#HappyTeachers for school culture transformation

Learning Forward India Foundation

Section 8 not-for-profit company

We grow the capacity of your people to improve student achievement and transform your school into a culture of trust and collaboration in less time with fewer resources.

The Foundation works for school transformation with an emphasis on culture as a service. We'll design a plan that meets your unique needs and improves teaching and learning in your system. Our focus is on governance, training and learning:

Governance: 

Schools Can Change -  Upgrading or setting up a school, we closely work with the client organisation, to further the vision and mission of the promoters. We assist the school in finding and mentoring the right people to help build a good leadership team. #SchoolsCanChange

Training: 

Learning Forward India Professional Learning Program - Focuses on building professional learning communities. The program leverages the best in adult learning, research on organisational change, and practical experience to create capacity for sustained improvements in educators. #HappyTeachers

Learning: 

My Good School - We help our partner schools to work for the personal and social development of an individual by offering an environment where experiential learning is made possible through activities beyond just study. The program helps measure the improvement in student learning at school. Our digital portfolio is the gamechanger and works to deliver a tailormade school experience for every individual.  #MyGoodSchool

Mr RP Devgan our Chairman, leads the growth of the Foundation and himself helps mentor and train Educators all over the country. He will be delighted to have you connect with him to strengthen the mission of the LFIN Foundation. You can share your time, your resources and even money to strengthen the Foundation. We are committed to building sustainable organisation for Happy Teachers and will value your professional capital, at no stage will you feel that this is pro bono, our association assures you of transparency and equity, we value every individual who cares to help schools deliver better. We have a committed set of advisors from all over the world, with 300+ years of total experience. 

Learning Forward India Foundation

www.LearningForward.Org.IN
Rajinder Pal Devgan, Chairman

Email rpdevgan@gmail.com

लिखना भाषा का अभिन्न अंग: कुसुम डांगी

लिखना  भाषा  का अभिन्न अंग है, जिसके जरिए हम अपने विचार, ज्ञान आदि को दूसरों तक पहुँचा सकते है । जिस तरह पढ़ना, सुनना व बोलना महत्वपूर्ण है उसी प्रकार लिखना भी महत्वपूर्ण है।

लक्ष्य पूरा करने में लिखने का बहुत योगदान है । हम  जो पाना चाहते है या बनना चाहते है उसको यदि सोचने के बजाय लिख दे और जितना ज्यादा लिखेंगे उसको सफलतापूर्वक पूरा करने की संभावना बनेगी।          

                                        

हमेशा सब कुछ याद रखना संभव नहीं है  इसके लिए यदि नियमित रूप से डायरी लिखी जाए तो जरूरत पड़ने पर लिखी हुई चीजों को फिर से दोहराया जाए तो अपने मस्तिष्क में सब कुछ स्पष्ट हो जाता है। भावनात्मक बातों को लिखने से तनाव, चिंता को कम किया जा सकता है।

अच्छा लिखने के लिए जरूरी है सही सुनना अगर सही सुनेंगे तो सही लिखेंगे मन मस्तिष्क को एकाग्र करने में लिखना बहुत सहायक है ।

कई बार ऐसा होता है कि दिमाग में अनेक विचार आते है, जिससे निर्णय लेना मुश्किल हो जाता है लिखने से सही समय पर आसानी से निर्णय लिया जा सकता है ।

Kusum Dangi

kdi4fab@gmail.com

Writing: The Power of Thought - Urmila Rathore

Writing is an important virtue to put all the thoughts and ideas clearly. Through writing, we can communicate clearly because this helps us to build a structure that will allow to express ourselves better and communicate complex ideas in a simple way. This way we gradually progress towards effective writing. Mistakes of grammar, punctuation and structure spelling are all progressively eliminated. Since these basics are more essential for good writing so automatically it improves our language skill and vocabulary.

Effective writing also demands thinking and imagination skills which improve by practice. I remember a line of Bacon's writing "Writing makes a man capable of thinking with logic and reason". He also describes that our thinking, speaking and writing abilities add charm to our personality.

