The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has brought a great upheaval in the total education system. A time has come when future is faced with uncertainties and unpredicted repercussions. Students have been segregated from real classrooms and the environments of schools. They do not come face to face with their familiar teachers who not only build their careers but also mould their personality, character and life itself. However, being a change agent is not as easy as it seems. It requires microscopic planning, great precision and constant attention.
There was a time when teaching was confined within traditional lecturing to give the students theoretical and rule-based knowledge and information required for making a good scoring in examinations. Gone are the days when students used to be passive listeners only inside the four walls of a classroom. In the present scenario, a teacher’s role has been changed to that of a facilitator. A question that often draws our attention is what actually the role of a teacher is in the 21st century. Is it to provide contents, facts, dates and formulas? Absolutely not. In fact, teachers are no more the source of information. Simply because children can get facts and data on anything any time anywhere. A simple click of mouse or touch on smart phones, Facebook, Wikipedia and, most importantly Google, can give them limitless information. Therefore, our curriculum should be focussed more on ideas and skills rather than facts and contents.
Now, question is what are these skills and ideas and how can they be achieved? It has been rightly said that learning is not the product of teaching; it is rather the product of activities of the learners. Classroom activities not only enhance concept clarity but also create a vigorous ambience to enable the students to explore and experience things themselves and, thereby, develop various skills and ideas. The term which is aptly appropriate in this context is Experiential Learning, a way to apply academic content to real life. Students can be engaged in activities related to real life situations so that they can discover and learn various things practically rather than by goggling. On the basis of a chapter, they can be assigned with a variety of situations to build skills like critical thinking and analysis, problem solving and decision making, etc. We have to rethink on the kind of problems we ask the students to solve and the tools we use. Students are to be trained to use the ICT tools not to entertain themselves but to discuss, collaborate, compare and publish their ideas.
Development of ICT skills like searching, commenting, posting, subscribing, linking, networking, editing, uploading, tagging, etc., are highly essential for online teaching. Apart from that, value-based teaching can bring remarkable attitudinal changes in students which will help them to generate positive thinking, willpower, readiness and courage to meet challenges, compassion, tolerance, etc., and ultimately can transform them into decent and civilised human beings. Competency-based education is another approach to allow the students to learn on the basis of their own abilities to master a particular skill at their own paces. Visual makes communication easier. So, teaching through Art Integration, which has recently been made compulsory by the CBSE, is absolutely a commendable step. Art-integrated activities like making projects, sketching, painting, debating , role play, power point presentation, etc., can be connected with teaching to strengthen the link between education and culture and develop knowledge, skills and values.
In this way, a shift from mark-centric approach to learner-centric approach is definitely going to give a new dimension to the teaching-learning process in the present pandemic situation. It is not an exaggeration that teachers of the DAV Public School Chandrasekharpur are always ready to be the change agents. Since its inception from 4th of August 1989 till date, this school has been setting its own benchmarks in holistic and quality education for the all-round development of its students focussing on their performances in scholastic, co-scholastic and extracurricular activities following the latest trends of pedagogies and methodologies in education. It has been the right platform for an ideal amalgamation of Vedic traditions propounded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati with the latest development in science and technology to produce worthy citizens for the motherland.
No change is possible without conflict. So, let’s overcome all conflicts and start from small steps to see its miraculous impact on our dear students.
(The writer is a senior faculty of the Dept of English, DAV Public School, Chandrasekharpur)