Education is not a very monetarily rewarding field any where in the world. And in our country it is a profession mostly entered into by women, as a job compatible with their commitments to family life. With very few teacher training institutions, and consequently very few trained teachers, training of teachers, once they have entered the educational sector, becomes of ultimate importance.
I finished my professional education with a degree in Design. But like a lot of others, found myself in a profession different from what I had been trained to do. I am currently employed as a coordinator of the Foundation Programme, at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Foundation Programme is the first and most crucial year at IVS and consequently the responsibility was huge. I has to deal with various issues, like addressing the drop out and failure ratio of student during the first year at IVS, the need to counsel students on various issues, ranging from problems with parents and peers to self-esteem and learning difficulties. My education in Design, gave me a eagerness to learn, ensured my growth, by allowing me to engage in freedom of though and self reflection, leading to clarity in what I wanted in life, but it did not equip me with the necessary skills to handle these myriad issues of educational management.
Dialogue, not only provided me with an opportunity to discuss these various issues with experts in the field, but also a forum to mingle and discuss similar issues with professionals from diverse fields and backgrounds. I participated in 3 of their workshops, dealing with diverse issues like Strengthening the parent teacher relationship: facilitating students become confident learners, Parental conflict and affect on children and Management and HR problems in the prevalent Economic Scenario.
Dialogue is a very interactive forum, whose USP is being layman friendly. Concepts like assessment, learning disorders, parental conflict, parenting problems and stress management are explained and discussed in a very easy to understand manner, by trainers with a psychology background. Their sessions bring a lot of insight, self-reflection and assessment, in a very warm and humane manner.
A lot of times during similar workshops/trainings sessions, at other forums, it was perhaps the warmth of the session that was missing. Being from the field of education, I noticed some faculty, struggling to come to terms with corporate jargon being employed, and subsequently tune out when they were unable to comprehend. This rendered the exercise of training futile. However at Dialogue, it was a different experience, marked by a different atmosphere, where the participants due to the language skills and methodologies applied, were able to comprehend, and therefore felt confident to vocalize their opinions and clarify ideas and discuss difficulties. This not only provided me with an opportunity to listen to points of views never heard before but also enabled me to identify possible reasons for many of the problems experienced at the workplace, (both student and faculty related.)
The first workshop was a source of insight, as to the possible role parents and teachers together could play, in producing students, who were a joy to teach. During my job, a constant complaint from faculty was, that the students were dull and uninterested in learning and had behavioral problems. During sessions we realized that the reasons could be myriad, however could we rectify a situation like that? Dialogue’ s Workshop offered a possible solution. It spoke about initiation of a dialogue between parents and faculty, to be able to produce students who would take ownership of their learning. It was interesting to hear, a predominantly teacher dominated forum, talk about experiences with students and the present practices at their institutions. This enabled me to understand various practices, which could have given, rise to the attitudes in student, at bachelors level. An exercise like this would enable faculty to understand where the problem arose, and find ways of rectifying it. It also served the bring home the fact, of how important a role parents played in helping students optimize their potential. Again, during reviews and assessments, it had been noticed that there was a link between poor academic performance and behavioral issues in students and emotional problems at home. A marked increase in the cases of student issues with parents had also been noticed. The workshop also served to indicate the various changes in our social setup that were leading to a distancing between children and parents, and thereby creating a conflict in the child. This was leading to problems in the children, which came out as apathy, by the time the reached Bachelors level of study.
The next workshop, relating to Parental conflict and its effects on children, was also of immense importance. Parental conflict, in some form or another, is a reality of out society and part and parcel of the consumerist culture that has crept into our society. We have to acknowledge that a large chunk of the students coming to us at any stage, will have experienced some form of parental conflict. As Dr. Rakhshanda Hussain said during the workshop, “Marital conflict itself is not bad but the extent to which goes and the way it is handled is what actually affects the children”. At my workplace not knowing how to handle the students was resulting in a lot of negative practices in teachers. Like raising their voices, employing negative terminologies during assessment and critique, becoming indifferent as a defense mechanism. Knowing and being able to identify the various forms of conflict and possible effects it could have on students, would benefit teachers in the following ways:
· They would be able to identify and understand what the cause of possible learning issues and behavioral issues could be.
· Not feel frustrated and blame themselves for not being able to communicate with students
· Not feel frustrated and blame themselves for the poor performance of students.
· Be able to take steps to counter the problem at their own end.
· Develop empathy.
This would give rise to more satisfied teachers, confident in themselves and their skills. It would restore their creative energy and thereby make the learning experience more energetic and meaningful for students as well and consequently promote a more content and fulfilled student body on campus.
The third workshop focused on the management side. Having attended their previous workshops, I thought, the psychological perspective in HR and management could be the key to solving the problems related to the human resource. It led me to develop an insight into the problems of the system I was working with, and made me think how to counter the problems, from a humane perspective. The solutions being offered are not always tailor made for an organization. An organization needs to develop its own set of principles and guide lines through which it can adapt various procedures to suit its needs. They need to be in synch with the realities of the workplace. And they have to have measure of empathy.
Dialogue offers you a place to discuss problems, share ideas and triggers the creative problem solving process, through which you become a part of the solution not just the implementer of it. It does not give you solutions, it helps you create them.
