Maya Sukumaran, Principal, Gitanjali Senior School, Hyderabad
A teacher affects eternity. He or she can never tell where his or her influence stops.
As we are progressing into the 21st century, I believe leaders should be those who transform vision into reality. In order to lead people, we need to walk beside them.
The introduction of ISC Curriculum in the year 2004 brought in more challenges. One of the key changes mentioned in NEP 2020 is the restructuring of school curriculum and pedagogy in a new 5+3+3+4 design to optimize learning based on the cognitive development of children. It has only been a couple of years since people became aware of the importance of exposure of students to Industry or Corporates.
The moment we introduced the ISC curriculum in school, we decided to emphasize on internship programs for classes 11 & 12 students. We had a vision for students to be equipped with requisite skills as early as in 2006, which was unheard of at that time. Since then, we have been sending students to corporate and social internship programs for close to 2 decades now. Even during the pandemic, our students have gone for online internship programs.
The World is changing – so there is a need to change our mode of teaching. In 2015, I felt that there was a need to prepare students for the unknown, the unseen and the unpredictable. I also felt the need for students to be problem solvers, decision-makers and enablers. We introduced Entrepreneurship Club and the EMF (Economics, Management and Finance) Club in school.
Skill-based learning is the need of the future to build Entrepreneurial skills to build creativity, venture management and scaling. We also have a robust Career Counselling Wing, which takes care of sensitizing the students towards various career options and making them future-ready.
A decade ago, I became a Google Educator and took an initiative to train all our teachers in the Computational Thinking Certificate Program. It was a vision that turned into reality. At the same time, we introduced STEM Education and integrated it with the Curriculum. Hence, we started the journey of using Technology in teaching to facilitate learning and help students build essential 21st Century skills.
Due to their acquired skill in technology, our teachers were able to make a seamless transition from offline to online teaching during the onset of the pandemic. The teaching technology is focused on thinking skills and analytical skills. Flipped classes are the norm we use in teaching. We believe that design thinking is the way of thinking, working, questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions, questioning the implications and reframing the problem in human-centric ways – creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions and in adopting a hands-on approach.
This academic year, I ensured that every teacher in my school is a Certified Coder and will use Coding in their respective subjects. The success of my leadership role was when my teachers could leverage technology to achieve new levels of productivity, implement useful digital tools to expand learning opportunities for students and increase student support and engagement. The parents of our students appreciated the efforts of the teachers and school management during the pandemic for providing high-quality offline education. The icing on the cake was the recognition for imparting best online curricular and extra-curricular activities by various organizations like The Times of India, Education Today Magazine, and many more.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves only equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. As an Educator, with decades of experience, I want high professional standards for my teachers and emphasize on the happiness quotient of all the teachers and support staff and that is the success of any Leader. This success would not have been possible without the support of the management.
I strongly believe in the laws of the environment – If you are a leader, do everything you can to grow yourself and create the right environment for others to grow.
