ITS THE "SELFIE " world , IS it ??

Narcissistic...This word is often heard in context to the next generation, And maybe to a certain extent rightly so.But to what extent ,why and how is the social media impacting the Generation next.The topic caught my attention and It intrigued me to dig further .Being a 'Social Animal' ,as we coin Humans to be I thought of various ways in which the social media connected us and I realized every generation sees it's descendants as some sort of narcissists with strange ways of life,with a misplaced value system and skewed world vision.

I am putting together some of my final findings here, before I conclusively draw on my opinions.
Are today's young people morenarcissistic than previousgenerations.was the question that loomed large in my head.

According to new research, young people today are significantly more narcissistic than during the 1980s and 1990s. Are we in the middle of a narcissism epidemic and, if so, who or what is to blame? Lynne Malcolm investigates
Narcissism—an inflated view of the self—permeates our culture. Not only are more people narcissistic, but the culture has tilted toward a narcissistic focus on appearance, money, and fame (reality TV is a spectacular example).
The term narcissism comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, the handsome young man who falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Narcissism is also a concept in psychoanalytic theory introduced by Freud, and it appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry as narcissistic personality disorder.

Professor Jean Twenge from San Diego State University points out that narcissism is distinct from the concept of self-esteem.

‘Somebody high in self-esteem values individual achievement, but they also value their relationships and caring for others,’ she says. ‘Narcissists are missing that piece about valuing, caring and their relationships, so they tend to lack empathy, they have poor relationship skills. That's one of the biggest differences, those communal and caring traits tend to be high in most people with self-esteem but not among those who are high in narcissism.’
So, with the selfies trends on the high,with Instagram and Snap chat all pervasive, with people living on Facebook and it's check- ins,it can be assumed that people are becoming more and more self obsessed.But as I said assumed because as far as i think this talk of the 'Narcissist Epidemic ' may sound new as a coined phrase, it is a phenomenon that exists with every generation.
Secondly ,as we say social media....who created this ? Aren't we more responsible than the tools of social network in creating the Epidemic?With the changing environment shouldn't we think differentl

THE GAP and how we plug it in .....Skills are needed

The schools today all claim that they are imparting the 21st century skills, that we are preparing children for jobs that don't exist ,that we are encouraging them to become life long learners...
But to me these have started sounding very clichéd and run down statements off late .Why ? Because year after year children that churn out of these human factories are absolutely not in touch with their inner selves,they don't care who they hurt with their words ,they don't care what their role in the community is,they seem oblivious of their respective responsibility in the world.
Yes we have community and services programmes, yes we do have action as their CS responsibility ,but a lot of them are engaging themselves through these only so to complete the mandatory hours.The framework of each school's mission and vision is in place but implementation? That's another story ,I am sure.
So what we and our next generation need is a deep look inside ourselves and see how we align ourselves with  the learner profile attributes in our daily lives.
That ,according to me is missing .Those life skills are what the students need today. They know they need to imbibe them,the curriculum caters to the soft skills getting entrenched into the teaching and learning process but to ensure that these are implemented is yet another challenge.
The story ends with all systems in place... Approaches to learning and teaching in place - check.learning profile part of classroom displays- check. Action components in the teachers schemes of work- check.CAS hours in place- check.
Life skills inculcated- check.life skills coordinator on board-check.
All sounding good and speaking of a great success story !
But life doesn't end at " happily ever after" it infact begins .
So while ,our system is all in place all across ...the story is the affairs between the skills and people , the clash between the real and the virtual world, the race against time ,the larger than life expectations, the real BIG world outside and the connections one fails at times or struggles most of the times to establish.
These are real life challenges we throw out at our students in the Real world.It's far away from what he/ she has ever experienced in the class.
We need to empower them with the realisation that the deeper connect with oneself and people around will make us more human, that acceptance of who we are will help us become more resilient instead of complacent . The Mindfulness with which we will connect with our environment  will help us get noticed and put us on the path to success sooner than being moneyed- The King of Bhutan is in news as much as Mr Trump.

We will need to engage students in value education from early life.
We will need to train teachers to all be counsellors in their own right. We will need to see beyond the happy ending of the story....
The story is behind the scenes!

