Engaging Educators on Environment
The program builds the capacity of educators to understand and practice responsible citizenship, which then helps them inspire their students to follow the path of social and environmental sensitivity and action. Therefore, the process of change results in positive direct engagement of teachers and positive indirect impact on students. Fundamentally our approach and methodology aims at enabling the participants learning through- • Experience • Exposure • Experiment. Our training strategies are aimed at making learning highly interactive, energetic as well reflective and self-evaluative. While we have a broad outline on the content, method and approach of our training module, we believe in making the process participatory. Inputs and suggestions of the participants has been solicited for agenda setting so that we are able to satisfy each individual's specific needs and expectations. The training programmes have also been customised to suit the learning needs of the school and teachers. Its a mix of interactive tools in the classroom and field visits based on the design and duration of the module.
Educator's workshops actively engaged teachers on issues of social and environ- mental development. These workshops are crucial to imbibe a culture of positive engagement in the pedagogy of education at the institution. This was designed for both English and Hindi medium schools and saw the participation of teachers across all levels. The workshops also helped build the capacity of participating educators, to understand and practice responsible citizenship, which then further helped them inspire their students to follow the path of social and environmental sensitivity and action. These workshops gave immense focus to the following themes : 1.Leadership and Team-building: Leadership is an aspect that is rarely associated with the profession of teaching. However to develop able leadership among those we teach we must lead from the front. Equally important is the aspect of team-building. Are we isolated, cynical and complaining or are we able to work along with others and contribute constructively to a process? Are we able to collaborate with people and work cooperatively with them? 2. Interpersonal interactions: The training helped participants to understand what aids and what hinders their interactions within the classroom and outside. 3. Creativity: How much creativity do we bring to our teaching? Does our teaching encourage students to develop and use their own creativity? How innovative is our teaching method? In pursuing a routine curriculum have we stunted our creativity? What are the benefits of creative teaching methods? How much of the concerns of the globalised world that we live in are we able to introduce into our discussions our teachings? The program addressed some of these key questions and enabled individual participants to find methods and ways of enhancing their creative potential. 4. Value-based education. Are we just imparting knowledge/information or are we able to raise socially and ecologically responsible citizens? Is our education process equipping students with required life skills? Is our education system enabling a student to develop his or her • Optimum potential • Social responsibility • Self-awareness • Social-awareness • Environmental responsibility Our training program aimed to introduce pedagogic methods that enabled teachers to integrate value-based educational ideologies into mainstream curriculum. 5. Communication: Communication is fundamental to the teaching process. Our programme looked at creative and innovative methods and skills of communication. It also looked at how communication can enable a classroom culture where learning is joyful, sensitive and enables optimum intellectual growth of an individual. 6. Innovative Methods of Teaching: Innovative teaching methods are indispensable to the process of enabling value-based education. It is important that, that irrespective of the subject matter, our teaching method should enable a child to develop and hone their learning, creativity, free thinking. It should make them confident and self-sufficient. Teaching methods need to be thought-provoking, interactive and needs to call upon a student's ingenuity. More focus was given to 'how we can learn' rather than 'what do we learn', during these trainings.
