May 2nd, 2013

Music and Language

I have always been musically inclined. My mother would motivate (read ‘bribe’) me with music and my day always started with the radio. As an educator, I persuaded (read ‘harassed’) my Supervisor to allow me to play music in the background when my students were not doing serious academic classwork. As a mother, I played music to my newborn even whilst he slept, much to the bafflement of my in-laws. Like many of us, music, is my muse.

Interestingly, the highlight of this past month has been administering doses of music into two very different curriculums – one formal pre-primary school program and the other non-formal language learning program.

Music as a primal and universal medium of learning/communicating is well archived. In fact, Charles Darwin speculated that early humans had already developed musical ability prior to language and were using it “to charm each other.” Fascination with music cognition took a whole new meaning when the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov developed Suggestopedia as an affective teaching tool seeped in music. More recently, Aniruddh Patel, in his interdisciplinary tour de force Music, Language, and the Brain elucidated how the brain processes music and language both bridging the left brain and right brain divide. One can find anecdotal evidence of symbiotic relationship between music and language acquisition in Gabrielle Giffords who has been successfully using music therapy to regain language after brain damage.

Given the universality of music as a language, first language learning begins with folk rhymes and lullabies and many well thought out music-centric language learning programs have been designed to enable foreign language learners in language acquisition. Since both music and language hinge on rhyme and rhythm, pitch and pace, texture and timbre, this synergy between language learning and music is natural. So while in the process of growing up, we lose most of the hundred languages that we are born with, and the verbal language becomes predominant, music is reduced to be an auxiliary language.

Lately, engulfed by work and parenting, music had become an intermittent interlude. Surreptitiously, as if struck by partial pedagogical amnesia, I wandered the alleys of curriculum review/design deprived of music. That was till a month ago, when I worked briefly with Dr Robert Hagan, to explore possibility of using music and emotional intelligence to teach English as a part of blended learning program for underprivileged run by AAM Foundation.

All the planning and preparation happened over a cup of coffee and a quick visit to the music store. Given the dynamics of the program and profile of the target audience, we decided to use We Are the World to teach nuances of English language to a group of first generation learners, in the age range of 12-20 years, who had been enrolled in our program for over 2 months at the Govindpuri center in South Delhi. Armed with a boom-box and lyrics of the song, we were greeted by a very excited and anticipative group of youngsters at the center. Like a seasoned craftsman, Bob started weaving his musical magic effortlessly and undeterred by cultural barriers. Initially, students struggled with comprehending the accent. But soon they were singing along with him uninhibited. Those who had limited exposure to the language demonstrated monk-like focus as they kept up with the group. Slowly, Bob injected calculated doses of vocabulary, word association, synthesis and analysis. As they grew more comfortable with the song and Bob’s accent, students were led atop the peak of Bloom Taxonomy where they rewrote the lyrics (both in poetry and prose) of the song, meaningful and relevant in their context. This resulted in poetic effusion (yes, in English), the quality (and quantity) of which left all of us suitably impressed. This musical intervention, an auditory feast for our students, opened up the greater global picture of English language for our first generation learners. Additionally, it has made students hungry for more such experiences and also brought music back into my pedagogical paradigm.

Thank you for the music, Bob! The rhythm did get to us and we intend keeping it for lessons to come.

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Posted in Arts in Education, Education, Play | 2 Comments »

January 17th, 2013

Book Love by Melissa Taylor

Book Review

Long ago, I was taught that children learn to read till about grade 3. By grade 3, they should be fluent readers (decoders of words and sentences) so that they can start reading to learn (comprehend to scaffold). My faith in this rule of the thumb consolidated over the years when I came across many capable students and adults who are disadvantaged in writing, speaking and listening as a ripple effect of their inability to read well.

At whatever place I called home, I have picked up the spoken dialect through socialization. But I could never read/write the language as that requires formal learning. Such is the case with the young children who enter structured learning spaces. The pieces of reading, writing, speaking and listening are so symbiotic that we often focus on one, neglecting the others under the misconception that development of one will magically develop the others. That is perhaps the reason for the oft heard complains of educators/parents: “Jack speaks very well, but his reading/writing is poor” or “Julie writes so well, but gets so nervous when she has to speak”. Reading and writing are synergestic just as speaking and listening are particularly in the case of young language learners.

