Mentor Magazine | November 2017 | Volume 11 | Issue 08 by Mentor Magazine

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Share your thoughts for Mentor Online (mentor.lxl.in) on following topics: Online Learning Tools For Students Factors Affecting Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Performance In Exams Emotional Well-being of Students During Exams We thank our contributors for their informative write-ups under Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Choice: Visual Communication for 21st Century Schools: Dr. Ritwij Bhowmik Healing Power of Music: T. Veena Passion Quotient: Virender Kapoor

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Share write-ups, videos and infographics on any of the topics above at info@lxl.in and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll publish it Online!* You can also contribute under School Pedagogy, Governance, Innovation, Leadership or Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Choice categories KKK @L@ =B

CONTENTS January 2018 | Volume 11 | Issue 08 | É 540

MENTOR THOUGHTS 4 From the Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Desk

SCHOOL INNOVATION 18 Digital Expressions

Mentor Conclave 2017 - Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Wrap

Building a Strong School Communication

5 Sultan Speaks

Redesigning Education for the Future

Exploring a fairly new space

SCHOOL PEDAGOGY

22 Making School Into An Iconic Brand

6 Visualising comics as an educational tool Consuming child-friendly content

Digital Marketing for Schools

Embodying the soul in the design

24 Mission Guaranteed Learning Causing a global impact

SCHOOL GOVERNANCE 8 Rural Education in India Problems and Solutions

10 Safe Schools

26 CARES Management Framework for Schools Creating and Managing Human Capital

28 Legal Protection for Schools

Adopting effective safety measures

Safeguarding Schools and Students

SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

30 Exploring Mythology and Beyond

12 Collaborative Classrooms Teaching as a team sport

Revisiting our roots

32 A Picturesque Story That school in a village

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MENTOR THOUGHTS

January 2018

From the Editor’s Desk Kalpa Kartik, Editor-in-chief, Mentor Magazine, Director, LXL Ideas

usability and applicability in schools by their leaders. The sessions resonated with every school stakeholder because of the diverse portfolio of invited speakers and the relevant talks.

“The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and life-changing experiences” This quote by Fernanado Pessoa, a famous literary ﬁgure was proven right when we saw a fabulous turn out at Mentor Conclave 2017. An active participation by principals and teachers helped shape the conclave as a remarkable learning experience making it an appropriate culmination of a fantastic year gone by. We would like to thank all our participants and readers for the continued support and wish the next year brings them new lear nings, experiences and accomplishments in plenty.

After every session, participant feedback was collected to help us know their thoughts and create a better learning experience for the next time. The graph displayed depicts the ease of implementation of thoughts in school . With everyone's continued support and acceptance, we aspire to bring more lessons of life in years to come.

Keeping in line with Mentor Magazine's goal of sharing ideas, views and opinions that can be implemented in schools, Mentor Conclave 2017 saw the community share, question and learn.The two-day event was thoughtprovoking, insightful and made some leaders even question their role and revisit their purpose in Education. This special Issue shares the learnings, knowledge and insight shared by all speakers during the sessions allowing all to revisit some key takeaways. The entire conclave was designed based on the feedback given by the community on the top 5 challenges our principals face. The focus of Mentor Conclave was on the relevance of content and its 4

kalpa@lxl.in

SULTAN SPEAKS

January 2018

Redesigning Education for the Future sultan@lxl.in

extremely insightful and pertinent topics and deliberations. Over 400 Educators from across India got an opportunity to engage in some very meaningful sessions. The highlight for me was a session titled 'Decoding Kids' - a panel discussion moderated by me with a group of 8 students aged between 9-16 years. During the session, kids responded to some of the major challenges faced by our education system including– How to motivate teachers? How to recruit the right teachers? Role of a Principal? How to deal with parents? How to handle difﬁcult children etc.? Their answers amazed everyone in the audience. Their in-depth perspectives and clarity of thoughts on the problems were very refreshing. The key message imparted by this session was that the best way for schools to innovate and evolve is by seeking support and inputs from their own students.

On our usual Sunday morning ride, I and my wife decided to stop over for a South Indian breakfast at one of our regular joints. There, I noticed an old man ordering a takeaway. On probing, I got to know that 75-year-old Venkatesh Uncle had recently retired from his job as a hospital admin but as a sole bread earner at his home, he now works at this highway hotel. He shared that he had met with a near fatal accident almost a decade ago that paralyzed his legs and his movement was possible only with special shoes with contraptions. But nothing affected his enthusiasm as even on that day he was looking forward to celebrating his mothers' 100th birthday. I was immensely inspired by his simplicity and zeal for life. The concept of retirement held no value for him when he had the self-confidence to face the life head-on. One of the ghosts left behind by the industrial era in our society is the concept of retirement that makes one feel redundant. Schools today face a big challenge when it comes to finding and retaining good teachers, on the other hand, most retired teachers have very little to do after retirement. T here is wisdom in onboarding 'Good Old Teachers' into the schooling system by creating specific and specialised roles for them. This will enable schools to benefit immensely from their experience and help the younger teachers learn from their perspectives.

