Surjeet Khanna
WHAT MAKES ME A PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPAL
Inculcating a progressive perspective and translating it into action is not just an imperative – it’s a chosen choice. Being alive to a world which is constantly thinking and enlarging its boundaries of new possibilities, how can a responsible school leader be content within a comfort zone. I push boundaries constantly, for myself and alongside my teachers, students and support staff. I involve parents and management too. I read extensively, network intelligently, work with honesty and introduce new thoughts and refine old initiatives. My school is winning accolades, venturing into interesting domains, especially in STEM subjects and demonstrating greater leadership with each day at both student and teacher level. To me, this means progress. Together we make up the heart and soul of a remarkable place called DPS Greater Faridabad.
MY MISSION AS A PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPAL
Being a progressive principal would extend me both, a motivation and an enhanced sense of responsibility. I shall use it as an affirmation of my bid to be bold and out of box kind of leader and would ensure that this title is perceived by all stakeholders as a well earned recognition. There is no pleasure in receiving a little to which your claims appear false to those, who share your world of effort and leadership. My mission is to create a positive and effort oriented school everyday in which relationships, personal connect and faith play an important role, where learning is possible, where learners remain motivated to work hard and see a meaningful connection between their today and tomorrow. My vision of education sees me seeking to build individuals who are creative, confident, empathetic and well socialised. I shall seek to achieve the above with higher confidence in my ability. I endeavour to provide freedom to flourish and this freedom enriches my school in countless ways.
LEARNING BY DOING
Our school has moved away from textbook method from day one. Projects are interdisciplinary across all core subjects, parent effort is strongly discouraged in executing projects. For eg. In Social Science, in order to study India in its diversity at class IV, VIII, we host Indian States Exhibition-‘Rangelo Bharat’ wherein every section researches a chosen state extensively and put up amazing stalls on their state with research, on costumes, traditional games, dance, music, worship, festivals, foods, attires, tourist attractions etc. Parents are invited and media writes about it.
To participate in Inter-DPS National Heritage Festival (2016) in folk art, about 22 students learnt the traditional art form of Saura art style from an indigenous artist of Orissa, Mr. Bal Krishna who was invited to stay at school for two weeks. We won the second position at national level where our students painted a canvas using Saura art form on the spot.
To set up a stall on Harvest Festival of Tripura, two students and two teachers travelled to Tripura to conduct first hand research and collect information for another Inter-DPS event in which we won at national level.
Experiential learning is the mantra at Little Wonder Wing (Jr. School) where activities like Markets, Helpers are organized to cement learning by participation.
Some of the other extensive research based projects we have executed are:
- Headgear of the Tangkhul Nagas.
- Kesh Vinyaas – study of hairstyles of the Kushan period.
- Handlebar Moustache.
We actively execute outdoor visits such as Police Station, Bank, Place of worship, Traffic Park, Fire Station for little ones and National Science Centre, Asola Wildlife Sanctuary, Rocksports, Adventure Camp, Night Sky watching at Sariska, Museums, Parliament House etc. for middle school. The list is long and meaningful.
INTEGRATED CURRICULUM
FA activities are thematic and interdisciplinary in order to comprehensively cover themes as well as demonstrate linkage with different subjects. The big gain in that a school like ours, which strengthens STEM with liberal arts education, alongside focuses on teaching students to think and communicate clearly. Students learn to tackle problems by looking at the context in which they occur in real life, in communities or environment around them. Problems and solutions are both carefully shown in their context to real life. They learn how to keep learning. We believe that a generalist can be taught to be a specialist but it’s almost impossible to teach a specialist to a generalist. Therefore, there is encouragement for alertness to life in all its shades.
INTEGRATION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTO EDUCATION THROUGH FACULTY
A beautiful example of integration was our school enterprise ‘Gift a Plant’ which was initiated by our Social Science teacher, Ms. Asha Dahima after an internet research on promoting entrepreneurship. This project, led ably her slowly involved the whole school including parents of classes Nursery – X in a big way. It focused on gifting a bit of greenery through artistically painted pots prepared at school carrying a green plant of choice from the range grown at the schools’ nursery under care of. Students of core team of class VIII-IX lobbied for orders at PTMs for birthdays, anniversaries, festivals and arranged a beautiful plant to be delivered on the said date across the entire school. The school generated about 35,000 rupees which were used by school community service at Govt. School, Alika.