Last month as I was working with some 40 teachers/administrators from my client school, helping them design the reading program for pre and early primary students. Students in this school are struggling with reading confidently and fluently. The mandate is clear – design a balanced reading program and enable teachers to deliver that as per design expectations.  So for me, there could not have been a more timely launch of Melissa Taylor’s book “Book Love”.

This book is significant for two reasons- firstly, Melissa wears the bifocal lens of a parent and seasoned educator making the book relevant for both classrooms and living rooms; secondly, it is both a visual and mental candy for parents and educators alike. A former elementary and preschool award winning teacher and literacy trainer working with inner-city schools in Denver, Colorado (USA), Melissa has valuable experience building interest and ability of young EFL & ESL readers. On the personal front, she has transformed her own daughter from a reluctant reader to an avid one.

At the very onset, Book Love succinctly outlines the reasons why most early learners find reading to be a chore that they would rather not undertake. These freewheel from books being ‘boring’ to ‘sitty’ as Melissa lays bare the possible reasons for this disengagement and apathy and turn apathy into interest in a practical and fun way. Each of these reasons is dissected and discussed at appropriate length in separate chapters. Of particular interest to me, as a mother of a 6 year old boy, was Chapter 5: Too Sitty as my son also reads in all possible postures and paces.

Book Love has precious pearls of practical wisdom on all aspects of building the ability to read at a very young age- from phonics to comprehension and from decoding to enriching vocabulary- that is playful and engrossing both for the teacher and the taught alike. It is also a treasure trove of ideas for raising enthusiastic and competent reader, both at home and in class. The forty-something, early primary teachers that I was interacting with, found Melissa’s Five Finger Book Selection Test an easy guide for reference.

For most early primary teachers loyally following the prescribed textbooks, selection of developmentally appropriate and engaging books can be challenging, particularly so in regions where both the teachers and the booksellers are clueless about diversity of such reads. Book Love comes to the rescue with its exhaustive list of recommended age appropriate books organized under every conceivable obsession/ interest that the early readers have.

In the midst of the 4 days session, I decided to surprise the teachers with a Skype chat with Melissa where she could take their questions and tap into her expertise and experience in this domain. In spite of her busy schedule, after the launch of her book, the author of Book Love, Melissa Taylor was magnanimous enough to fir this in. Her pedagogical grounding and simplicity cut through the jargon and leapfrogged the session across the ealry reading spectrum- from reading challenges among students to reading space in classroom, from phonics to comprehension. Melissa was able to give succinct and specific strategies to address a volley of questions around ability and interest in reading, making chewiest of literacy theories digestible through bite-sized doable interventions with little or no special materials/preparations. While I was always certain about her erudition, Melissa’s ability to connect with an audience that was very new to all this and culturally very distinct left me impressed.

So for any parent/educator/caregiver dealing with beginner, reluctant, struggling or any early reader, Book Love by Melissa Taylor is a must have.

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August 16th, 2012

Teach children or curriculum?

AOL's Curriculum Design Model

AOL's Curriculum Design Model

Lately, we have been silent on the blog front as we untangled curricular confusion and cobwebs helping four schools under the same management spring clean their primary school curriculum.

Over the academic term/year, school curricula tends to get cluttered with redundant and developmentally inappropriate content that our well-trained, well-intentioned teachers are too busy to weed out because of their rushed schedules. The result is that they teach mindlessly, simply because ‘it is in the textbook’. In many instances, it is also a case of disempowerment with the teachers’ role reduced to being mediators between the curriculum and the children, with even the protocol of mediation (how to teach, time to teach, how and when to assess) being determined outside the community of teachers and tightly regulated.

