further the development of curricula that help educators and students resist the social and educational injustices that are shaping out world.
d) Fellowships (6months -2 yr duration): The collective will support and promote action research undertaken by teachers around educational and social justice issues especially with regard to policies and practices that promote equality, justice and democracy across all sections of the society. Such initiatives may include developing and implementing curriculum on social justice issues, research on social conflicts and their impact on education processes, development of effective teaching learning practices to promote democratic values/ remove impediments to the practice of these values, or initiating projects in the school to promote citizenship action. To enable this we propose to support fellowships for 3 teachers per year through financial and non-financial support in forms of mentoring, training, access to resources. These fellowships will be available to collective members and the criterion of selection will be framed by the group. The modalities of selecting fellows, nature of engagement of the fellow teachers and the themes will be determined by the members of the collective. Once the selection criterion is decided by the collective the core members will manage the fellowships. The core members will be identified on the basis of their experience of running citizenship education, understanding of social justice issues and mentoring ability and time commitment.
e) Skill Development workshops ( 1-2 days duration ): The members of the collective will design and deliver workshops for colleagues on developing citizenship education as integrated with the study of social sciences and language.
f) Publication and newsletter: To disseminate ideas and reflections generated by the collective a quarterly newsletter for teachers will be published. Simple hand books and booklets with ideas for classroom activities to initiate citizenship action and promote social justice education in the school system will also be collated, published and disseminated among teachers.
g) Learning Fellowships (1 week – 6months): To help teachers to see themselves not only as teachers but also as life long learners and to become more self directed and learning oriented in their approach to development, we seek to institute learning fellowships for 12 teachers over the three years. Our objective is also to encourage educators in the field of citizenship education to become active seekers of excellence rather than passive recipients of training interventions.
h) Interface with main stream education: In the light of the new National Curriculum Framework where civics is redefined from the lens of citizenship education, teachers' learning center will actively engage in developing training modules for teachers to expose them 'to foster multiple perspectives as well as inter and trans-disciplinary perspectives in examining social realities, conflicts and concerns’. An outcome of this initiative will be a compilation of citizenship action projects that can be used by the teachers in the classroom to transact social science curriculum in an experiential way.
Expected Outreach: The core team (intensive engagement) will have 10-15 teachers and they will reach out to 50 teachers each year.
Role of Pravah vis-a-vis school based learning center and educators collective:
Pravah would facilitate the formation of the learning center / collective through including identification of teachers, developing systems and processes, supporting the envisioning and ongoing planning, developing monitoring and review mechanism and conducting the same. It would continue to lend its expertise in training and mentoring of the group for this period. The learning agenda of the members will be developed in partnership with the members and implementation will be facilitated.
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