PROBLEM SOLVING & CRITICAL THINKING AMIDST THE FACULTY
Our school is effective because there is a lot of decentralisation and teacher – led initiative and collaborative efforts are strongly encouraged. With agreement on value system to be upheld, all departments function with fair amount of autonomy for scholastics and co-scholastics domains related to their subject. The textbook selection, the designing of assignments, revision sheets, the oral and written evaluation, the individual and group activities incorporation of technology and media inputs, the assessment, the remediations, the felicitation etc. are all led by teachers at every subject and class level. Brainstorming happens regularly especially on WISE SATURDAYS (on Saturday every month devoted strictly to teacher training and skill sharing) and consensus is built and then followed through. We evaluate candidly and learn from experience. The class and school discipline is a common responsibility. There is respect for our teachers’ view and freedom to start an initiative and no judgements are passed if it does not succeed. We tweak it a little and move on. For eg. the problems of girl students not wearing cycling shorts and dengue and chikungunya compelling us to allow civil full sleeves and leg covered multi coloured clothes. Teachers got together to suggest we add a track suit. The designing as well as cloth selection, the pricing, the sizes, the logo and aesthetics were finalized collaboratively. The track suit is really attractive and is being used on PE, Dance, Period Days and as well as during current season health hazards.
GROUP WORK AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL SKILLS AMIDST THE FACULTY
We talk a lot. With confidence I can say that every teacher of the school finds the Principal approachable, sensitive and impartial. I uphold a strong sense of justice and fairness. I do not gossip and do not encourage tale–telling. So our school is fairly clean. This makes it possible for teachers to team up. ‘Educating the whole person’ happens actively through Staff Meetings which are held often as on every Friday, is a stay back day. Teachers’ personal life crisis moments are supported and this too helps teachers learn to support each other. We encourage articulation actively. Teachers are encouraged to build skills (for example speaking in English by PE/Hindi Teachers/address by a teacher on every Assembly at school). All school events are conducted collaboratively .Several Co-Scholastic Committees are in place to provide opportunities to conduct events, competitions,maintain websites and facebook page, prepare newsletters, magazine, conduct assemblies and much more.
UNDERSTANDING & ACTION BASED LEARNING
Strong focus is given to application based assignments and examination papers. Project work is action oriented. Concepts are reinforced creatively. For e.g. class VII revised the Digestive System by writing fun stories in groups about a land called ‘Digestopia’ where all organs, juices, processes became fun activities in a sequence and all terms were learnt with enjoyment.
COLLABORATIVE & COOPERATIVE LEARNING PROJECTS FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
The skill building of teachers is an important priority for us. Teachers attend workshops and share their learning by conducting many workshops at school. Several collaborative activities are organized at our school. For e.g. all teachers of language subjects (English, Hindi, Sanskrit, French, German and Librarian) attended the four – level creative writing workshop, where teachers mentored and collaborated to learn creative writing. Spread over May 2017 to Sept 2017 this workshop has added both skills and commandeer to the language teachers of English, Hindi, Sanskrit, French and German subject teachers. Sports teachers have conducted several fitness workshops. IT Department has been conducting workshops to lead experiments in using platforms like Steam Education using iPads to design effective course material, conducting effective assessment using OMR, using various IT Apps like Mindspark to enhance Mathematical skills, conducting technology workshop for teachers, arranging TED Talks, MOOCS and usage of Smart Boards for student learning successfully at school. Students visit Goonj to handover their contributions, shot a media film on the activities of Goonj and screened it in all classes on the smart boards. Recently, the teachers of the school collaborated to produce a book encapsulating experiences of teachers which was released by the Pro-VC at Teachers’ Day celebration.
EDUCATION ACCENTUATING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY
Attitude and value building for students and teachers come together at school. For e.g., we execute a 100% participation based project with class VI and VII in 2016 on Child Rights in collaboration with Republic of Slovenia and Bachpan Bachao Andolan. This became a school wide campaign, whereby the entire school staff actively got involved with Special Assemblies, Exhibitions, Interviews and Awareness building campaigns. The Ambassador of Republic of Slovenia visited the school on February 10, 2017 to felicitate student ambassadors for the Child Rights Project. In 2017-18, the Child Rights education initiative has been introduced in classes I, II, III as well. To successfully execute such initiatives, it is imperative that a school uphold social responsibility and safeguards democratic rights of all.
