Life is a journey full of choices. Success is not accidental, we must need to burn our mental fuel, work hard, struggle in the way of life to reap the great meaningful outcome along the journey. It’s all about making good choices along the journey and remaining focused on these most meaningful ideas or choices.
My joining of IAAT has been a stepping stone in the beginning of my journey keeping the higher purpose of my choice of serving and growing as an educator. The beautifully blended academic course content and framework has helped me bring radical change as an educator and has unfolded with a new vision of education, teaching and learning.
Our journey started with a weeklong offsite trip to a hill station and was designed to provide us an opportunity to know other participants and teachers; the events was so carefully programed to unfold many of the hidden potential in us and allow us to explore the other vistas of self. The year ahead on the academic program was challenging and required absolute physical, mental, psychological and emotional fitness. The intent of un-limiting ourselves and to bring self-realization, we took rappelling, trekking in mountains with additional pay load, cooking food for forty people with limited resources and lots of breakthrough sessions. To our great surprise, we were successfully completing all the challenges thrown to us one after another. The journey had already begun; we encountered varying difficulty, pain, challenges, fun and reflections and we were solidifying our thought and self-confidence each day. It made us understand the importance of coming out of our comfort zone and taking our first step. For us it was a glimpse of the year ahead and surely a platform to build a community with a defined purpose.
Returning back from trip, we started our class room courses which was structured and designed in such a way that undergoing the course embeds the purpose and thought in you gradually. The process of collective thinking, various discussions and knowledge building are amazing things that I saw it happening in our theory classes. Extensive exposure to practical classes has been providing us an opportunity to experimenting those theoretical principals and ideas in real time.
During the course I realized the importance and effectiveness of working in a group or crew.Each subject has its own individuality and while it is important to know what to teach in that subject, it is equally important to learn how to teach them effectively, and setting up oneself as a model in journey of our educational process. We learnt different methodology of effective teaching and helped me realize the different tools and
process to teach various subjects.
The entire process of partnering with children through their questions, wonder, discussion, collaboration and conclusion was at the core of learning in this program. For the effectiveness of teaching and realizing the latent potential of the children, we learnt to partner with children and facilitate them in their learning rather than to employ the concept and process of conventional unidirectional teaching. This course helped me learn and realize a whole new meaning of education, learning and teaching in modern time.
IAAT course content and carefully selected subjects has abundance learning opportunity for the educators. This has further reinforced my knowledge and concepts and has helped me evolve myself in this wonderful journey. We learnt child development and their psychology and at different growth stages and how does carefully frame of pedagogy help in shaping up the child for the demanding future of tomorrow. A truly amazing experience to witness how these work and theory works in children. Being a parent its importance and latent potential were unknown to me.
Mindful Personality Learning (MPL) gave an altogether new and innovative perceptive and depth at seeing anything and taught me to reflect and wonder on questions even if answers are not available at that moment.
I still remember when we started reflection journal most of us were not convinced with the outcome of it but again it was an experimental learning to see effectiveness of journal. It gave me the flavor of being restless with my questions. This restlessness brings dedication and requires effort to search for your answers; the restlessness ends with satisfaction when one gets the answers. MPL gave me the courage to dream and chase that dream until that is not realized, it also gave me a means to think beyond my boundaries and brought strength to achieve it.
For me, philosophy in teaching was new and interesting subject; it was eye opening to learn philosophy behind educational methodology. I learnt many new theories around philosophy of teaching whether these teaching are from Aurobindo’s or Mother’s, these are relevant in today’s context and social frameworks. “Nothing can be taught” and “From near to far” will always be with me. I was interesting to know that so many works have already been done on teaching and learning philosophy. It gave me a opportunity to think about different approaches and their combinational and integrated effectiveness.
Being a Heritage parent, I was familiar with Jodo Gyan methods and had attended few of the workshops. IAAT gave me opportunity to learn the concepts and details of Jodo Gyan as a teacher. The multiple visits to Jodo Gyan school as part of our academic program was altogether a new experience and brought one of the precious learnings to me that I would choose to keep those closed to my heart. Jodo Gyan, runs in limited space and resources, It was a new realization that process of learning can be conceptualized and organized in any available space and resources. The relationship between the teacher and children and their comfort with each other was great. Their dedication towards education was something that stuck me most.
Every subject had its own parts of teachings be it language, science or social science. When I talk about social science, it’s more about Kamala di, our teacher. She is experienced in the subject matter and listening to her washed away all my previous notions about social science. We got to learn the new perspective and importance of social science. She teaches that children’s mind should not be filled with information rather they should be left to explore and experience themselves and build their own bank of information in journey of their quest and exploration.