It is a pedagogical travesty when professionally trained teachers, who have first hand knowledge of learning profile of students’ and the best interest of those students in mind, surrender / are made to surrender to publishers of textbook who neither know the given set of students nor are responsible for their learning. A very natural consequence – teacher starts teaching the content / curriculum and not their students . As a consequence teaching takes center-stage and learning is pushed to an obscure corner, till it meekly drags its carcass out through the door. The classroom then becomes a haven of sage-on-stage (read ‘teacher’) who sprays and prays for students’ learning. Frantic reading, writing and speaking is mistaken for well-paced cognitive development. The result is intellectual stultification of both the teacher and student; joy of learning replaced by boredom and monotony of rote; teacher becoming the sole repository of knowledge and students empty vessels to be kept mute as they are filled.

Teachers in most parts of the world, are suitably qualified and well trained in their craft but seemingly their appointment letters have an unwritten clause – “We are happy to hire you for your credentials / experience but leave all that you learnt during your training out in the corridor before you enter the classroom.” As a consequence training/credentials/experience just does not translate into effective teaching-learning in the classroom.

For almost two years, we have held the mirror to the teachers’ beliefs and practices of the four schools. This has been an introspective journey of reconciling and realigning the philosophical / pedagogical beliefs of the teachers / administrators with their actual classroom / school-wide practices. During this journey we have been able to get the teachers’ buy-in as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Learning Styles, Developmental Profile of Learners, Brain-Based Learning, etc started making sense to them. I correct myself here, most teachers were familiar with these concepts (as they were part of their B.Ed. curriculum) but our interactions made them recognise that inspite of high student teacher ratio, paucity of time, curriculum overload, chock-a-bloc school calendar they could scaffold their practices on these pedagogical concepts.

Timely and focussed interactions with the teachers combined with tremendous on-ground implementation support by the school administrators helped unfold the magic of teachers feeling capable, competent and confident enough to take control of students’ learning. The first piece of the learning puzzle was reflections on how we teach, consciously meandering into the next piece of how we plan our teaching. The piece on what we teach was a natural progression to the work we had already done and we deliberately chose to deal with teaching-learning and planning before we reviewed and revamped curriculum.

Curriculum is a lifeless piece of paper only as effective as the teacher that transacts it in classroom. Teacher with a sound understanding of how her students learn best is like a bridge that takes the students from where they are, conceptually speaking, to where the curriculum wants them to get at. Once the teacher becomes student-friendly in her methodology, she can learn the tricks to work smart, to maximize the learning of her students. Curriculum has its role, but at the end of the day, it is a lifeless piece of paper. It is the teacher who makes it come alive and an effective teacher can infuse life into the most archaic, inane and irrelevant curriculum to make students’ learning relevant, significant and holistic. Effective teachers become super-effective if the curriculum that they transact is well-aligned and holistic.

So after facilitating a measurable degree of effectiveness into the teaching-learning paradigm in the four schools, we embarked on the complex exercise of curriculum review. Curriculum review is like playing dominoes, with substantial and far-reaching implications. In a setting where textbooks were the key determinant of the syllabus and flow of the taught content, the reluctance of the teachers, to take ownership of deciding what to teach was perceptible. Once again, our role was ‘mirror-holders’ to what was being taught in the different grades and we held up as many as 3 different mirrors – alignment (horizontal & vertical) mirror, the holistic mirror and the mirror of developmental appropriateness of content.

Over the next 10 days, we focussed on reviewing and realigning curriculum of individual subjects at different grade levels. It was heartening and satisfying to see teachers’ skepticism replaced by keen enthusiasm as they went over the curriculum with a fine tooth comb. It would have been less time-consuming and laborious for us to review and redesign the curriculum for the school but this approach would not have achieved its desired outcome of making the teachers the owner-designers of what they teach!

After the micro-level scrutiny by teachers, as we finalise the curriculum for the academic year 2013 along with the academic and assessment leaders in the schools, there is a sense of satisfaction with keen awareness of the support that teachers will require after this curricula coup d’etat, as the teachers usurp the driver’s seat from textbook. One of the school principals aptly remarked, “Two years ago, my teachers were chopping (read- ‘teaching-learning’) stale and limp vegetables (read-‘curriculum’) with blunt knives (read- ‘classroom practices’). Over the past two years, they have been sharpening their knives and bringing in more crisp and fresh produce to cut. This is increasing their professional output with little incremental effort and reorganization.” We couldn’t have asked for a greater proof of change!