Nowadays people don't have much time to listen to someone's concern but writing gives us the freedom to share good or bad thoughts. It reduces our stress effectively and later we feel joy and satisfaction.

Writing can even make us feel nostalgic through carving out childhood poetry, essays or letters to our dear ones.

When asked of its importance, I exemplify it as, “What if Shakespeare wasn’t a good writer? Perhaps, we never would have been able to understand the tragedy that occurred with Caesar, or literature itself would not have enjoyed its virtue as it does today.”

Urmila Rathore

ure4fab@gmail.com

Speaking as a skill: Kusum Sharma

Speaking is an important way of sharing our thoughts with others. It turns our ideas and reasoning into a discussion. A collaborative exchange of knowledge and ideas makes us speak fluently. It is an indication of the fluency of our thinking and listening. Our efforts help us to organize our own thoughts.

Speech has two components diction and fluency. Diction is the way and manner in which somebody pronounces a word. The word should be right, accurate and in context to the word used. Clarity of speech is important to get the message across. Fluency is the ability to speak or write a language easily and quickly. The spoken word adds music and movement as a powerful learning technique.

Some parts of our brain work together and lead to learning. To speak frankly and expressing themselves is the challenge that children face in school. It is difficult for teachers handling parents at the PTM and communicating with them. Proper communication is very important in every situation. Children learn better by listening to incidences and stories.

Communication is how we make our students understand as an educator. We must be very clear and accurate in our speech and teaching. We must listen more, talk less, listen to everyone’s opinion and share our opinions. In this way, we can become a good mentor and make the children understand in a better way.  

Kusum Sharma

ksa4fab@gmail.com

Marshall Memo 821, 27th Jan 2020

This week's quotes and articles come from The New York Times, Exceptional Children, American Journal of Education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Cult of Pedagogy, Education Week, Mathematics Teacher, The Reading Teacher (more next week), Language Arts, and a YouTube video. Here are the headlines:

- Reducing burnout and attrition among special-education teachers

- High-school debate and "cultural capital"

- Teaching "The Odyssey" with a social justice perspective

- Linking afterschool programs with the regular school day

- Phonics is only part of good literacy instruction

- Increasing joy in primary-grade math classes

- Four-text sets to build students' reading power

- Recommended storybooks and audiobooks

- Impeachment teaching materials

- A video on probability

If you want an HTML version of this week's Memo, please click here:
www.marshallmemo.com/issue.php?I=de42a99365e8512f8377d1f8a3fe43f7

For a podcast of last week's issue (#820), please click here:
youtu.be/VNOvPfRTq8s

To hear this week's podcast, just log in at www.marshallmemo.com later this week and click Podcasts.

My best,

Kim Marshall

© Copyright 2020 Marshall Memo LLC

If you have feedback or suggestions, please e-mail kim.marshall48@gmail.com 

Join Learning Forward India

Learning Forward India Foundation Private group · 95 members Join Group Learning Forward India (LFIN) is an affiliate of Learning Forward (LF), membership is subscription-based and is open to any person interested in profe... We invite you to join the Learning Forward India Foundation group on Facebook

LFIN Retreat 2020

The goal of the retreat is to foster professional learning and social interaction for empowering Educators to work for better learning outcomes. The program will include an agenda for professional learning and discussions, as well as other informational and social events. #HappyTeachers

Importance of Writing in our life: Byju Joseph

We can express our own ideas and opinions in different ways. It is possible by expressions, by signals, by communication, by writing or by speaking. It is not necessary to select only a particular way to express them but perfection is important. Writing is one of the powerful modes of expressing ideas. Writing helps us to communicate better.  If we want to become a good writer we must be a good read which will help us to improve vocabulary, sentence structures and grammar.

We all have ideas but the way of presentation of them will lead to identifying the personality. It is not an easy job for everyone because a lot of mental exercises are needed for writing. It is the work of our brain to analyze and arrange our own ideas, imagination, feelings, knowledge and information to present before others. When we write anything most of the parts of the brain involve accomplishing it. This will help to improve memory which will lead our imagination into reality.  Writing helps to stimulate the brain especially the left hemisphere which is the dominant part that controls all the related activities. Both the hemispheres have lobes, out of which the frontal lobe mostly regulates writing and speaking in association with other lobes.

