Heraclitus had once rightly said, “The only constant in life is change.” No sphere of life has remained untouched by change and so does our education system. The transition from rote and teacher oriented learning to children oriented learning is a testimony of the rising standard of our education system. Being a teacher I personally feel that current practices of teaching and learning provides a lot of scope for the overall development of students. Somewhere I regret of not getting these opportunities as a student.
Nevertheless, everything happens for a reason. I have been lucky to get the opportunity to be a part of the revolutionized child-oriented learning system as a teacher. Since the time I came in to the teaching profession I have been trying various child-oriented learning strategies in my classroom. Often, it was an unconscious effort getting me only half the achievement as my lessons lacked systematic execution. It is only after joining the Teacher Pages Innovator Fellowship (TPIF) that I got to know what it means to systematically execute a learning strategy that is aimed at child-oriented learning.
TPIF happened to me as a miracle. Miracle because before getting into this fellowship program I had already used one of the strategies which was uploaded on their YouTube page for one of my prose lesson and it happened to worked well. So when I got to know about this fellowship I immediately registered myself.Teacher Pages Innovator Fellowship (TPIF) program is an initiative by Centre for Equity and Quality in Universal Education. During this four month of fellowship period I was given hands-on experience on how to teach language in an innovative way. The theme for this fellowship program was story writing and on completion of the training I was amazed that simple story writing includes 8 steps and these 8 steps can be taught to children in a very playful and interesting way.
Attending the four month training was not the end of this fellowship program. I was supposed to conduct the activities which I had done in the training with the students. Students’ enthusiastic and positive response gave me a sense of confidence to proceed with such good work. I am glad that I took up this experiential learning as the outcome, displayed by the students in the form of a “Story Writing Exhibition” was worth all the effort. Parents’ positive response to the exhibition was a bonus for me as those responses bear testimony to parents’ willing and openness to such experiential learning.
As a part of this fellowship teachers’ lesson videos are professionally shot by the CEQUE crew and uploaded on their official Youtube page. I too got the opportunity to face the camera. It was a moment of pride for me as it not only gave me a sense of satisfaction in completing the fellowship but also a sense of being a responsible teacher as my video can be used by other teachers like me as a supporting resource.
You can check out CEQUE’s Youtube page here: http://teacherpages.ceque.org/home
Ms. Vinita Pal, Std VIII Teacher