Now, as we initiate work on the final piece of intervention – assessment, at our end, we hope to hand over complete control – the steering wheel and the navigation charts back to the school leaders and look forward to taking a back seat on the observation deck.

Note: The word ‘curriculum’ is used in the blog narrowly to define learning outcomes associated with a structured, pre-defined syllabus.

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June 11th, 2012

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

“Most of what I really need to know about how to live  and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sand pile at Sunday school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and

draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,

hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.”

This advise by Robert Fulghum intuitively lays down universal and eternal guiding principles of dignified and harmonious living for all age groups, irrespective of where one lives. Yet, given the pace and pressures of modern life with its academic inflation, many of us have forgotten foundational lessons of life – things we learnt as kids.

Not surprisingly these words come from the same writer also gave us a peek into his philosophical beliefs when he wrote:

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —

That myth is more potent than history.

I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —

That hope always triumphs over experience —

That laughter is the only cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

Robert Fulghum surely had learning outcomes figured out well!!

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January 5th, 2012

SEMBLANCE OF SCIENTIFIC SUPERIORITY

I have always struggled with the supremacy of sciences in the hierarchy of subjects in school curriculum, particularly the obeisance we accord them in Indian education setup. This struggle was brought to the forefront, this past month, by two triggers: the 2011 Lenovo Global Student Science & Technology Outlook that was forwarded by an acquaintance, who is an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, advising the federal government on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs in the US. The other was a chance interaction with an Indian parent of a young college lad at a parent interaction session in a school near Delhi.  I am currently advising this reputed school, known for its rigorous academic orientation, on its adoption of an international curriculum. The objective of the session was to answer parents’ queries on benefits and rigors of the international program.

At the session, many parents proclaimed racial/national superiority of science programs offered by Indian boards; articulating doubts about the ‘rigors’ of the science programs offered by the international framework. One parent, who had been quiet for most part, also shared the story of his academically brilliant son who had passed out of grade 10 from the very same school. Based on the outstanding scores of his son in grade 10 external examinations, the father decided that his son would benefit from intensive and focused coaching to crack the maniacal entrance examination to premier engineering institutes. The sixteen year old was packed off to the city of Kota in Rajasthan, a city with pathway to the engineering dream as its sole raison d’être. Statistically speaking, the cram schools in Kota have an impressive success rate. Like all cram schools, they are inhumane and depressing. A lesson learnt by this father the very hard way, as his teenage son became a nervous wreck and was clinically diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That explained his presence at the session- he had been converted to a more holistic framework of education for his younger, equally brilliant son.

Skimming through the findings of 2011 Lenovo Global Student Science & Technology Outlook, excerpted here, left me connecting the dots:

  1. Is Science more valuable to society than the Arts? Yes, it is, except in Russia. Kids in India and Mexico especially believe so.
  2. What is the current state of Science in each country? Kids in Japan and Russia especially feel the number of students pursuing Science is declining. Kids in India feel the number is increasing.
  3. How many kids are interested in pursuing a career in STEM? The least are in Japan. The highest interest is in India and Mexico.
  4. Will STEM make them rich or change the world or both? Kids in India have the highest expectations of getting rich if they pursue a career in STEM. Kids in Russia have the least. Mexican and Japanese kids feel more strongly that they could change the world.

My two cents

In India, as in most other places, we misunderstand science and art and confine them to watertight subject boundaries. Science is not a set of subjects with a fixed body of knowledge; Science is a way of thinking, an attitude of curiosity, imagination and rationality.  The mental processes of an artist and scientist are the same.  It was one of greatest scientists of our times who said, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music” ~ Albert Einstein, highlighting the synergy symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines!

In most schools in India, we use the term science and science subjects interchangeably. In our science lessons, we discourage inquiry, reflection, and observation to make room for rote. Science subjects are taught (not learnt) as a dull drab mass of disjointed facts sans much science, the drudgery of which students tolerate due to parental pressure or some hope for gratification/ ROI in the future as the Lenovo survey amply demonstrates. Living in a poor nation like ours where majority of people are still deprived of basic necessities, I do not see even one science student with the zeal and passion of Severin Suzuki. The aim for studying science (or anything, actually) is simply to amass personal/individual riches.

