Reflecting on one year of my dream leadership role......

Another milestone crossed..

This blog of mine has been voicing my views and spreading wings now to countries around the world. That which started as a innate articulation of a loner in a corner of a room at CI has now shaped its journey by picking up lot of accolades on it's way. What else a better gift could I gift to myself than to write a blog post to celebrate my journey of completion of a year in the present leadership role, my pathway which has really transformed me completely.

What does it take to transform to a new you?

 The will of course. The will to have an impact , to contribute. The will to bring changes, sustain them to help mankind.

 So what I have lost in this journey? A part of me, never to return back. A part of me which could speak anything under the sun and talk to anyone with the same intimacy. I guess titles come with their own tantrums. 

What I still carry with me....?

My values , my honesty and faith in good deeds. You can of course be a leader without being a negative character , the world might however treat you as one...deal with the irony.

What I need to still learn and move ahead?

Being a simple, logical, physics person who thinks too much and tries to justify situations by evidences , sometimes it becomes difficult to play the mind game. Strategic planning, yielding results under tough challenges , benchmark outputs as a team have been my takeaways. But what I yet need to integrate is a better understanding of the human mind and how the word perception revolves with the same. Solving the various entangles around seem more challenging than yielding high outputs. However time will teach me to master that probably. 

My aha moments....

Never knew that having the power and helping someone in need could be so interconnected , though it may not work in your favour. Always felt,what could I do for this world in my capacity.?But have been very happy to help all those who came in this journey of mine. Very soon life would move on and take some new course...all the more to reflect on a new milestone achieved. Thanks for being a part of this for so long.

Keep believing in yourself and be good....keep dreaming to achieve more....
Believe in others coz somebody somewhere believed in me.....

 

Which Learner profiles do you associate yourself to?

Has your teaching been impacted by the learner profiles that you have associated yourself with?

My DP Coordinators online workshop , Category 3 has started. Though just finished a hectic three programme evaluation visit last week, yet all excited to get on board and learn something new for a better understanding.

pic courtesy: Module of IB workshop resources

As a part of my first activity I have to blog which tow LPs I associate myself with and how I think they might influence my teaching.

Well I could right away chose open- minded and reflective. Very close to my heart. Both are related. The more you reflect, better are your chances to become more open-minded. These two attributes have made me break free of a rigid mindset and helped me accomodate other people's views and respect the same. having a difference of opinions is needed for the growth of a healthy ecosystem , but agreeing to disagree with dignity.

I have been always a physics teacher (since teaching DP) embracing technology to enhance the learning process. However this year's year 1 had one of them asking me "When are you going to teach Normal Physics?" I realized how difficult is must have been for the student to shift from his way of learning from textbooks and teachers to a system of self learning. So we had no ipads for the next few days and I made the batch comfortable so that their transition from textbook oriented learning to ipad based self learning could me a smooth one. And bingo,,,the same student is using popplet to design his formative assessment task infusing TOK elements in it. Hence I do think that being open-minded helps me respect views of students in the classroom and being reflective helps me tune into my teaching strategies as per the need of the students.

An LP that I myself did not get associated was being an Inquirer as being a student in India, my education system never demanded me to be one. Hence devising inquiry based teaching model took quite a bit of time to be accepted. However the pedagogy following of late using a 5E model of inquiry has sparkling results in the classroom. Surely looking forward to infuse more ATL in the classroom.

Reflecting on the Three programme evaluation visit by the Asia Pacific team

What does Evaluation mean for a DPC and the school?

pic courtesy : Standards Workshop Delhi , Sept 2014

My journey through this IB world takes turn all the time and at every juncture makes me realize how immense the learning and the transformation process is. Last week was the culminating visit of the three programme Evaluation team members. The heartbeat and adrenaline rush had already been high as the whole school had been busy in documenting evidences.

As I documented evidences for the DP , every statement of those standards and practices seemed to come alive. The whole process in itself was an eye opener. It made me realize of the high benchmark of implementation that IB has set.

pic courtesy : Standards Workshop Delhi , Sept 2014

A few days back also attended the Four in 1 standards workshop at Delhi which had already made me realize how all the standards were so very well connected.Everything was interconnected. My career in IB five years down the line had now made me realize the importance of all the documents that IB had made and all the new publications that came up.




The major highlights of my learning were:

• Success of any IB programme is based on regular scheduled collaboration with the staff alligned with the set standards and practices
• How important it is to interpret each one of IB 's documents in our school's own context and agree as a team on a sustained model of implementation. 
• Handling the curriculum development across all the three programmes, also made me realize how important it is for a DP educator to have a knowledge of the PYP and MYP. Made my understanding of the DP so very clear.
• Also having a clear cut system of documenting evidences is a must as it is a five year evaluation

What is IB education and Towards an IB continuum were the two documents that summed up everything. The Evaluation team liked many of the set practices in the school and looked for a stronger and sustained implementation of the planned model. Staff after their one on one meet felt the high levels of expectation in their work.

Amongst the set practices appreciated were the following:

• formative and summative assignments alligned with the grade descriptors throgh rubrics
• strong senior school assembly and global awareness sessions
• TOK integration in the curriculum
• support from the recent Year 1 parents and the transparency that the school had with them

Also what came out as a big understanding was why IB has placed ATTL in the heart and what it meant to the IB DP. Have alligned ATTL into our practices. All of us as a team just need to reflect at each step, imbibe the learner profile attributes in us and go ahead to have a positive impact on the community.

Please comment on what evaluation at your school meant to you?

