The Progressive School Vol 02 Issue 04

they become highly volatile and its
retention is limited to a short period.
They project largely an apparent
learning than real learning.
However, a little of positive stress
that challenges the brain and
in turn brings about a sense of
fulfilment on achievement of the
desired goal may help the learner.
Teachers could think of strategies
that promotes humour, freedom
and equity of opportunities which
make learners happy. Ensuring
happiness in classroom need not
be interpreted as disorganized
behaviour. Intellectual discourses
that absorb the attention of
the learners relieves them of
the boredom and a meaningful
engagement that promotes their
personal happiness.
2 Engagement
is essential for
purposeful learning
Engagement in a classroom
could be at a personal level or
as a group. Engagement is not
unidirectional. Engagement doesn’t really
mean a focused cognitive experience.
It is a delightful participatory process
of the teacher and the learner to a
dialogue, to a conversation, to a debate,
to an introspection, to a discovery or
to a research on unexplored vistas of
knowledge. Engagements could be
intellectual, multi-sensory, playful or
even sportive. This furthers the mutual
trust and demolishes the iron curtains
that bring about suspicion, doubt or fear
of authority. Engagements between a few
in the classroom could also spread the
aroma of joyful learning.
Emotionally competent
3 stimuli empowers
learning
Brain sciences urge the importance
of emotionally competent stimuli in a
classroom which have the strength of
impacting the learners’ emotions. Such
stimuli facilitate the power of learning
and trigger curiosity for further learning.
They have the power of consolidating
the stimuli-response bonds. Effective
classrooms provide the experience
of a theatre. Introduction of learning
experiences through role play, skits,
story-telling, music and dance promote
holistic and fruitful learning. Teachers
and schools should not be averse to such
interventions in a classroom thinking
that such interventions could promote
disorder, noise or may challenge the
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authority of the teacher. Classrooms offer
immense opportunities for providing
emotionally competent stimuli in almost
all subjects whether they have a larger
impact on the right brain or left brain.
These experiences also meet the inherent
needs of the differentiated leaners in
a classroom. They facilitate immersive
experiences.
Positive communication
4 scaffolds the learning
culture
The communication of the teacher
with the learners has to be positive,
encouraging and empowering. This helps
in building the confidence profile of the
learners in their personal self. Further,
this heals the wounds caused by past
repressions and helps them to project
themselves as confident individuals
committed to a cause. Reactionary trends
have to be handled without contempt,
rejection or isolation. Teachers need
to acknowledge the personal identity
of the learners in each classroom and
accept them as they are without any
pre-conceived notions or judgment.
Researches do indicate that dominance
of amygdaline reactions in the growing
children at their developmental stage
and hence absence of effective thought
and emotional controls. Positive
communication helps in moderating the
issues arising out of low self-esteem,
identity crisis, introvert and extrovert
JUL-AUG-SEP 2018
behaviour and in reassuring
them of their worth. This indeed
helps in consolidating the
learning curve.
Aligning the
5 informal learning
with formal learning
Researches indicate that a
large part of learning is informal
and through a variety of inputs
which are not experienced in
a classroom. Teachers need
to provide a link between
formal and informal learning
through referral and integrated
experiential opportunities so that
learning becomes impactful. With
extensive treasure of informal
inputs to curricular concepts,
the opportunities for leveraging
such knowledge, skill and
experiential inputs to classroom
experiences is becoming
increasingly vital. Further, with
education being preparation
for life, relevant, positive and
conscious interventions that
would promote socializing and enhance
social consciousness of the learners
have to be structured into individual
and group learning opportunities and
resulting experiences. Concepts of
Blended Learning might help in achieving
some of these goals.
6 Non-judgmental
classrooms
Assessments, evaluations and
examinations have largely been
interpreted with a negative connotation.
They are often times used to differentiate,
single out and condemn the learning
profiles. Comments resulting from these
assessments have often done extensive
damage to the morale of even competent
learners thereby promoting an attitude
of self-defeat, self-contempt, self-pity.
Such learners turn out to be a greater
burden to the society. Mostly such
things happen at formative years due to
absence of understanding the potential
of the learners in their specific growth
pattern. Teachers need to be totally
non-judgmental in classrooms and
even if they have to be suggestive for
modification of behaviour, they need to
be handled at the personal level and as
a meaningful counseling and mentoring
exercise.
Reimagining classrooms is a
wonderful exercise and with basic
understanding of the above, teachers can
design their own strategies.
THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL
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