Energising Professional Development for Block & District Mentors

Enabling the learning environment at home took centrestage, when schools got closed indefinitely due to Covid-19. To facilitate this, Punjab has been leading Virtual Parent Teachers Meetings (V-PTMs) every quarter. It has resulted in improved trust of the community in public schooling, better teacher-parent relationships and even, higher enrolment. Here is the report.

Last month, the state leadership brought its focus back on developing the capacity of the instructional leaders so that they can strengthen and stimulate the teacher - child interactions. A clear need has emerged to support teachers in continuously improving the teaching-learning process under these new circumstances and especially, in the face of learning loss. Thus the Energized Professional Development Program in Punjab was conceptualised.

The first cadre of these instructional leaders are experiencing and learning about facilitation and creating participatory spaces. From co-creating learning courses for teachers to conceptualising the TOP (Teachers Orientation Program), our instructional leaders are feeling confident to reach out to teachers over the next 3 months leveraging DIKSHA. Do reach out to us to know more.

We often face situations where our ability to sense in run-time helps us to understand and act on problems quickly and more effectively. Similarly, at a community level, for example, meaningful information about weight and micronutrient status can help the individuals to sense malnourishment of children in their community. When information is available in a contextual and understandable manner, the ability to sense and understand the problems dramatically improves.

When we address a societal challenge at scale, the ability of individuals and institutions to sense and respond to local realities becomes all the more critical, so that the impact created is contextual, shared and sustainable. Thus, it becomes important to share the ability to sense and solve with local actors, to enable local action and thereby accelerate the social impact. But, how can we invoke the ability to see and solve? The Societal Platform team expands on the idea.

We are happy to announce our partnership with the Department of School Education, Puducherry to drive systemic improvement across all schools in the Union Territory. This initiative is a collective effort by Vidhya Vidhai, Mantra4Change and Shikshalokam in collaboration with the Department.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is the focus of discussions across the country. It is a significant milestone in India’s journey to educational reforms. However, with any forward-looking policy, the biggest concern is always around effective implementation. Hence the time is ripe for the education ecosystem to come together and prepare for effective implementation. To catalyse this process of coming together, ideating and solving, ShikshaLokam conceptualised and curated a unique experience called ‘The Unbundle Series’ - a 5-part series.

In past months, we covered the aspects of Early Childhood Care and Education and Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN). November 2020 is dedicated to discussing Teachers as leaders, their motivation and agency. Let's come together to drive constructive solution-driven conversations in collaboration with domain experts and CSOs.