Stimulating the reading habit

Chhavi Jain
The reading habit has always been the bone of contention between children and parents/teachers. The adults want the children to develop one and the children believe there are better ways of spending time. Here are a few tried and tested suggestions for you to try and turn your students into readers.

Say it with flowers!

Ajita Banerjee
The saying goes that you learn better when you do. This teacher and her students decided to find solutions to tackle the problem of the large amounts of floral waste generated. Read about their experiences and learnings in this narrative.

Children and education: why policy matters

Anjali Noronha
Finally after a long gap of more than 25 years, India is ready to overhaul its education policy. A draft of the much needed and awaited New Education Policy was released in June this year to public scrutiny, advice and suggestions. As the committee led by Dr. K. Kasturirangan sieves through the overwhelming feedback received and finalizes India’s New Education Policy, eminent educationists look at and comment on the document for Teacher Plus and its readers.

Winds of change

Usha Raman
The draft of the New Education Policy was released in May this year. Ever since it has generated a lot of debate on what it proposes to do and what it does not. And while a lot of people are getting into this debate of the NEP, the people conspicuous by their absence are the teachers and school administrators and children–incidentally the stakeholders that the policy will most affect. While nobody may ask us for our views on national tv it is still very important that amongst ourselves we discuss the provisions of the NEP and see how we can bring some parity between our own vision for education and that of the top authorities.

The Draft NEP: Does it rise to the challenge?

Madhu Prasad
The Draft New Education Policy 2019 (DNEP) is deeply problematic both conceptually and structurally. There are several diverting statements, such as the references to the ancient Buddhist institutions of Nalanda and Takshashila (without crediting them to a distinctly anti-Brahmanical and egalitarian tradition) and the need to ensure a contemporary form of wide-ranging and equitable access to ‘quality education’.

Exclusion by design: math education in the NEP

Jayasree Subramanian
Mathematics education in general receives a lot of attention in the education policy documents as well in the curriculum frameworks because of the importance attached to the subject and also because of the difficulty it poses for learners. On the one hand, mathematics is becoming important in several higher education programmes

Catching them early: foundation stage education

Venita Kaul
The Draft National Education Policy (2019) has been making headlines on a periodic basis ever since it came into the public domain. There have been some recommendations that have raised a political controversy such as the three-language formula. Unfortunately, this is taking attention away from several very commendable reforms suggested in the policy, one of which is the concept of a foundation stage to be created in the school structure.

Preparation and progression: teachers in the NEP

Sushama Yermal
The NEP attends to the topic of teacher education in two chapters. In chapter 5 on ‘Teachers’, it takes a cursory glance at the proposed programme for teacher preparation, then spells out novel plans to introduce professional standards that will inform teacher appraisal as well as career progression. In chapter 15, on ‘Teacher Education’, the need for professionally better equipped teachers is elaborated, the current status of teacher preparation/professional support are analyzed and possible solutions are proposed.

Skewing priorities: what do we give up, what do we gain?

Saba Khan
Many major cities in India are undergoing massive expensive changes under the Smart City projects*. Bhopal is one of the cities in the first phase. There are huge expenditures for ‘beautification’ of the city, even as one can see how the rights of the urban deprived, Dalit, Adivasi, and Muslim children are being withheld and abused.

Sensing a story

Nabanita Deshmukh
Storytelling is a popular teaching aid in the primary classes. Sensory storytelling is a technique that is fast gaining popularity as it allows its listeners to experience a story through their senses and thereby giving them more learning opportunities. Here is how you tell a sensory story.