SUNIR NAGI
WHAT MAKES ME A PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPAL
I believe I am a lifelong learner, learning begins from womb to tomb. I have commitment towards duty and good leadership skills which are commended by stakeholders of my school. I believe in integrating Academics with values in students which is of utmost importance in today’s India. Students should be involved in problem solving skills & critical thinking to make them independent learners. My strong beliefs and ideas make me a Progressive Principal of India.
MY MISSION AS A PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPAL
A student should always be motivated to strive towards excellence. Being a Progressive Principal, would help me achieve my mission of positing knowledge as liberation. My vision is to create exceptional students who make an amazing world for us to live in, with constant research and help us in the development of our country.
LEARNING BY DOING
A leader leads by example. Hence I believe I am a born leader & I should be able to reach out to my students. Regular planning is done & ideas shared amongst the teachers where we interact & demonstrate to each other how to involve the students actively in the teaching – learning process. Students learn the best when we involve them & make them do activities in class or plan projects conduct seminars or take up flip classroom activities. We at Pallavi Model School, Alwal continuously strive towards using all the multiple intelligence theories in classroom. I have 28 years of teaching experience & I implement the best & most successful teaching strategies with my students.
INTEGRATED CURRICULUM
Students learn best when they are exposed to the vastness of each subject & how every unit they learn can be interwoven with other scholastic & co-scholastic subjects. Our teachers design integrated projects based on different themes and they are then integrated with other subjects say we have done an integrated project on cricket & tried to blend in cricket & music, cricket & Art, cricket & history, cricket & biology, cricket & maths. The beauty of it all is how well the students put everything together & spun a tale around it with rhythmic poetry & songs. Live illustrations were done & the game was depicted on field & students were the commentators. It was indeed an amazing experience.
INTEGRATION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTO EDUCATION THROUGH FACULTY
Today’s students are way ahead than our generation, they just need proper guidance, we just took up NDTV Behtar India project where we had to fulfil 3 talks & the 1st one was being an entrepreneur & collecting funds to eradicate dengue, instead of going from door to door our students came up with an amazing idea: they prepared a lot of Artwork and sold it in school, they took help of parents & teachers & cooked food in school, they set up a canteen & sold this food in the school premises, they collected the money made the accounts statement for it and transferred the money in to the account of NDTV Behtar India. The 2nd & 3rd project were cleaning up our surroundings & motivating other people to the same. We got support from locals after doing Nukkad Natak, we were able to involve the local police & lead a really our journey culminated by cleaning up the Mothkunta Lake at Alwal. The video is uploaded on YouTube.
PROBLEM SOLVING & CRITICAL THINKING AMIDST THE FACULTY
Problem solving & critical thinking have always been my vision & I strongly believe that students should be given such projects that necessitates they use skills of critical thinking & problems solving to apply while doing the projects. The students are usually divided into groups & activities are given to allow them to come up with constructive ideas to solve an issue and come up with solutions plaguing the issue
GROUP WORK AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL SKILLS AMIDST THE FACULTY
Teachers need to be trained periodically to adapt themselves to the changing educational demands & scenario at Pallavi. We have micro teaching sessions where we have peer teaching sessions, where teachers learn from each other. Teachers meet their group members & devise plans and activities to keep the students engrossed & fast learning amongst them. Staff needs rejuvenation too. Every 3 months we plan & have team building activities, outings, cooking & eating together for fun & bonding. This closeness reduces professional rivalry amongst the staff & boosts their morale. We have coordinators at every level who keep their teams motivated after planning strategies with the principal. I could see the enthusiasm built up amongst our teachers when we announced the theme Retro-fashion for this teachers’ day. Each group came up with innovative ideas to outdo the other and their novelty surprised me.
UNDERSTANDING & ACTION BASED LEARNING
Usually a lesson like banking and credit is done within four walls of a classroom. But this year I took the students of Class X to ICICI bank and they were shown the entire procedure of how a bank functions, students answered a questionnaire after visiting the bank. Learning was faster by this process. At middle school level where students had a lesson on industries we took them to a small scale industry which manufactures paper bags our students carried an old newspaper each and learnt the act of making paper bags thereby they learnt the idea of making our planet free of plastic. The pre-primary classes were taken to Sarvadharmasthal to spread the message of secularism and God is one. They visited a temple, Gurudwara, Mosque and Church in one premises.