DESIGN & DELIVERY OF A LEARNING ECOSYSTEM WHEREBY HIGHLY PERSONALIZED LEARNING ACCOUNTING IS DONE FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL’S PERSONAL GOALS
There is a recognition and appreciation vide written communication and public acknowledgement of good work done and initiative launched and achieved. Teachers are encouraged to enrich themselves beyond academics by assuming extra responsibilities and they are supported to achieve success by creating time, by procuring materials, by adjusting classes, giving resources for expenses deemed necessary etc. Teachers write reports on work done which are shared within school and on facebook page too.
INTEGRATION OF COMMUNITY SERVICE AND SERVICE LEARNING PROJECTS INTO THE DAILY CURRICULUM
Our student led programme Happytude Together is about making community service real. Our students and teachers have been conducting workshops, playing matches, doing art, building awareness on blood donation, gathering donations of usable educational materials, clothes and more , specially at Govt. School, Alika and Govt. School, Badoli. Through ‘Gyarah Muthi Daan’, our students collected and donated grain to labourer families. Our online portal of RedRevolution@dpsgfaridabad.com acts as a bank with local blood banks. We are a collection centre of Goonj. Recently our students visited Goonj to hand over contributions, made a film on activities of Goonj and screened it in all classes on the smart boards.
FUTURISTIC SELECTION OF SUBJECT CONTENT
While subject content is governed by NCERT, its interpretation is enriched by adding learning material, films, clips, facts and stories etc. which compel attention to skills of the future. For us, collaboration, problem solving and empathy are important skills of the future and our activities focus on building them. There is a lot of importance for intra activities, not just inter activities so that there is 100% participation is competitive activities conducted as per the school calendar. Competitiveness and collaboration are encouraged equally.
LIFELONG LEARNING AND SOCIAL SKILLS OF FACULTY MEMBERS
We encourage reading books, seeking out information and sharing it. Our online teacher learning sharing platform VIRGO (Go Virtual) for all teachers of the school enables sharing of informative, articles, stories, research findings between teachers. Teachers post activities, pictures and videos of common interest and this promotes perspective building actively. Also, our fortnightly special 50 minute period, ‘My Learning, My Research’ encourages teachers to use the library resources to learn new information and enrich their skills. Our school does not operate in silos. There is collaboration at every level and subject and everyone contributes to build an environment wherein initiatives are conceived and carried through and fulfillment experienced. Teachers are constantly encouraged to move ahead of anxieties and differences through communication, persuasions and letting go that which may hold them back.
FACULTY ASSESSMENT & EVALUATION OF THEIR INNOVATIVE PROJECTS & PRODUCTIONS
The assessment regime for teachers is well defined.The school teachers vote to select a fellow teacher to serve the role of Subject Mentor.The Subject Mentor in turn provide academic leadership to the subject, organizes weekly faculty meetings, documents discussions are held on academic and co-curricular activities of the subject, monitors follow up as execution and reports to Principal. Further, as per a prepared schedule, the Mentor observes two cycles of teacher lessons through a mutually prepared and approved format. Observations are signed by teacher mentee.
Thereafter, the entire subject team evaluates the common threads of improvement as well as appreciations. In addition, each teacher conducts a peer evaluation report and a self-observation report. Then, assessment of performance happens at three levels. Teachers are encouraged to visit and observe classes of peer colleagues and share feedback. There is honesty and trust in this arrangement and not being judgemental. Notebook checking too is counter-checked by HM at Junior and Middle School level by a written feedback. No initiative taken by a teacher is ignored or unseen. Also, the annual appraisal of performance, both scholastic and beyond scholastic is done with comprehensive attention to information document under several heads in a detailed form which is designed and circulated by HR Department. A Teacher is assessed, guided and areas of extra effort are commended with clarity. The appraisal is done at the level of the HM, followed by Principal and finally Management of the school. This assessment is taken seriously by all concerned.
PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY TO FACULTY EMPOWERMENT
I uphold faculty empowerment with absolute and total gusto. It’s the life line of a school. I go out of the way to seek out professional platforms for teachers across all subjects, new areas and new skills. Being an active training resource with Delhi Public School Society for its school across India, I actively facilitate learning through workshops and interactive sessions. My teachers also conduct training sessions for DPS at HRD Centre. In 2016-17, my teachers participated in 48 workshops.