Skills for the Future generation

I was once asked :

1. What skills will students need for the future and why?

2. Will they be mindfulness or technology driven?

3. How will you teach them?

4. How are the skills students will need changing compared to the past?

 According to me..the skills students will need for the future will be soft skills :- of communication, collaboration, research orientation ,investigation, and reflections. As we do need to connect with the work beyond ours.We keep saying the world is be coming a smaller place to live in to that end ...humans need to connect and collaborate.With resources getting used ,overused and abused we will need to reflect on our role in the global community ,how we can positively contribute and look into solutions facing the world collectively.We must agree and adhere to collective measures to peace and coexistence and avoid conflict .

I am hoping and I think it will happen that there will a upward movement towards use of technology. But then at the end of the day one will be mindful of effective use of technology , and not let TECHNOLOGY use us.After,all  with the advancement and progress of the world , one will need to pace up with everyday changes.But care has to taken that  we are mindful of the negative and positive impact of technology ;it will be essential for us to work around technology in an effective way , mindful of how much of  a carbon footprint are we leaving behind.Skills will be taught through the curriculum injecting activities that would lead to a holistic approach to both the content and life skills enhancement in teaching and learning practices. By injecting the action Component in the teachers planning and guiding .
By creating Modules to share with the students as activities during the form group lessons.

Where I teach ,at Pathways school have a weekly lesson with our form groups where in we discuss ethics ,values, social issues with our children and this is right from grade 1-12.We also make it a point to start the day with a 5-8 minutes routine activities on Mindfulness with our students.

The different challenges faced by the students then and now are significantly different. The stiff competition, opening up of new horizons,the global connection, the rapidly changing phases of technology, the levels of engagement of human resources in jobs and cropping up of certain jobs which don't exist now - are all the signs of "CHANGE" and thus we need to prepare our students to be adapting to the various changes.They must be trained to be caring thinkers who will constantly inquire about the right and wrong of the society so that they are principled and balanced decision makers with an open mindedness and risk taking ability to accept people from all walks of life and all countries -being part of the global community and reflect effectively on their role in the scheme of things as they will be from time to time subjected to different situations, so that they communicate all their learning and understanding in a knowledgeable manner.

How I route the roots

Teaching and learning.living and learning.Developing thought and learning.organising and learning,Taking risks,Thinking but learning all along.I believe in keeping one's learning process an ongoing on because life teaches the best lessons provided we wait,watch listen and learn. The world is full of complexities and some where down the line we have successfully developed a skewed vision of those oddities and we refuse to change,which upsets my thought process.I need to evolve,to move on and be progressively proactive in the life processes.I seek my answers from all ...Being a teacher of Social Sciences I feel I am connected to my roots and yet aligned to the big global sea...One planet the  Earth,one family mankind.

Teacher role in the world of Technology Integration

Are so many questions OK??

The discussions these are all  focused on using teacher resource to the best potential possible and help them craft the curriculum in a manner that it becomes child centred and using our traditional legacies as sources of learning.In words of Prof Yashpal, the child will not learn only because he has to, but because the  thirst for knowledge is ignited.and that the  teacher ,therefore needs to be educated and aware of her role in transacting such a curriculum.

The need of the hour is that a students’ Flight of fancy be fanned with academic rigour and for that school heads have to  think differently and democratically .

All in all, the days are  spent introspecting  with self provoking thoughts which should take us  beyond  our confined mindsets and help break our mental

boundaries . if i am doing that i am doing justice to my profession ,is what the general belief is these days .For schools in the race ,  thinking democratically and differently , conduct of workshops to  reinforce those ideologies has become the call of the day, it is often said that this is how schools respond to the present-time demands  .

So, not only is the workplace supposed to be  an enriching and a learning area  for an educator but it is also a personal space for a re-look. we need to constantly evolve our methodologies and strategies to come up with the dictates of present day stressful lives that the students is exposed to . all I hear these days is  learner profiles , challenging norms and set patterns and value systems and making changes and linkages with the child's life , teaching children the rights from all the wrongs, preparing them for jobs that don't even exist ...... but what about the baggage the teacher carries with herself ? what about her learning style and curves ? who ever taught her to teach the present generation. why is her in capability or inability to tune with the changing trends not accepted as it were ???  

Parenting and what I learnt ....

Parenting - a word loaded ... A word with many many leads ......A world full of unanswered questions!And Adolescence, a phase of life beginning in biology and ending in society where person's most biological, cognitive, psychological, and social characteristics are changing from what is typically considered child-like to what is considered adult-like.  And never the twain shall meet ??? or they do, they Can !! It was with this positive thought in mind and a challenge at hand that we decided at the Middle school level to organize a parenting workshop for on Saturday April 11^th, 2015. The workshop was intended to operate as per a structure with a focus on – 

•   Parents getting in touch with their years of adolescence to connect to their own world of anxieties, fears and questions

•   To acquaint the parents with the 6 domains of Child development which an adolescent goes through.