As the human brain develops at an age of early childhood it is very important to teach the children how to write everything properly. The first step in this regard is to write and learn alphabets and then to words. Gradually they attain the knowledge of forming sentences. Developing a writing skill will help them to gather and analyze their ideas in an effective manner. Children should get the freedom to write whatever they want to. More and more interest will develop and that will direct them to form creative ideas. Creativity will surely lead to better output in their academic areas. Handwriting is another aspect which improves by continuous practice. By seeing the handwriting we identify the nature and confidence level of children.

The overall writing is a skill which should be practised and improved by all.

Byju Joseph

bjh@fabindiaschools.in

Courage: Shivani Rao

It means making an effort to do something that frightens one. It most important value that should be taught to students. This can be done by setting a good example in front of them, many kids try to copy their teachers.

The teacher should encourage student  by saying things like, “You can do it—I know how brave you are,”  to show your child how you see her.

Giving permission your student to mess up things, and encouraging them to perform better next time.  Also, tell your child that it’s okay to fail. Remind your child that every time you fail at something, you learn what doesn’t work.

Encourage your child to try new things. Share stories of times when you felt scared or nervous or had to stand up for yourself against others’ opinions. Discussion on what kind of difficulties you face when you stand is right.

Sharing stories of freedom fighter, how they took a stand when everyone was against them, how they overcome difficulty. Also giving them a comfort zone to discuss any topic with their teacher.

Shivani Rao

The Fabindia School, Bali

Speaking is an Art: Urmila Rathore

Speaking is an art, an art of listening, of carefully observing your environment, of thinking critically. It is one of the key traits through which a person is understood. Imagine being a teacher and not being able to put your thoughts clearly in front of the pupil. More or less, I believe, this becomes the reason for students to not be able to understand the context of their subjects.

Often, not speaking clearly enough happens when one is preoccupied. This again can be done away with, by speaking out your doubts, problems, issues to the right people at the right time. It is a cycle.

There used to be a time when speech was silver and silence gold. But now, in a world of constant negotiation, speaking up is as important as keeping silence. One who masters speaking - excels, whatever be the work. It is an important skill that should be honed for self-development.

Diplomacy is an integral part for a nation to have healthy ties with others and is achieved by appropriate dialogue, again a form of speech. A good speech can take you out of trouble, while a bad one can lend you into one.

It is as an important attribute for success, as is hard work, but unfortunately, personal attributes are often underrated. Here comes the use of such articles to emphasize how important traits like these are.

When I was a child, I often used to keep silence, expecting others to understand without explanation. It took me some time to figure out that it is very important to acknowledge people of my needs and deeds. Otherwise, we are often mistaken, judged and considered weak.

Since humans are social animals, they need speech to socialize. In all speech is a form of expression, the more effective it is, the more you lighten up your environment.

Urmila Rathore

ure4fab@gmail.com

You may know about sports coaching

You may know about sports coaching
But did you know that Educators can have coaches too?

Is this new to you? Would you like to find out what coaching has to offer you? The not-for-profit  LFIN Foundation connects educators with professional coaches, for free. Educators receive coaching support at no cost. In our work to bring coaching to educators, LFIN coaches waive their fees for the introductory session.

Just like a sports coach, your LFIN coach is able to see your ‘performance’ from outside the box. They see what you can’t see. Your coach works in collaboration with you to shift what needs to be shifted, changed or let go of so you can perform to the best of your ability.

Leonie Hurrel shares why coaching has been important to her.
"My own experience of coaching played a significant role in my career as a Headteacher. As a leader, it enabled me to work more effectively, manage change, balance the demands of an intensive job with a young family and feel far more confident and happy in myself."

In India, you can connect with members of Learning Forward India, an association that shows you how to plan, implement, and measure high-quality professional learning so you and your team can achieve success with your system, your school, and your students. Simply connect with us by email LF@ebd.in

We grow the capacity of your people to improve student achievement and transform your school into a culture of trust and collaboration in less time with fewer resources.

