A week of updates and community
I am grateful to all of you readers, subscribers for reading, engaging, responding and making this a part of my week I really look forward to.
On the 27th of November, I placed a small call to action at the end of the newsletter sparked by a conversation with Dhanush:
If you have ideas on a school re-opening curriculum drop me a mail..
And today I want to highlight two beautiful responses I got for this. The first was from Mohammad Jafar at Avsara Academy
He listed down 8 crucial areas of a school we must think about when we re-open.
1. Washrooms.
2. Infrastructure to safeguard any physical harm. Accommodating the physical abilities of learners.
3. Water and food.
4. Safe and thoughtful adults, counseling support for socio-psychological impacts.
5. Space of expression without judgment.
6. Identity formation with exposures to thought processes of subjects, adults, peers, and self-reflection. Especially for teenagers.
7. To learn extracurriculars, especially to those who can't afford it out of school.
8. Learn expressions, languages, and communications of diverse contexts.
Jafar then goes on to list three key action points that I strongly resonated with
How shall we move ahead?
1. There will be a need for more and more sharing among peers and adults, compassionately and in a non-judging way, the need for professionals to deal with severe student problems ( many would have seen bad times in highly pressurizing times).
2. As you said, academics must not be a priority, as the basic requirement for good learning are: a good learning physical state, mindset, trust, sense of safety, and mental peace. So they must be engaged in lighter experiences without any fear of losing out among others in the learning so that they are warmed up for learning.
3. Tests must be postponed and retrieval practice of basics must start in content areas.
I am willing to work and think more on these lines if any such opportunities are forming with interested people.
For this to truly embody a community, I encourage you to reach out to Jafar if you feel you can work on this challenge and co-create something with him.
For the same question, another reader Kalpesh Mange who leads program and curriculum at Playtos had some amazing suggestions
If I were doing this my way, I would encourage people in my school to use the custom-new-2020-3-C's:
Courage, Compassion and Curiosity.
Twice each week, teachers can set up structures that talk about the pandemic and its effects in the context of the 3Cs and how we can make each other's lives easier through understanding and implementing these in our daily lives.
Example of a Math class:
SWBAT compare and contrast between prime numbers and composite numbers
In Group Practise(GP), the teacher can use datasets from COVID cases in the city. {Courage, Compassion}
In Independent Practise(IP), the teacher can use datasets about the number of organisations/people that popped up for help during the crisis for that locality. {All Cs}
In Post work, the students can measure the dimensions of the masks in their homes and do an exercise. {Curiosity}
The other class is a purely biology-sociology class talking about specific effects of the pandemic on the body and socio-economy.
I hope to make the gist clear between the two classes between separate and still addressing the issue, but not overtly overshadowing the content that teachers still want to do in the class, if this were not post pandemic.
His suggestions were actionable and focussed on expanding on the 3Cs a beautiful way to make meaning of life in times of a pandemic.
On the 20th of November I wrote a piece on The incomplete truth about “The Growth Mindset”.
This resonated with many readers and a comment from one of our readers Sowmya Swaminathan reflects on her own experience with learning something
I have been engaged in/with writing for a long time, and I hit a roadblock a few years ago. After immense internal struggles that felt never-ending, I chanced upon a supportive community where I could get back to writing in a way that felt psychologically safe and joyful. I also sought out opportunities to learn storytelling/writing techniques to sharpen my skills and craft.
When I look back, I can see that my journey was built around the foundations of the themes in your 7 guiding questions - growth mindset (believing that I can become a better writer), belonging (a supportive community), purpose and relevance (my lifelong passion and fierce commitment to writing stories), finding mentors who are accomplished writers (teaching, coaches), etc. [I'm still working on the last 2 guiding questions] :)
Thank you Sowmya for sharing and I look forward to your continued engagement and feedback.
There are many examples like this and so many people who have motivated me everyday to post and share with so much amazing feedback. Thank you all.
I also want to acknowledge and thank the many lovely Guest authors we’ve had namely - Smriti, Sannidhi, Plub, Quinn, Sarayu, Jayanti, Aishwarya, Shashank, Nagarajan, Abhijith, Pooja & Sofya. Thank you for some amazing posts that went deep into the ideas of playful learning and more. I am so so grateful.
There are many of you reading this newsletter, I would love to know who you are, what you’re inspired by and why you do what you do. I don’t want to get to know you in a google form. Write to me, I love long e-mails and I love stories. I want to get to know you better and help build this newsletter into a playful, learning community.
In other news, Upepo is shaping up into a beautiful playful, social learning platform for children and we’re working tirelessly on our content, our technology and on giving kids an unforgettable learning experience. Stay tuned for more updates!
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Prasanth