Siddharth Rajgarhia is the chief learner and Director at Delhi Public School, Nashik, Varanasi and Lava Nagpur. He holds a certificate in school leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. An engineer at heart he is always looking to find creative solutions to make the world a better place to live in. He has been selected as one of the few most impactful school leaders 2022 by Indian principals Network.
Recruiting high quality teachers, providing professional development and retaining this trained pool of teachers is a huge challenge. In the past few years we made a gradual shift from rote learning towards more engaging active learning classrooms. Many parents in India place high emphasis on academic performance, leading to a focus on grades rather than learning. This can create a stressful environment for students and put pressure on teachers to prioritize exam scores over holistic education. As a progressive school leader, I have found that it’s really important to balance and take the entire ecosystem on this change journey which involves carefully planning for each and every stakeholder and backward designing this process for them. The emphasis is on holistic education by incorporating life skills, creativity, and critical thinking into the curriculum. Maintaining the right balance between content and character in the curriculum and looking to ensure the 3 R’s of education-Relevance, Relationships and Rigour constantly guides us in our work. A great deal of importance is given to teachers’ training. We are constantly looking to research the latest pedagogical approaches available today. Most of our teachers also carry out action research in their classrooms. We have realized that more than running these educational institutes our role is to build India of tomorrow. Self-directed and personalized learning caters to individual needs and interests of students. This could involve using technology to provide differentiated instruction or implementing project based learning and backward designing.
Students need to understand how they learn and that will help them embark on the journey of a lifetime. A lot of focus is on helping children set their own goals and help them reflect on their journeys and personal patterns through the questions that we constantly ask. We are constantly using the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 document to bring about these changes. We involve and inform the parents in this journey called education for the 21st century.
Students need to understand how they learn and that will help them embark on the journey of a lifetime