•   To share an action plan for building a connect and a strong relationship with their adolescents.

•    To address parental concerns and queries So Parwarish,an Institute Parenting was brought to make a difference in the area of this nature. The dictionary meaning of parenting means ‘the upbringing and care of a child’. Thus, parenting is the work of not just the parents but also of the teachers. Parwarish ,established in 2008, focuses on bringing education and science in the area of parenting through specially designed workshops that cater to the requirements of parents and teachers of children from all age groups.It is always aimed to bring about a paradigm shift in the way we look at establishing connections with our children and students with the changing times only the complexity of the issues changes but the basic issues remain same. So what is required? 

Through the two and a half hours workshop we were empowered as teachers and parents to find our own solutions to everyday issues and work towards creating a stimulating environment for the children. For the adolescent, this period is a dramatic challenge, one requiring adjustment to changes in the self, in the family, and in the peer group. In contemporary society, adolescents experience institutional changes as well. Among young adolescents, there is a change in school setting, typically involving a transition from elementary school to either junior high school or middle school; Understandably, then, for both adolescents and their parents, adolescence is a time of excitement and of anxiety; of happiness and of troubles; of discovery and of bewilderment; and of breaks with the past and yet of links with the future.But I felt confident that each one of us sitting through the workshop that Saturday morning were very focused on bringing about the changes in ourselves, because Sushant Karla our workshop leader and company head made it very clear “the workshop was about us and not the children, we are here to make a difference in ourselves not in the children.”  

The journey into our childhood and the connections we then established with the childhood or teenage years of our children made us realize where we could BE THE CHANGE and not ‘be’ our PARENTS. The process of metamorphosis made many of us think of our role in that process; it was rightly pointed out by a parent that our role as adults in Chrysalis of "Meaningful Transformations" of our young ones is Just that of the support..

The Stick. “Just A stick “one would think, but if you see the actual role of the stick ... it is THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE ... so it really depended on us whether we wanted to be that stick providing support all along or have the “ Butterfly “ deformed with our constant interventions! I was forced to think again ...It was not going to be easy, but I am sure it would be well worth it for all us teachers and parents to step back and watch ....just be there in case our children needed us ...they should be able to look back and feel our presence, and not always “have” us around .All in all, the entire workshop was an enlightening experience, one that I will value and share most fondly. One that taught me not only how to be a better teacher but look within the Parent Me. An experience that made me see what everyone was going through and the children would probably be  confronted with through their personal “Roller coasters”. A life learning ,and a consolation that I am not alone that we all our in it together . I am feeling “empowered”.

MY INSIDES .....TWISTING AND SHOUTING

While going through the many links I  read through much MORE  than my mind could handle , I needed a break I needed human company ..but at this unearthly  hour ? Who would i find to connect  with ,and where .
After aimlessly browsing through sites and finding no human to connect with I WAS ABOUT TO SWITCH OFF MY TECHNO WORLD , when i saw the white birdie glow with a little red notification .... And yes ! there it was the sign  I was waiting for , the human link i so desperately was seeking .  I checked the " While you were Away " I checked the "New Tweets ". and yes  it was there ...the # chat that would give me a  new lease of life .
It was an education network group  and what I learnt from there were few things about myself :
 My opinions counted , they weren't as irrelevant as I always thought they would be , they were heard and read and retweeted and favourited .Oh what a blissful world ....I  had got accepted and I  was being followed.

and now my tweets are 840 and i believe in my opinions I feel instantly gratified when I am "followed and liked".this is the case with most youngsters seeking their existence and meaning of the same in the  virtual world today . IS THIS WHAT WE WANT OUR CHILDREN TO INHERIT FROM US ??? Not disregarding the importance of the virtual world and its magic like connections and networking , but why are we becoming victims of the powers of the Digital onslaught .One part of me  the parent creams and shouts and rebels against this exposure , but the 'rational  teacher side' of me encourages the usage of technology , integrating it into our lessons , coming out with novel and innovative ideas of digitalizing learning .ill keep coming back to this endless debate and ill make my insides respond maybe a pitless hole this one but i intent getting to the bottom of this and prove a point ..... wonder what that is !