Reflecting on new responsibilities

Blogging almost after 5 months. Life seems to go so fast that It feels I am no longer in control of it. As if I am on a conveyer belt. My journey shifted me from Oaktree back to CI. It's very difficult now at this juncture to compare between IB schools. Everywhere you work , you are so much connected thatyou can   always feel the gain and loss at the same time. Every school really does have its own set of values and culture and you definitely become a part of it.

This time I returned to a known place , known world and known people. Choithram International , a school which had shaped my career in the past and now is going to do it in a much bigger sense. Being the DPC and Deputy Head of a complete IB school calls for lot of responsibility and intelligent smart work.Sitting in the hot seat what I realised is that I need to keep myself grounded. All that I had learnt from my mentors was now to be implemented. 

So in such responsible positions what as IB educator should we keep in mind ? What attributes are we looking forward to?

Reflecting on a milestone crossed

The journey changes its course...

My journey in this IB World has been a tremendous learning experience for each every day.As the course of life goes on I had to leave OIS and return back to my previous school Choithram International. I am one of those fortunate teachers who has had the opportunity to be mentored by some of the finest people in this world and the IB industry. As I switch over from OIS to CI the thoughts that kept striking me ,are, that I am just shifting from one learning ground to another one, each milestone adding up so much to my existence as a better human being and understanding others. Moreover I never feel the loss in connectivity as the whole ethos and philosophy of IB just gets carried forward as you move from one IB school to another. 

At this juncture I would like to reflect upon all the good values and characterestics that I have learnt and embedded in my character,after my interactions with the OIS environment.I could actually make a list of them....

1. resilience
2. coherence
3. tolerance
4. appreciation
5. respect

These 5 strong chracterestics have actually been strongly existing in all the corners of OIS. It was a system that introduced me to some of the rigorous academic processes that probably exist very aptly in any of the benchmark schools of IB such as the UWCs. 

At OIS another benchmark set everywhere was the sense of critical thinking.TOK concepts and talking about various global  issues had infiltrated very smoothly even in the middle school students.

Probably there would be many more such reflections that would make me realize much later in life, how my tenure at OIS has moulded me.

As I gear up to work with zeal and enthusiasm at CI , again under a strong mentor and guide the only thing that gets emphasized more with time is that every organisation of IB has its own culture and local flavor and it is very important to identify and accept that.I hope to contribute a lot to this institution and gain immensely in the upcoming days.

How facts develop concepts?

What makes a good monday morning?

Well this was the theme of our monday morning assembly at school, worth being pondered about.

Today my monday morning started by sharing good thoughts as usual on my twitter and facebook profiles, some of which are my own and some shared so generously by the the whole community of my social networkers.

One of the tweets which struck my mind went as follows:

Ryan Campbell @ryandal

Use factual questions to guide students to a conceptual generalisation. Don't tell them generalisation instead draw it from them. #IBDunia13

Well it was a tweet from the Indonesian IB teachers group. I never knew that this thought would be later justified so quickly and so well in our school assembly today. The big questions thrown to us in the monday morning assemble by our Head Teacher were in the form of few facts. They went as follows....

1. Total of about 50 percent of the world population lies in the urban region and by 2030 ,UN projects that it would be raised to 70 percent.What does that mean to Kolkata?
2. In the late 20th century , Shanghai , which today projects an image of "modernisation " as quoted by one of our students, was very much similar to what Kolkata is today.

What did these facts mean to us? Was there a corelation? Did it have a purpose?

These facts stated , actually had a far bigger meaning to the audience as our Head Teacher had started a competition for the students, 90 percent of whom were not born or brought up in Kolkata, to contribute to Kolkata and make it a better place to live. It resonated with the theme "Think globally and act locally".

How well we could use this in our classroom practices...Connecting back to the tweet ..developing conceptual generalisation from factual questions. To what extent do we articulate this approach to generate an inquiry based learninhg?

My learning in the journey of being an IB teacher is just endless where the horizon gets pushed away by each passing day.

A new academic year...

Why do we ask 'Why" ?

What a way it was to start the formal monday morning assemblies at our school in this academic year, with the thought shared by our Head Teacher, why do we ask 'Why'?  The thoughts that he kept infusing last year and which continues this year is actually what works wonders in keeping the monday morning blues at bay and add value to my existence.

Today is World Ozone Day and I had been asked to be a guest speaker for the same during the assembly. What I had prepared to share with the school community members could be so well linked with what I heard in the morning. Our head teacher left us all with an impending thought about discovering our own self, about who we are, to think about the past , present and the future. And probably my speech connected from there itself.

World Ozone Day is celebrated all over the world on 16th of September to mark the success of the Montreal Protocol signed in 1887 for the prevention of depletion of the ozone layer. As my conversation moved around the information that I had collected and collated over the internet, the most interesting facts that I could reveal were the extent to which the targets in reduction of production and consumption of the ozone depleting substances set way back in the late 19th century have been achieved by 2011 to a significant way.

The entire discussion brought 4 important thoughts to light:

1. The importance of identifying crisis and the problems related to that.
2. To have a vision to pull oneself away from the crisis with probable projected scenarios
3. To take collaborative intervention if the crisis has a collective nature
4. Meticulous planning by setting targets and having a proper review and action plan for the same.

Does not this coincide with the way the whole education process is set in our school?

The discussion very fluidly connected to the prior thoughts given by the head teacher.It is all due to the tireless efforts of scientists, technologists, legal advisors, economists and policy makers, of identifying the planet earth as the "SELF". A zeal to look through the crisis of the past planning meticulously and implementing the present , by means of which a far better planet can be handed over to our future generation. Our students got a deep insight into the necessity of a connected and collaborative platform of effective communication between interdisciplinary wings for progress.