Something that sets the Sharon teachers apart from other teachers is their enthusiasm and zeal to learn. A good teacher is also a lifelong learner. We at Sharon therefore believe that teachers must constantly engage in different kinds of professional development programs and to this end we encourage and enable our teachers to explore new avenues for professional growth.
At the end of the 2016-’17 academic year we heard about the Teacher Pages Innovator Fellowship conducted by the Centre for Quality and Equity in Education (CEQUE) in collaboration with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). This was a seven month long fellowship offered to select teachers to improve their classroom teaching through intensive coaching, theme-based workshops and video recording some of their classes. The fellowship uses the 5D framework (Fink and Markholt 2011) i.e. five dimensions of teaching and learning which include purpose, student engagement, curriculum and pedagogy, classroom environment and student assessment, to guide and evaluate teachers’ work in the classroom. The focus of the fellowship is to observe and video record teachers’ lessons in the classroom,analyse the videos with the teachers using the 5D framework, work with teachers to create iterations of lesson plans based on this framework and finally shoot and produce a video of the teacher teaching this lesson plan in her/his classroom. This video is added to CEQUE’s YouTube channel for larger dissemination.
Three of our teachers, Ms. Reena Babu, Ms. Shailaja Nair and Ms. Pranali Gaikwad were selected to participate in the fellowship after intensive rounds of interviews. They enthusiastically attended the residential workshops in Pune, actively participated in discussions and activities in the distance period and tried many new strategies that they learnt in the classroom. All three teachers dedicatedly worked towards bettering their skills and practice in the classroom. In the last leg of the fellowship program, each one conducted a master class for their students in math or language using innovative techniques and ideas. This was video recorded by a professional crew and will be released on YouTube in the coming months. You can watch this space for more updates : https://www.youtube.com/user/TeacherPages
All three teachers were felicitated this summer by the CEQUE team for successfully completing the fellowship program. We congratulate our teacher innovators on this accomplishment and look forward to our students learning in fresh new ways in the classrooms.