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About the same time last year, when I decided to apply for the Fellowship I thought I was completely prepared to face the multiple obstacles that would come my way but it was probably a week into ‘Institute Training’ that I did realize that I was nowhere close to equipped to face the challenges this journey entailed. However, the belief of the staff members and their advice at every stage helped prepare me for what lay ahead. The grueling and rigorous schedule at ‘Institute’ was a trailer for what we had signed up for.
I personally believe that until you actually join the Fellowship and step into your classroom, you underestimate the vital role various stakeholders play in your journey and the importance of building that relationship of mutual respect and trust with them. I may only be at the beginning stages of building that relationship but this amount of time that I have gotten to spend with my students has given me a glimpse into their challenges.
I came into this Fellowship wanting to build a classroom of forty-eight independent leaders who are empathetic, compassionate, conscientious, and courageous enough to stand up for what they believe in. Although I still want to achieve this with my classroom, my first and main goal begins with just providing students access to uninterrupted learning. The four months have opened my eyes to the grave and grim reality of the quality of education you receive is dependent on your socioeconomic background, especially during this time and I would love to continue working towards bridging this widening gap.
Teaching in a ‘First-year Intervention’ third-grade classroom really has its own set of challenges primarily beginning with the older siblings of the students getting preference when it comes to devices, battling against the restriction of instructional hours for primary students as well as being denied any kind of offline teaching at first. This made me push my own boundaries by teaching four classes a day and dividing the students into smaller groups such that they each get a minimum of two hours of instruction. We wanted to try to make sure that the maximum possible students attend class as well as receive the assistance they may need in terms of their learning levels. I was still left with a few students who did not have any device at all so I decided to go to their houses and try making sure they are at pace with their class so when schools start they aren’t completely lost.
I don’t think I would have ever understood the amount of preparation that goes into ‘Blended Learning’ in terms of preparing Asynchronous worksheets, making videos for students to watch at their own convenience, and providing feedback in an efficient manner if it wasn’t for the numerous sessions held by the Teach For India Staff during our training period where they walked us through how previous Fellows had done it. The resources, as well as experiences, shared amongst members of our Learning Circle Groups and the recommendations given by our Program Manager are what encouraged me to try new ideas and prepare for these unprecedented times.
Despite the end of our ‘Institute’ period, we still have multiple sessions held for us where we are introduced to different teaching strategies such as building intrinsic and extrinsic motivation within students, keeping them attentive during class, making sure they are understanding subject matter, and instructions which definitely aids in student progress.
I constantly reflect back to the Leadership In Teaching Strands in order to align my classroom goals with my own learning goals. Over the last few months, I have realized the importance of creating a safe space to listen to the challenges faced by students as well as their families and actually immerse myself into their world in order to build that intrinsic motivation within my students to work towards achieving their goals. I believe that if I would like for my students to be responsible and empathetic, I would need to lead by example and be the same compassionate version of myself who plans her classes in an organized manner such that I can meet my own goals as well as those goals we set with the students.
Being a part of this ever-changing world of teaching and learning has made me aware of the importance of SEL or Socio-Emotional Learning, and its impact on students in terms of resilience and intrinsic motivation. We conducted a session where we taught our third-grade students the English words for ‘happy, sad, angry, and scared' and asked them to draw a situation that has made them feel each of those emotions while labeling their drawing in order to encourage them to write in English. We noticed how students stopped responding to our question of ‘how are you feeling?’ with a ‘happy’ without thinking. They started opening up and saying they were ‘scared’ because they had a bad dream or that they were ‘angry’ because they disliked what they had to eat.
Students were also asked to use a ‘Student Portfolio’ to think about ‘a wish you have for yourself’, ‘a wish you have for everyone around you’ and ‘a wish you have for your country’ over two classes. We began class with extremely surface-level wishes like ‘we want to play right now' and then we began receiving responses that were beyond heartwarming. Some students spoke about their long-term wish to become a doctor, a soldier, a teacher while some just wanted to go back to school and spend time with each other.
Another promising initiative by Fellows from the previous cohorts, ‘Saturday Art Class’ has been introduced in our classrooms where different forms of art are used to educate students about different life skills and values in order to build confident as well as able individuals. We have also tried to introduce several small structures that help build accountability in students while also promoting the spirit of joy in learning such as beginning each class with a dance which not only serves as an energizer but makes students look forward to class, another would be asking students to choose their own group names according to which they attend their classes in a day. After much debate, the groups have finally chosen ‘Hulk, Spider-Man and Batman’ as their names.
There definitely is a whole lot for us to achieve as a classroom and my end goal remains to help each student realize their complete potential. When it comes to investing the stakeholders, our conversations have shifted from ‘aap kaise ho? Main theek hoon’ to being able to speak up about their financial troubles or family issues. This has also helped us understand the needs of each student both within and beyond the classroom and address them to the best of our ability.
We constantly hear that the Fellowship ‘is a marathon and, not a sprint' and sometimes it may be easy to forget that but the entire staff team makes sure to never forget to cheer us on even when we may lose belief in ourselves which definitely helps to keep us going even in the toughest of situations.
Anushka Ketan Shah
Cohort 2021
Mumbai
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