Happy New Year! As we welcome another year into our lives, I hope that the coming year will give more opportunity to the experienced and retired educators to contribute to the progress of education. I also hope that educators give more importance to the innovation and perspective of their own students to help design the future of education for themselves.

The recently held Mentor Conclave 2017 in Bengaluru was a fabulous experience with

Syed Sultan Ahmed, Managing Director, LXL Ideas 5

www.lxl.in

PEDAGOGY

Visualising comics as an educational tool Savio Mascarenhas

avio Mascarenhas is the Group Art Director of Amar Chitra Katha, one of India's largest comic book series that is known for Tinkle, the fortnightly magazine for kids.His role in the company is to look into the art and design for both these magazines by heading a team of artists, cartoonists and colourists. He started his stint as a freelance cartoonist for Tinkle comics in 1992 and later joined as a fulltime staff artist in 1994. While at Tinkle he has co-created characters like Mopes and Purr along with writer Reena Puri, Janoo and Wooly Woo along with Writer Vaneeta Vaid and also created Super Suppandi and Adventures of Little Shambu.

Take us through the history of Comics in India. We are a land of stories and story-tellers. Over the years, Comics have been an effective medium of telling stories and an important platform of content consumption by our Children. In India, Amar Chitra Katha started 50 years ago to educate our children about our rich history, culture, mythology and stories of folklore, fables and parables like Jataka Tales, Panchatantra through comics. This vision of encapsulating our cultural heritage and social values in Comics transformed them from something frivolous to a powerful educational tool. Comics as a medium of education has been responsible for nurturing generations of readers with the habit being passed down to the next.

a script based on facts. The characters could range from historical ďŹ gures like Asoka to social entrepreneur like Verghese Kurien to a story told by Ruskin Bond, an award-winning English author. Art & Design: It involves penciling, inking and colouring to represent the story in the script as pictures. Penciling involves making the crude outlines of the characters. It requires a team of highly visually active people who imagine the words as a moving picture and sketch the characters. Inking is the second stage where you deepen the outlines making the pictures clearer. This is followed by colouring i.e. adding the colours and making it visually appealing. Inserting Text: the Last stage is putting the dialogues as speech bubbles and completing the story. A picture can speak a thousand words and without dialogues, each can be perceived differently by an individual reader. So, putting dialogues in context to pictures enables us to read and interpret stories in the way storyteller would like to narrate it.

What is the story behind creating a comic? Enlighten us on the entire process. Research & Scripting: The story of a comic starts from an idea i.e. identifying the need for a particular story to be told to the masses. This involves an editorial team which researches on the identiďŹ ed topic vetting several books, articles and other reading materials to prepare 6

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Comics can be an effective supporting aid to the academic content of textbooks for e.g. Children can understand historical characters like Asoka through a comic on the same. Comics being more visually appealing than textbooks helps engage students so that they understand and retain the story in their long-term memory. Comics are but a creation of a sequential act through pictures bringing the characters alive. Textbooks at the most can tell you a story but comics have the power to let you become a part of the story. Recently, several ICSE schools have included comics as part of their curriculum reďŹ&#x201A;ecting the fact that schools are also starting to realise the value of comics as an education tool.

Creating a Comic: Inking and Colouring

What are your most recent works as the group art director of one of the leading comic book series? My team has worked on a comic on Sardar Patel which took our editorial team a year of research and scripting. It is based on a book by Rajmohan Gandhi. We have also done a comic on Swachh Bharat where we have narrated the history of cleanliness in India dating back to Mohanjodaro and Harappan times to where we are at present. In addition to story-telling, we also suggest learning activities and social initiatives that students can be a part of to play an active role in Swachh Bharat. Thus, most of our works have sections of active engagement for the students to get involved in the community.

What are the different ways being used by your team to engage schools presently? In addition to visiting schools and recommending them to use comic books as an add-on to the textbooks, our team is also conducting students workshops on creating their own comic books. The students are encouraged to doodle, sketch and write their own stories. The workshops are a huge success with schools asking us to come back. In the time of digital media, where do you see the future of comics which are primarily print? Age group of comics primarily fall in the bracket of 7-14 years. In the pre-teens age, a majority of parents don't give a digital device to the child and encourage inculcating reading habits through books. What more, going digital is just a format. In future, comics would exist but the format may change. Presently kindle and book readers are primarily for reading novels and still not comic-friendly. At the most, one can use their PC to read a comic as pdf. Our market research has shown that comics are strong in print and majority of the readers are quite young. Though comics may expand on digital platforms, they would still stay put in print as reading habits in India are still rooted in books.

How can schools take advantage of comics as an educational tool? The world has always been dominated by visual learners with men in stone age illustrating their stories through cave paintings. Over the years, people talking through pictorial representations hasn't changed with the majority of children preferring pictorial content over something that is text heavy. Hence, it is important for schools to include comics as an add-on reading with their textbooks to enhance informed content consumption and retention in their students. 7

savio.mascarenhas@ack-media.com

www.lxl.in

SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

Rural Education in India Gourav Jaiswal

ourav Jaiswal graduated as an Electronics and Communications Engineer and was initially working as Network Engineer. During this time, he witnessed the lack of quality education in rural areas and a misconception prevailing in the society of quality education correlated with money. Being from a rural background himself he decided to work towards making education accessible and founded the NGO, Agrini. Agrini focuses on transforming rural government schools to provide equality in education for students inhabiting remote locations. Gourav has also been selected as “Young Connectors Of Future 2017” by Swedish Institute and has received multiple national and international fellowships like Learning and Leadership Journey, Wipro Education Seeding Fellowship, Dasra Social Impact program etc. Apart from being an entrepreneur, Gourav is also a speaker on education issues.

