The day I got Featured....

Appended above all images of my work which featured in the IB world magazine. The whole idea of seeing your name published in a magazine of that acclaim is something that give me a sudden rush of excitement and sense of ownership.

https://issuu.com/internationalbaccalaureate/docs/sept_en_2016

And then again in the UKed magazine...I realised I wanted to write , I could share and express .Then started my baby steps...and I am now learning to balance it out ...

https://indd.adobe.com/view/850d622a-91c4-4fd1-9b6c-668c71fb4050

How do I let go.... struggle of a mother

How is the world from up there ? I'll ask you my dear once you take your wings and fly off ...fly off to unknown skies , fly off to unknown zones and reach unknown destinations.For now be content in my fold , 'happy to be with mamma' as I hold you to my heart ,close to me my dearest ...

Why are you in a hurry to grow so soon,fly off from the nest ..when did you learn to see the world so differently , when did you grow beyond my lap ? I wonder ?

Mothers universally are a hyper breed not willing to relinquish the hold ..yet fly the fledglings must and we feel a part of us fly off with them .Our dreams must never clash with theirs , they must have the freedom to choose not only their sky but also their strategy to manoeuvre those skies.The more we hold them down the more rebellious will be there flight and then there is a threat of us loosing sight and connect.

As a Teacher to teenage children past 25 years , I have come to conclude that parenting contrary to belief cannot be a bit and try ..it has to be evolving and adaptive,supportive and guiding.we must realise our journey is set we have chosen our path , moving ahead we need to let our children charter their course and dwell in the future they plan to create.For most parents letting go becomes the most impossible thing to do.Relax Mom ...I'll take you with me whispers my daughter gently in my ears as she reads my thoughts...

"You are my inspiration Mumma and I can never fly with out you" says my imp of 13 years ...So for now I rest assured...but just For now ... !!!!

My approach to teaching and learning

I believe that teaching is a process which involves the learning of both the teacher and the students. I enjoy working with children when they are full of questions and at times I am ok with saying "I don't know let's look for the answer"

Any research based ,inquiry based project runs very well for me. I enjoy leading the children through the process of developing a research question. It's always interesting to hear so much that goes on in in the mind of these inquisitive learners. Last year my grade 8  was working on impact of government systems on individual and Socities . Students took up the case studies of India and Pakistan,
 some of them worked on Arab Israeli conflict, and yet another group picked up the Berlin Wall and its impact on the population. Through the orientation and space time and place it should understood that human beings to get impacted in the same manner wherever ,whenever. It was interesting to see how to learn to co ownership to the learning interacted with writers authors newspaper men; making presentations to each other, talking to the parents about with their grandparents getting us oral histories, we even  had Skype interactions with the schools in  Pakistan to understand how the thinking developed in both the countries over time. Our topic covered issues such as marginalisation, migration, division and inclusion,Othering; All in all moving into certain uncharted territory for the children. Most of it was guided inquiry, but some of it we can see children taking it off in a different direction- they were very excited about such live examples that they could relate to; it was further more interesting to see them contribute ongoing class blog  open the parents too and they also commented on the children's thoughts and inputs.
Along the way I asked children to think about any Research question that they would like to work on and it was so exciting to see at each and every child came up with their own Research question ,formulated the question that they wanted to work on and they looked at the action plan that they would go to answer the question and they followed the whole process through. Through this activity were developed so many skills that were needed for my subject the general awareness was created about not only what happened in the past but also how that impacted ask in present times. We also took them for a field trip to one of the border areas of India and Pakistan children saw the exchange between the two border zones and came to know that the events of the past have been exaggerated at times ,interpreted in different ways and that partition of India and Pakistan was as painful for them as it was for our side of the world. As a teacher I learnt that the child is not the only learner. We all are learners in the process of life, the parents needed to learn what to tell the child and not colour their opinion, the teacher need to learn how to guide and mentor the child ,the politicians need to learn how not to use events of the past to suit their needs, the media person needed to learn how not to sensationalize any event. so,to be principled and open minded people of the world there wasn't too much that we would need to do.
https://blog.seesaw.me/grade8c

I realised this style of teaching not only aided me in letting the children explore in different directions but also give me a direction by the end of it. It was a total win win situation and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

https://blog.seesaw.me/grade8

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.