She brought a new definition of history to us and taught us the importance of understanding the trajectory of tracing the past from the lens of the present. Each of her class left me with numerous questions and doubts. Her classes, leaves us with multiple pondering questions; which when worked upon brings lots of learnings. It taught me to enjoy the process of questioning, reflecting and then working on it. Evaluating oneself, retrospection and working on improvisation is the best way of learning.
During this academic course, I attended workshops on varied topics and subjects on hunger or others. These workshops added to my learning to a many folds on learning new and effective methodology and concepts. To my understanding, hunger and the difference between the purpose and the desire are very impactful. Each and every question asked, brings you the opportunity to think and this practice of thinking gets embedded into the thought and slowly becomes part of our system.
I do remember that I used to get stressed out and did not use to visualize the benefits of writing reflections of my assessment in first few sessions of MPL. But now, I like longer sessions on new topics and subjects, listen to the session attentively and love to search for the answers.
Now reflection is my journal which I want to write to go back to it and live these days again, this is what IAAT has given me.
As a part of curriculum, we had to visit few schools to learn from their process, practice and teaching methodologies. We visited three schools, ‘Jodo Gyan’, SDMC School’ and ‘Mirimbika’ and each of them were unique in their own way as far teaching pedagogy were concerned. Jodo Gyan gives the glimpse of dedication of its educators in their mission and how with limited resource one can chase you thought and dreams and like only plenty of resources are not the prerequisite of the mission. While SDMC was a beautiful example of how a strong desire overcomes all obstacles and one achieves the change you want to make. Lastly, Mirimbika has been an excellent example of how learning should be and how it creates impactful outcomes over a period of time. While discussing with Jayathi didi, she mentioned a sentence “take your heart to your class and rest will follow”. Back at the classes, I practiced this for few weeks now and it really works and I will keep this to my core forever.
Nervousness used to envelop me all around when I started my practice classes initially. Even staying an hour in the class used to make me tire. But slowly the hours increased and tiring gone away and now staying entire day in class is a fun.
It has been a great transformation from a nervous soul to a contained teacher and a doubtful person to a confident teacher. The course helped me learn the skills on keeping focused, bringing maturity in thought and the teaching styles. I am now enthusiastically oriented towards the education and its importance in society and nation building. It enhanced my skills and leadership abilities.
I would say that it has been a great personal and professional journey at IAAT. I am enjoying the moments, finding gems in the past and looking forward to tomorrow. Using my strength, sousing to save and grow and overall not forgetting the compass of my journey. My journey at IAAT has been more enjoyable, provoking, purposeful, motivating and productive. I am blessed.
My joining of IAAT has been a stepping stone in the beginning of my journey keeping the higher purpose of my choice of serving and growing as an educator. The beautifully blended academic course content and framework has helped me bring radical change as an educator and has unfolded with a new vision of education, teaching and learning.
Our journey started with a weeklong offsite trip to a hill station and was designed to provide us an opportunity to know other participants and teachers; the events was so carefully programed to unfold many of the hidden potential in us and allow us to explore the other vistas of self. The year ahead on the academic program was challenging and required absolute physical, mental, psychological and emotional fitness. The intent of un-limiting ourselves and to bring self-realization, we took rappelling, trekking in mountains with additional pay load, cooking food for forty people with limited resources and lots of breakthrough sessions. To our great surprise, we were successfully completing all the challenges thrown to us one after another. The journey had already begun; we encountered varying difficulty, pain, challenges, fun and reflections and we were solidifying our thought and self-confidence each day. It made us understand the importance of coming out of our comfort zone and taking our first step. For us it was a glimpse of the year ahead and surely a platform to build a community with a defined purpose.
Returning back from trip, we started our class room courses which was structured and designed in such a way that undergoing the course embeds the purpose and thought in you gradually. The process of collective thinking, various discussions and knowledge building are amazing things that I saw it happening in our theory classes. Extensive exposure to practical classes has been providing us an opportunity to experimenting those theoretical principals and ideas in real time.
During the course I realized the importance and effectiveness of working in a group or crew.Each subject has its own individuality and while it is important to know what to teach in that subject, it is equally important to learn how to teach them effectively, and setting up oneself as a model in journey of our educational process. We learnt different methodology of effective teaching and helped me realize the different tools and
process to teach various subjects.
The entire process of partnering with children through their questions, wonder, discussion, collaboration and conclusion was at the core of learning in this program. For the effectiveness of teaching and realizing the latent potential of the children, we learnt to partner with children and facilitate them in their learning rather than to employ the concept and process of conventional unidirectional teaching. This course helped me learn and realize a whole new meaning of education, learning and teaching in modern time.