With our tunnel vision of sciences and fundamentally in-the-box view of careers, the vast Indian middle-class parents still cannot think beyond medicine, engineering and IT for their children.  If you talk to them about the knowledge economy and that the career landscape in five years will be very different from today, with the emergence of new sciences, new art forms, new trends and paradigms of needs/wants; they are convinced that this implies that the quantum of information multiplied manifold so more rote and drudgery is required on part of their children to be successful in the uncertain future. Knowledge is pursued with such passion that understanding and application are frowned upon as infringements on precious, scarce time. The disconnect between knowledge and application is so pervasive that we have engineers graduating from of prestigious institutes who cannot even change a fuse.

Another salvo that parents are fond of shooting to defend the ‘Indian way of teaching sciences’ is that most doctors, scientists and engineers in US are Indians. Statistically incorrect, but this is a widespread perception when it comes to our scientific arrogance. I would not defend or dispute that claim but suffice to reflect that Indian organisations are lamenting the quality of new engineers and doctors in India, in some cases, only 25% of engineering graduates are found to be employable. Also, producing workers (doctors or engineers) with an edge in foreign lands- is that what we are so boastful about when there is rampant deprivation related to food, housing and livelihood?

Finding comfort in nostalgia, we harp on the laurels achieved by our scientists of yore like Aryabhatta and Shushruta. Fast forward to today, how many innovators and creators like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates have we produced lately? In a country where malnourishment and hunger is rampant, why have we been able to produce only one M S Swaminathan; in a country where public transport is non-existent, why have we been able to produce only one E Sreedharan? Well into the 21st century, Indian educational set up churns out millions of engineers annually, but we are yet to figure out how to construct roads that can last one monsoon; we are a unique nation where 80% of road accidents are caused by faulty road engineering.

Our fixation with science subjects has not taken us too far as a nation, as majority of our people continue to live in deplorable conditions. It’s time to put some science back into the science subjects!

So how does one put more science into the science curriculum so as to instil scientific temper? Here are some of my thoughts, more from perspective of foundational years necessitating attitudinal shift:

  1. Children are born with a scientific temper; pre-schools must design learning experiences in a way that sustains this spirit of inquiry and exploration.
  2. Taking the baton from the pre-schools, the elementary schools must encourage questioning, observation, listening and problem solving among young learners. Culturally, our tolerance threshold for children’s probing and queries is very low.
  3. As adults, we should take away the focus from one-right answer and keep the door of possibilities and probabilities open when it comes to interactions with children.
  4. Subject boundaries should creep in only when children grasp the rationality of doing so, somewhere around mid-teens; till then all/most learning experiences should be structured to be transdisciplinary/interdisciplinary.
  5. As adults we need to come down from the pedestal of ‘know-it-all’ where we have placed ourselves in our dealings with children. The desire to respond with ‘the right answer’ to every inquiry of children should be curbed and slowly eliminated. This will bode well for us as well as our children, so that they do not feel they need us as crutches in their information gathering to construct an understanding.
  6. Most science lessons till middle school should be experiential with strong conceptual and theoretical underpinnings.
  7. Encourage children to experiment and evaluate things that fascinate them. Help them inculcate a habit of research, analysis and reflection. Done effectively, it deepens understanding and creates linkages.
  8. Young children are intelligent beings and make deductions based on observation and valid reasoning. We should refrain from mocking and laughing at their theories, which in most cases is a reflection of his world and how he sees things. For instance, if a four year old observes that the “sky is moving”; avoid a patronising tone (the ‘How cute!’ kind); avoid the urge to tear through his deduction. Being told that it is earth that moves and not the sky will only make him repeat/regurgitate without actually understanding. A scientific thought deserves a scientific answer.

The possibilities are endless and we as a community, as educationalists and as parents need to find our own answers!

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Posted in Education, Learner centric teaching | 2 Comments »

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