Sandeep Dutt founder Learning Forward India Foundation
As School Improvement Coach, he focuses on school transformation with an emphasis on culture as a service. With over 30 years of experience as a trainer and mentor, Sandeep has been involved with schools across the country and worked with teachers and students all over the world. Read more https://hundred.org/en/profiles/sandeep-dutt

Learning Forward India (LFIN) is an affiliate of Learning Forward, membership is open to any person interested in professional growth and organisational development.

- The post is inspired by the writing of Martin Richards, and he works for Inspiring and encouraging educators to believe even more.

www.LearningForward.Org.IN

Proposal deadline approaching

Apply to present at the 2020 Annual Conference

This year’s Annual Conference theme is Innovate for impact, addressing questions such as: - What innovative solutions do education leaders need to know about for professional learning policies, systems, and practices? - How can professional learning be leveraged to achieve school improvement? - How can we measure the impact of professional learning so that you can ensure your investments are leading to equity and excellence for all students? We are looking for education leaders at all levels – policy, system, school, and classroom – to lead like-minded colleagues through the tools and strategies they need to understand and implement effective professional learning in their classrooms, schools, and districts. Submit a proposal to present a session at Learning Forward's 2020 Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois, December 5-9, 2020. The proposal deadline is February 3, 2020. Submit Proposal

Connecting The Dots

Pic courtesy themachinemaker.com

Visited the office of CTD (Connecting The Dots) – www.ctdedu.com – an education startup of Mr Rajesh Rao, an ex-Infy techy. He has built this company with a great vision and has been successful in providing structured academic education to class 6 ~ 10 through webcasting using his own unique teaching methodology for subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths and English. 

He is able to connect with 15000 from 70 schools every day through 8 digital classrooms. These schools are a mix of govt. schools and budget private schools spread across Karnataka as well as Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. His vision is to reach out to 40000 students by next year taking the tally of schools to 250 or so. He is looking for funding as well as connects that could enable him to augment his reach. 

He has 25 teachers working as his employees, to whom he pays a decent salary, enabling them to relish the teaching profession akin to a software engineer. I viewed and listened to a recorded class of Physics and was very impressed with his methodology of teaching using real-time experiments and white-board teaching technique.

- Manoj Kabre <Manojkabre@gmail.com>

Affection and Rejection post by Curious Icons

People who become afraid of rejection might hold back from going after something they want. The better we get at dealing with rejection, the less it affects us.  When a child comes to the school they want to care, love and affection for becoming a human being.

A teacher thus plays a very important role in a child’s life to save him for the feeling of rejection. A word rejection itself brings all the negativity in it, how can one groom himself with the feeling of rejection?

In a classroom, many students think themselves as slow learners or have been projected by their peers as a slow learner. This led them towards rejection or to some isolated subgroups.  It is thus very important for an Educator to assist the fellow classmates to change their views for that child. This will definitely help the child to come up from the feeling of rejection.

The feeling of rejection not only comes with slow learners but many times personal family background also has a great impact. A child with a happy family will have always a joy in him which will, of course, make him confident but a child with a disturbed family wants someone to care for him. Here a teacher has a very active role in his life. If with his affection he can bring all good qualities in him, the child will be a great human being.

- Curious Icons, The Iconic School

कक्षा में गतिशीलता, रचनात्मकता और अभिव्यक्ति की आज़ादी होनी चाहिए

आज सारी दुनिया के सामने परिवार को बाँधे रखना सबसे बड़ा प्रश्न है। लोग एक-दूसरे को समझने के बजाय अहं और भौतिकता का शिकार होकर प्रगति की दौड़ में अंधाधुंध भागे जा रहे हैं और पारिवारिक मूल्य पीछे छूटते जा रहे हैं। माता-पिता की इन महत्वाकांक्षाओं के टकराव से परिवार टूट रहे हैं, बिखर रहे हैं। इस बिखराव का सबसे ज्यादा प्रभाव बच्चों पर पड़ता है। वे स्वयं को उपेक्षित महसूस करने लगते हैं। उनका ध्यान शिक्षा से हट जाता है और वे दूसरों को आकर्षित करने के लिए असामान्य व्यवहार करने लगते हैं। इन टूटे परिवारों के बच्चे जब विद्यालय में आते हैं, तो वहाँ वे प्रेम और सहानुभूति खोजते हैं। वे कक्षा में अन्य छात्रों के साथ सामंजस्य स्थापित नहीं कर पाते।