COLLABORATIVE & COOPERATIVE LEARNING PROJECTS FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
Faculty meets every Thursday (once a week) and shares ideas of writing and innovative lesson plans. They discuss ideas & projects which worked effectively in classroom. Teachers come out with presentations and given a chance to come up & express their ideas. On a regular basis I ask them to share their ideas for development of school and betterment of students.
EDUCATION ACCENTUATING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY
I am a Resource person of CBSE Southern India for inclusion and inclusive strategies and also Social Science. My experience of teaching the subjects and conducting workshops at different places has taught me to give freedom of expression to my students. To me democracy does not mean only voting, it also means freedom given to students to express themselves and give ideas on how I can help to give my best to the institution. I have an open door policy whereby students are free to walk into my room and express their ideas.
DESIGN & DELIVERY OF A LEARNING ECOSYSTEM WHEREBY HIGHLY PERSONALIZED LEARNING ACCOUNTING IS DONE FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL’S PERSONAL GOALS
Students understanding of a concept is evaluated the best when they are able to respond in class. We have a unique way of testing students on a daily basis which is called RCT – Recall Concept Test. Classes I to XII answer 5 questions of 1 mark each as a method of recall at the beginning of the period. The teacher checks the marks and is able to analyse the understanding of the students based on the marks secured. Majority of students haven’t been able to score well then there is a problem in teacher’s methodology & she has to change it to adjust to the learning pattern of the students. This regular testing helps us to know the level of understanding in every class.
INTEGRATION OF COMMUNITY SERVICE AND SERVICE LEARNING PROJECTS INTO THE DAILY CURRICULUM
We have formed a social service club in school which works under the aegis of the Rotary Club and is called as the Interact Club. The teacher in-charge of the club, plans doing with the captains of the club regarding monthly collections. I have started an idea called ‘Power of One‘ where every student contributes one fist full of rice/sugar/1 onion/1 potato/soft toy/ one note book etc. We donate it all to an orphanage. Students pay monthly visits to old age homes and prepare programs for the not so young to bring smiles on their faces. They generously donate items collected in school to the inhabitants of the old age home or orphanage. GHMC has come up with a unique idea called ‘Wall of Kindness’. We collect books and pens, pencils, old clothes & leave it there and people in need take them away.
LIFELONG LEARNING AND SOCIAL SKILLS OF FACULTY MEMBERS
We live in a world which is globalised, if our thinking does not evolve with time we will stagnate. Our future society needs children who have skills required to blend with the global world. We have taken up ICT in school as a compulsory skill development subject. Students are thought to use the skills required to contribute to the growth of society. I can proudly say our school kids have bagged the second place in game designing in the state of Telangana for 2 consecutive years. Students are made to understand that skills acquired in school will go a long way in life to help them contribute richly for growth of the global world. Man is a life long learner and experience is the best teacher. Works experience is taken up for higher classes where students are taught to make articles which are saleable and can help them earn their pocket money.
FACULTY ASSESSMENT & EVALUATION OF THEIR INNOVATIVE PROJECTS & PRODUCTIONS
I have developed a peer assessment policy in school. Faculty are assessed by their peers teaching the same subjects, their coordinators and by students annually. Self-appraisal forms are filled by teachers. I keenly observe their progress in school and give regular feedback to them on a one to one basis every six months to tell them their strengths and areas to be worked upon.
PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY TO FACULTY EMPOWERMENT
As I said I believe man is a born learner, growth happens when a teacher believes to survive in an era of technology and an era where students can come up with smart doubts she has to be a constant learner for which she has to regularly research. I always tell teachers to top the charts and get the Badge of Innovative Teacher of the Month or Best Teacher of the Month or get Principal’s Certificate of Appreciation, a teacher has to sharpen her axe. Learning constantly happens around us it has to be observed and practiced to excel.