A literary tale

Shalini Solanki
Literature is enchanting, enthralling, engaging. But it is not often that children experience literature that way. Here are a few techniques that this teacher tried to make the teaching and assessment of literature classes interesting.

Cold desert – Ladakh

Geetha Iyer
When we think of deserts, usually the image that the mind conjures up is that of large open spaces with sand dunes and a bright hot sun beating down. In part 2 of her article on deserts, Geetha Iyer introduces us to cold deserts, their flora and fauna, and the threats to this ecosystem.

The many routes to handling conflict

Anuja Venkataraman
Smoothing, compromising, forcing, withdrawing, problem solving — which of these conflict strategies will you choose if you get into a conflict with your colleague?

A 10-year-old romance: libraries in schools

A group of people with a passion, a goal of setting up and transforming libraries into active learning spaces, and schools and children who learnt to celebrate libraries. Looking back on a decade of Libraries in Schools programme.

Being polite to being nice

Usha Raman
Are being polite and helpful no longer valued? It is almost as if we are conditioned to expect rudeness all the time, so much so that little acts of kindness take us by surprise. We need societies that are more considerate and pleasant to live in and clearly moral science classes are not the way to build them. So how do we build polite and nice societies?

How do we prepare to deal with tragedy?

Simran Luthra
Life is turbulent like the sea, but all of us would like to believe that it will flow along like a serene and calm river. This inherent optimism bias in human beings and our desire to keep all things bad at bay means that when tragedy strikes, it will strike us hard. Whether as institutions or as individuals, we often find ourselves unprepared to handle tragedies. When we know that life is not all roses, and if education is preparation for life, then we must engage with the grim side of life as well and learn how to handle it.

Nurturing spaces for ‘wild’ ideas

Deborah Dutta
Human beings falsely and foolishly believe that the Earth belongs to them. And that is why when we teach about the environment, it is mostly from the human perspective. This kind of pedagogy leads to a very limited understanding of nature. It is time that we allowed nature as a co-teacher into our classrooms and looked at the environment from a fresh perspective.

Thinking – and doing – differently

Soma Chakraborty
Moving beyond just lip-service, this teacher, who as part of a workshop conducted in her school was engaging with the transgender community, decided to help a transgender person find a livelihood.