Workshop to rejuvenate teachers

"wild " into the classroom!

October is a very tricky month for any environmental activities in the schools of Mysore region because of the State celebration of Dasara festivities.  The celebration of Wildlife week also gets morphed off by so many events during that fortnight. The school’s students would be drawn into Dasara sports or some other cultural activities and every institution would be busy in the selection processes at the taluk, district and state levels. Beyond these issues one have to find time amidst the mid-term exams and holidays.

Checking upon plant diversity of the campus

However, the management of Deepa Education and Service Trust managed to snatch three days for its teachers just before the Dasara vacation. A workshop that would refresh, invigorate and capacitate teachers was wished by the school and Hasiru Hejje team planed one with suitable resource persons. Mr. Subba Rao, the Secretary of the society lighted the traditional lamp to inaugurate the workshop. Mr. Manu who coordinated the workshop spoke on the occasion and promised to keep the three days cheerful and activity filled and thought provoking. He insisted that the school should start a Nature Club and keep it active through need based activities.  

Theatre workshop in progress

The three days were filled with a lot of hands on activities, energizers that the teachers could adapt into their class rooms. Ms. Geetha H spoke about the need for activity based learning on the first day and the benefits of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system. The teachers of the state board school took some patient revelation by the speaker to get these newer child friendly ideas. A teacher who taught fourth grade was persistently putting forward her methods of imposition writing and mugging up the tables. She was taught several games to teach tables rather than make the children write a lesson a dozen times. Mr. Ravi C explained, the children, in order to finish the task would simply restore to writing incomplete sentences in columns instead of writing a complete sentence. Their prime agenda would be to fill up the page and get away to play.

Teachers exercise to know their plants

The second day was dedicated for the development of creative abilities of the teachers. Paper and card sheets were used to make masks and models which could be used as teaching tools. Srinivasa S J used paper elephant to demonstrate the group behavior of an elephant herd. Jeevan Kumar, a well-known director in child theatre put the teachers in a lot of exercises pertaining to Body language and sense of rhythm. Being through the Swedish project for Children’s Theatre at Rangayana he had a lot in store for the class. Through games he made them open up with expressions and feel the ease in communication. The teachers felt the need of such activities for longer duration so that they could successfully adopt learning into class room teaching.   

A mask for the class

Mr. Manu in his sessions stressed upon why environment education is important to mankind and how mere considering it for class room teaching will not benefit the society. He mentioned the wrong model of western civilization is creating a consumerist world and developing countries are trying to ape the west. The development and economic growth of the western countries stands upon the siphoned resources from their colonial countries for over three centuries. And we couldn’t attain those standards as we don’t have that cheap labor and resources across our borders. As a result we are ruthlessly exploiting our own resources and people. In the valedictory session, the Scientist in-charge, Mr. B S Yogendra quoted the experiment of Pavlov about conditioning reflexes and enable learning. What is learnt could also be un-learned by removing the stimulating action.  With a pun he requested the teachers not to lose their enthusiasm they have gathered during the past three days. He insisted that the school should make use of the resources at the museum and enrich the young minds in their formative days.

Mr. Yogendra addressing 

Valedictory