उनके असामान्य व्यवहार का नकारात्मक असर अन्य छात्रों पर पड़ता है। ऐसे में एक शिक्षक की भूमिका और अधिक महत्वपूर्ण हो जाती है। विद्यालय बच्चे का दूसरा घर है। जहाँ वह अपने घर के बाद अधिकाँश समय बीतता है। इसलिए शिक्षक को चाहिए कि वह छात्र के लिए उपयुक्त वातावरण बनाए और मनोवैज्ञानिक ढंग से उससे बात करे। उसे भावनात्मक संबल दें, उसके दिल में जगह बनाए। ताकि वह अपनी बात खुलकर कह सके। जब शिक्षक और छात्र सहज होकर बात करेंगे, तभी इस समस्या का निदान हो सकेगा। इसके लिए धैर्य, समर्पण और कुशलता की आवश्यकता है। कक्षा में गतिशीलता, रचनात्मकता और अभिव्यक्ति की आज़ादी होनी चाहिए। छात्र स्वयं करके सीखे। उसकी प्रतिभा का उचित प्रदर्शन और आकलन हो। जिससे वे खुशहाल और प्रतिभासम्पन्न  होकर अपना भविष्य उज्जवल बनाए।

-Caring Icons, The Iconic School Bhopal

Affection Vs Rejection post by Helpful Icons

A school is a place where multiple emotions and behaviours are reflected and experienced by the educators and the students.  Every situation in a classroom and school leads to an expression of affection or rejection. These words are simple and make a great meaning when educators reflect on them. This time the focus of the article is on the key responsibilities that the Educators have. The first role of the educators is to see the children through different lenses and recognise their unique traits and accept them with their individual characteristics and abilities. This in itself will change the picture of the classroom and the situations that take place in the class.

The next responsibility as an Educator is to accept all the children with love. The love that the Educators show to the students develops trust between them and the students. It is because of this trust that students share various problems, issues and concerns with the educators because they know that they will be accepted with everything. These two responsibilities can bring in a great change in the development of the child. However, if the above responsibilities of we the educators are not recognised then we tend to take our children on the path of rejection. For example, if the whole class is expected to follow the things just like the best student in the class and not as individuals, it will create great dissatisfaction amongst the pupils. With this dissatisfaction, some children will automatically be left behind as through this mass approaches the individuality of a child is not accepted by the Educator.

It’s time that we all start reflecting on the day to day activities and the situation’s in the classroom and connect with our children in a way that they feel acknowledged, appreciated and accepted the way they are and develop a growth trajectory that makes our children a champion with the core values of acceptance and love.

“We can live without religion and meditation but we cannot survive without affection”

- Helpful Icons, The Iconic School Bhopal

Affection Vs Rejection post by Understanding Icons

Affection is one of the most important factors which has an important role in one's life. Lack of affection and attention leads to rejection in life. Everyone at every phase in life needs attention and during childhood and adolescence, a child needs special care as this is the most critical phase of their life. Here comes the most important role of a teacher to be observant, so as to build a connection with every child in the classroom.

This will help them in analysing the students as every child is different. Out of the whole lot, some lack of attention due to some of the other reasons. It may be because they are not getting what they require at this stage of the life-like care, love, empathy, understanding and motivation. This might be due to some personal problems they might be facing back at home which they don't want to share. The teacher can do the hand holding by showing care and attention.

If a child will start feeling insecure they will show it in different forms like anger, fear, demotivation and eventually build a negative approach. This will have cared forward in the long run. They will feel rejected and once they carry the scar they stop accepting anything and finally rejects everything which comes in their life. The teacher can prevent them from going into that state of mind.
So right planning, sensitive mentoring and upbringing can help in strengthening the relationship between the child, parent and teacher. This will inculcate a feeling of acceptance towards life..

- Understanding Icons, The Iconic School Bhopal