Smriti Krishnia: Taking My Learning Forward

Always happy to do so!
I had a wonderful initiation of my professional life with a short, albeit enriching, stint at LF India back in 2016.

Growing up, I always wondered about the ills that plague our education system, thereby deeply impacting learning outcomes and the future of the kids that form the most critical component of the entire ecosystem. My time with Learning Forward India was beneficial in more ways than one because I got to see first hand what an intervention at the level of the teacher, or rather educator, can do to help solve many of the aforementioned ills.

I was amazed and overwhelmed on more counts than one to see the successful outcome of this experiment at The Fabindia School (TFS) in Bali. The levels of motivation and sincerity in the educators at TFS are not just high, they’re self-driven. The educators increasingly understand the need to develop themselves professionally on a continual basis. Small and simple things that we take for granted in our daily lives today - making ppts, delivering presentations, articulating one’s thoughts in written words and speech, public speaking - are not so easy after all. They are crucial skills that we all work upon knowingly or unknowingly, and they are what result in our overall development and confidence as we step out into the world each day.

I happened to work with the educators on a book they all had written collectively after having done some groundwork on reading and understanding a different book. I was sincerely amazed at not just their honest efforts but also their will to better themselves.

In the process, I was also introduced to the idea of My Good School and its overarching focus on service skill sport and study. Simple and logical concepts in theory but how rarely do we see their implementation as an organic whole. Again, these 4 ideas come alive together in the students that are being nurtured at TFS. I had the opportunity to interact with some of them and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how confident, collected, and self-aware they were. The professional development of the teachers, I believe, is critical to attaining this.

My third learning pertains to the importance of having a leader who leads from the front and with an example - something that is so critical for a school. You’ve got to have someone who not only keeps everything going smoothly, but also empathises with students and teachers alike, and is able to focus on the details while never losing sight of the larger picture and the things that really matter at the end of the day. Rajeshree Ma’am is indeed a fine example of the same.

While my field of work has undergone a bit of change, I can safely and confidently conclude that Sandeep Sir and the entire team at TFS are onto something big when it comes to finally fix our system. To my mind, they’re constantly striving to create a recipe for a perfect school. And I have no doubt that they’re pretty close to getting there :)

Smriti Krishnia did her Internship with Learning Forward India
https://www.schooleducation.com/p/yes-interns.html