Reflections of a Pedagogue

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/raising-successful-children.html?smid=pl-share

It always amazes me how many layers there are to the transfer of learning. A new facilitator who came to me to ask advice on her lesson plan, made me start thinking on the details of the strength enhancement we do in our organisations. She had her plan, she had her timings straight. Her conceptual understanding was crystal clear. As I said to her later, if she went with what she had, put it up on the Internet and circulated it to the development world, she would have a full calendar for her workshops. Luckily for her, she was in the habit of listening well - both to herself as well as to whatever was going on around her and she asked me a critical question, that gave me the confidence to expand her exposure. She asked how the participants of her workshop would need to tweak what she taught and how she taught it such that it would make sense to their students. As we unravelled the answer to her question, we discovered that she may well be learning about how learning is transferred - an...

As a teacher one can be terribly naive with devastating results for organizational pace and resources. One can believe what one is teaching is being absorbed, will be used, is appreciated, the need is felt and that students will be, if not grateful certainly more effective in their work as they go along. Painful experience proves otherwise and can do so repeatedly; forcing one to ponder, what, if anything will bring on the realisation in a learner that there is a need to learn? After all, more often than not, the young worker, fresh out of graduate school does not have the experience to gauge their own quality or gaps in competencies and therefore the need for further training is not felt. When inputs are provided, the premise is that there is an interest in increasing competency, a passion for the subject or a commitment to the field of work/study. What if none of these motivators were true? What if the only motivator were to earn money? W...

It has been a privilege and pleasure to mentor leaders as they define their journey. My interest being in scaling up while maintaining quality, the journeys have been about learning how to nurture the small, backyard, organically, intuitively seeded large family to learning how to lead institutions across states. Very often the business of going to scale is thought to be about the numbers - the targets and the money that backs that objective. The product is a concern as far as it supports the former. Organisations make decisions around which to work with first - the numbers, the money, the product. That the product itself is the result of processes and systems is recognized but is slotted lower down the list of priorities because the money is not dependent on it. The end product is all that needs to be in place - that too, to the extent to which the donor world is interested. And its not very interested at all. Gen1Can works with the reality of the variables abo...

English is all the rage. We are well beyond the point at which one can even as why this is, without sounding moronic. It is a foregone conclusion that it must be taught to children in schools and practiced at home between parents and children and amongst children. It is taken to be a language of necessity and survival, not a gateway to a way of life, but the only way to survive the only surviving way of life. Who should teach this language? Do they know how? Do they know the language at all? Who taught the teachers? Is the teacher fluent? Where do the teachers go when they get stuck with teaching it? Is everyone sure what 'correct' English might be? What if no one at home is fluent in English? How do you support the child? Is there a grammar book that one can swear by? What if none of the other children at school speak the language either? What is appropriate instruction of English for children at Elementary school and where does one get it? This is a question that parents i...

In the education circles especially amongst academicians, you will get your head bitten off if you say that good teachers have to basically just be good people. Vociferous and often long-winded and boring explanations follow, mostly justifying the skills that teachers need to develop that these people earn their living building. I agree with the skill part, but want to make a case for the attitudes that must come with, and the basis of these attitudes in a therapeutic experience of self discovery and reflection. Common sense tell us that our roles as workers, just like all the other ways we manifest our Selves is dependent on how developed that Self is. The more work done on the Self, the more potential is actualised and reflected in the roles we play. And thus, any hindrances to actualisation there might be, will also be reflected in the quality of the roles we play, including the work we do. Supervision, mentoring, managing, ongoing capacity building, training and support are...