Post Workshop Pondering

Looking for a quarry of ants

There has been a lot of coverage in the news about the two workshops we conducted over the past two weeks. And writing about the same thing in the blog would look like self boaster. However, all the dozen newspaper reports are just about the inaugural function and wholly contain the statements made by the chief guests. The prologue of the workshop or the stuff it delivered to the participants were not mentioned anywhere. Without these matters getting across to the public and the target audience the Workshops become meaningless and self defeating.  We felt that there should have been a mention of at least the follow up activities that are planned as part of this year long programs.

Participants indulged in Specimen collection

Both the workshops were aimed at enhancing the capacity of the Life Science Teachers.  We believe the teachers would be able to inspire the students much better with a practical hand-on method of teaching rather than the conventional rote method. The content of the workshop included a lot of activities to be done within the classroom as well as the out doors. Every resource person endorsed the same irrespective of their topics.

 Dr. Prasanna of the Azeem Premji Foundation who spoke about the power of the outdoors advised ‘you just give a small toy lens to the child and show him the way to look through it; it becomes a microscope or a telescope in the child’s hands, one day’.

Some basic lessons under the fig tree

 Dr. Soumya Kumar, who spoke on the varying interactive modes out rightly belittles the strength of verbal mode of teaching and defends the power of hands on experiences. He holds to the fact that the single most important challenge before the teacher is to make learning a participatory exercise. The concept of participation in most cases bypasses the role of the teacher because of the mental blocks we have as teachers. A teacher is also a participant and should be a collaborator instead of an authoritarian. Adding pun he calls such a mind set as that of a "dictator" (one who just dictates notes). Beyond that a whole set of negative factors such as the size of the class, location of the school and a number of bureaucratic set ups puts our education system not only malfunctioning but absolutely non-functional in this regard. However he did not leave the session with a depressing note. He brought in the concept of the eighth intelligence and mentioned eminent personalities like Galileo, Newton, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, and Jane Goodall as the personalities who possessed it. He stressed the need to nurture such traits among

Mrs. Mujeeba interprets the Western Ghats for participants

st the younger generations.

Celebration of Vanamahotsava during the Workshop

Smt. Geetha suggested a number of classroom activities as well as the ones to be done in the outdoors. She endorsed the newness of the CCE method in her session titled ‘Out door Activities for Life Science Teaching’. The participants were introduced to numerous activities that come handy in teaching Life sciences….those that could be suggested for individuals, groups or that could be taken into a mode of a game involving the entire class.

Of course Smt. Champa Jaiprakash, clinical psychologist who spoke about the Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder also mentioned the remedial measure Nature can bestow upon the normal and children with special needs. S J Srinivasa and Mujeeba Khanum proudly took the participants round the museum galleries and explained the way teachers could make use of the galleries as an extension of their class room teaching. The Nature walk and the theater component introduced in the workshop were a hit in itself because of their participatory Nature. Thanks to Dr. Roy, the Nature walk had made the participants realize that they had learnt more in a matter of hours than in all the three years of their stay in the degree course. Probably it was the clarity that they achieved about things they had already heard about, that got them so impressed.

Theater person Jeevan Kumar exposed the participants to the basics of theater exercises and tried to throw light upon subjects like body language, expression, intonation and the kind of etiquettes that the teachers would find it very essential for their profession. In case of the second workshop it was the would-be teachers and they couldn’t simply say good bye after the valedictory function on the evening of  Saturday, the 11^th on the lawns of the Museum.

Conclusion of a successful workshop- the begging of  a Follow up.....

As part of the program it is now our turn to get back to the colleges who had sent in their students for the workshop. The response for our invitation for the B.Ed College was thin. Of course it was a bit of a wrong time for them as they were all in their practice Teaching sessions.  But we had a Saturday and Sunday; that is something too precious to be lost-especially for the salaried class of this country.

Participants of Trainee teachers' workshop