IAAT course content and carefully selected subjects has abundance learning opportunity for the educators. This has further reinforced my knowledge and concepts and has helped me evolve myself in this wonderful journey. We learnt child development and their psychology and at different growth stages and how does carefully frame of pedagogy help in shaping up the child for the demanding future of tomorrow. A truly amazing experience to witness how these work and theory works in children. Being a parent its importance and latent potential were unknown to me.
Mindful Personality Learning (MPL) gave an altogether new and innovative perceptive and depth at seeing anything and taught me to reflect and wonder on questions even if answers are not available at that moment.
I still remember when we started reflection journal most of us were not convinced with the outcome of it but again it was an experimental learning to see effectiveness of journal. It gave me the flavor of being restless with my questions. This restlessness brings dedication and requires effort to search for your answers; the restlessness ends with satisfaction when one gets the answers. MPL gave me the courage to dream and chase that dream until that is not realized, it also gave me a means to think beyond my boundaries and brought strength to achieve it.
For me, philosophy in teaching was new and interesting subject; it was eye opening to learn philosophy behind educational methodology. I learnt many new theories around philosophy of teaching whether these teaching are from Aurobindo’s or Mother’s, these are relevant in today’s context and social frameworks. “Nothing can be taught” and “From near to far” will always be with me. I was interesting to know that so many works have already been done on teaching and learning philosophy. It gave me a opportunity to think about different approaches and their combinational and integrated effectiveness.
Being a Heritage parent, I was familiar with Jodo Gyan methods and had attended few of the workshops. IAAT gave me opportunity to learn the concepts and details of Jodo Gyan as a teacher. The multiple visits to Jodo Gyan school as part of our academic program was altogether a new experience and brought one of the precious learnings to me that I would choose to keep those closed to my heart. Jodo Gyan, runs in limited space and resources, It was a new realization that process of learning can be conceptualized and organized in any available space and resources. The relationship between the teacher and children and their comfort with each other was great. Their dedication towards education was something that stuck me most.
Every subject had its own parts of teachings be it language, science or social science. When I talk about social science, it’s more about Kamala di, our teacher. She is experienced in the subject matter and listening to her washed away all my previous notions about social science. We got to learn the new perspective and importance of social science. She teaches that children’s mind should not be filled with information rather they should be left to explore and experience themselves and build their own bank of information in journey of their quest and exploration.
She brought a new definition of history to us and taught us the importance of understanding the trajectory of tracing the past from the lens of the present. Each of her class left me with numerous questions and doubts. Her classes, leaves us with multiple pondering questions; which when worked upon brings lots of learnings. It taught me to enjoy the process of questioning, reflecting and then working on it. Evaluating oneself, retrospection and working on improvisation is the best way of learning.
During this academic course, I attended workshops on varied topics and subjects on hunger or others. These workshops added to my learning to a many folds on learning new and effective methodology and concepts. To my understanding, hunger and the difference between the purpose and the desire are very impactful. Each and every question asked, brings you the opportunity to think and this practice of thinking gets embedded into the thought and slowly becomes part of our system.
I do remember that I used to get stressed out and did not use to visualize the benefits of writing reflections of my assessment in first few sessions of MPL. But now, I like longer sessions on new topics and subjects, listen to the session attentively and love to search for the answers.
Now reflection is my journal which I want to write to go back to it and live these days again, this is what IAAT has given me.
As a part of curriculum, we had to visit few schools to learn from their process, practice and teaching methodologies. We visited three schools, ‘Jodo Gyan’, SDMC School’ and ‘Mirimbika’ and each of them were unique in their own way as far teaching pedagogy were concerned. Jodo Gyan gives the glimpse of dedication of its educators in their mission and how with limited resource one can chase you thought and dreams and like only plenty of resources are not the prerequisite of the mission. While SDMC was a beautiful example of how a strong desire overcomes all obstacles and one achieves the change you want to make. Lastly, Mirimbika has been an excellent example of how learning should be and how it creates impactful outcomes over a period of time. While discussing with Jayathi didi, she mentioned a sentence “take your heart to your class and rest will follow”. Back at the classes, I practiced this for few weeks now and it really works and I will keep this to my core forever.
Nervousness used to envelop me all around when I started my practice classes initially. Even staying an hour in the class used to make me tire. But slowly the hours increased and tiring gone away and now staying entire day in class is a fun.
It has been a great transformation from a nervous soul to a contained teacher and a doubtful person to a confident teacher. The course helped me learn the skills on keeping focused, bringing maturity in thought and the teaching styles. I am now enthusiastically oriented towards the education and its importance in society and nation building. It enhanced my skills and leadership abilities.
I would say that it has been a great personal and professional journey at IAAT. I am enjoying the moments, finding gems in the past and looking forward to tomorrow. Using my strength, sousing to save and grow and overall not forgetting the compass of my journey. My journey at IAAT has been more enjoyable, provoking, purposeful, motivating and productive. I am blessed.
