“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela.
Professional development refers to the training, certification, and education that a teacher needs to succeed in her career. It’s no secret that different subjects require teachers to have different skills. Even if a teacher currently has the necessary skills, he or she may need additional skills in the future. Through professional development, teachers can learn these skills to become better, more efficient workers and this has been the focus at the Ekya Schools.
As a teacher at Ekya for the past three years, I have grown wiser and more knowledgeable in terms of my awareness of students, their emotional and social needs, supporting adolescent learners, and how to nurture a language of caring. The hours of PD that I have been a part of have been very enriching and have supported me in structuring learning experiences that challenge the students and harbour a quest for mastery.
The sessions gave me clarity on how to plan my time better and stay organised. This made me more efficient and gave me extra time to focus not on paperwork but on students. I learnt to work with students with various learning needs and was able to accommodate a variety of learning styles in my classes. The SEE learning sessions and the activities facilitated by our team of counsellors were an eye-opening experience and taught me how to perceive the classroom situation and be an architect cum leader there instead of a manager and dominator.
It has been quite a pleasant experience and this journey of learning has been enlightening in more ways than one. I am grateful for the opportunity given and look forward to many more such enhancing experiences here at Ekya
“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.” Nelson Mandela
Today’s young generation is the future of tomorrow’s world. Sports can calm your mind, heal your heart and make you a strong person. Sports are played both inside and outside. Cycling, basketball, and tennis are a few outdoor sports. Badminton is an indoor sport. Some sports aren’t really something where you actually do physical exercises. Instead, these sports require critical thinking, as well as physical and mental well-being, which comes naturally when we involve ourselves in sports activities. Sports help in improving our overall personality and make us more active and attentive.
Sports can make you strong, and playing sports can also improve blood circulation. Muscles need more oxygen than they do when we’re at rest, so we have to breathe more quickly. Our heart starts to pump harder and faster to circulate blood to deliver oxygen to our muscles when we’re exercising. Subsequently, blood pressure rises and improves. Apart from the above, playing sports can make you active and happy. When our body is active and is exercising, it produces a hormone called endorphin, which throws us into a good mood. Playing sports is great for our morale!
Did you know that playing sports can improve your patience? Yes, patience is a very important factor in sports. Professional Golfer Gary Player once said, “Patience, practiced correctly, is a powerful mental tool that unlocks so many other positives and that will also give you the kind of perspective others may lack under pressure.” Every sports person must have the patience to complete practice and start the game.
Stress can also cease by playing sports. Exercise causes your body to release endorphins, the chemicals in your brain that vanquish pain and stress. It also reduces the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and studies have shown that 20 to 30 minutes of exercise each day can make students feel calmer. Teamwork can also be grasped by playing sports and can help give students stronger communication skills and teach them to work better with others.
Sport has great importance in building personality, too. For some people, it is not only the body movement or playing strategy, but it’s a life philosophy. Sports develop teamwork and team spirit, which in today's world is very important. But many look at the sport as a waste of time due to current changes, which is wrong. So, in the end, I would like to encourage each one of you to choose a sport of your choice and participate in it while encouraging others to do so as well.
Over the past two years, the world has been hit by a raging pandemic which has stalled the daily routine of humans and more importantly, students. The fact that attending school is no longer a necessity, was almost etched in the minds of everyone. So, to keep the ball rolling in accordance with the existing conditions, the entire schooling had to be converted to an online state, where all academic ventures had to be conducted virtually without any physical communication. With the inception of online methods of teaching as the pandemic continued, both teachers and students had to undergo major behavioural changes to adapt to the new system. However, simply organising get-togethers virtually was not enough to sustain an offline-like education system. The advent and integration of multiple applications and virtual tools played a very crucial role in keeping the boat afloat. We realised that these applications could be put to various uses to simulate offline classes on an electronic device. I start with an example of an application like Google Expeditions. This is an application that uses augmented reality to define various concepts and ideas in different disciplines. It helps create 3-dimensional diagrams of any object that would, otherwise, have been accessible very easily in an offline state. For example, in Biology, we study the structure of a cell. On paper, it takes intuition to visualise the structure of the cell with different organelles. However, with online tools, it is also possible to create mental images of the cell, exactly as it exists. This application is not just limited to Biology. Other disciplines like Chemistry and Geography can be taught using this application, as it becomes very intuitive for the students to remember concepts and ideas, once they have seen chemical structures and geographical landforms, respectively, in a 3-dimensional shape. Thus, across disciplines, such applications proved to be very effective in translating a real-world example into a virtual form. Similar user-friendly applications like this have been used to create an online, intellectual environment conducive to understanding the theoretical aspects of any subject.
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