Global Education Model For learning to take place, a safe school ambience is a must. This safety is not limited to just the school infrastructure but also related to the teaching-learning practices adopted by teachers to engage students.

Globalised education today faces a large urbanrural divide in the quality of learning. Rural areas are marred by geographical isolation, reduced accessibility of good schools and teachers, economic backwardness pushing the children towards unsafe labour jobs and other socio-cultural barriers. Even if a school is present, inadequate basic infrastructural facilities, regular absenteeism of teachers and frequent use of corporal punishment by the t e a c h e r s m a ke t h e t e a c h i n g - l e a r n i n g environment hostile to the children. In this article, I have shared my experiences of working at the grassroots and my efforts to bring a change bottom-up.

Pain-Points of a Rural School Inadequate Rural School Infrastructure Schools in rural areas primarily Madhya 8

Pradesh and Jharkhand lack even minimal infrastructure. In the majority of villages, an abandoned house is changed to a school with no regards to the safety protocol and minimal guidelines for a school by RTE Frequently, a classroom space is shared by two classes with a single teacher shufﬂing between the two groups of students. These classes have no provision for support infrastructure like lighting and ventilation Schools also lack facilities for safe drinking water and toilets. A common reason for early drop-outs of girl students as observed is lack of functional toilets in the school Frequent accidents when students wander off school premises because schools lack a boundary wall is not unheard of. Old dilapidated buildings with the danger of roof falling exist in a lot of government and low-income private schools In a community school, a case had been registered of a child casualty who on touching a high tension wire hanging low over the school roof had to get both his arms amputated. The owner was actually a teacher who had bought the land because of

January 2018

its cheaper rate and even the gram panchayat had provided the sanction overlooking the school safety guidelines

Rural School Teachers The teachers also believe in old-school teaching and do not move beyond the chalk and talk method. This leads to inattentiveness and ďŹ nally children losing interest in the subjects. A saying in the village, 'Guruji marey dhama-dham to vidya aaya chama cham' meaning the more teacher beats, the more student learns, prevails in these parts of India According to Right to Education Act, our teachers are also involved in census and election duties and multiple elections along with updating voter's card takes makes it an all time consuming work

increasing access to quality content for the Children. We have realised kids today are visual learners so you cannot isolate them from the screen media, but, you can substitute the content with more age appropriate and useful matter So, we have started showing them youtube videos related to their coursework and giving them hands-on assignments like making working models for concepts learned We organise art competitions, quiz shows and cultural activities to engage students Student as teachers has also been used as a successful strategy where video recordings of example students are showed to motivate others to perform better Making power point presentations and use of other audio-visual tools have also increased our classroom participation Regular teacher training workshops on imparting value system, sensitivity to no corporal punishment, basic experiential learning practises are regularly undertaken

Participation by the Community A positive about rural education is that the community is very involved in the child's education. Awareness of quality education is leading to a mass migration as parents want to put their kids in a good urban private school. The high fees of such institutions result in parents investing more than half of their income on education. This again raises an urgency of making quality education accessible to such communities for an inclusive development. An undergoing experiment that involves parents and teachers together in the learning loop of the child has been undertaken by us in several villages. The idea behind is to raise empathy and accountability of each stakeholder to provide an optimal teachinglearning environment to the Children. This experiment if successful will pave way for making quality education accessible to all.

Increasing Violence in Students Violence in school and among students is a common occurrence. Common reasons found out were bad inďŹ&#x201A;uence caused by mass media especially television These children come from families where domestic violence is an everyday happening and for them, such violent behaviour gets normalised over time.

The way ahead Using new and evolving Pedagogical Tools A solution we are working towards is 9

gourav1009@gmail.com

www.lxl.in

SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

Safe Schools Shanti Krishnamurthy

hanti Krishnamurthy has over 35 years of teaching and administration experience in the Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Jamshedpur (1981-2002), M.Ct.M Chidambaram Chettiyar Group of Schools, Chennai (2002-2006), and as founder-principal of the Mahindra World School, Chennai (20062009). In 2009, she took over as the Principal of Chinmaya Residential School in Coimbatore. She is a member of Central Chinmaya Mission Trust Educational Cell which governs and runs assessments for all the Chinmaya schools across the country. Due to her long tenure, she is also associated with CBSE and is a member of the afﬁliation committee and runs inspections and frame board papers for CBSE Board. She has received the “CBSE Mentor Principal Award” in 2014 from the then HR minister Ms Smriti Irani and “Chinmaya Gaurav Award” and the “Most Inﬂuential Principal” award from the White Swan group.

What measures school needs to take care of while dealing with physical safety? Physical safety deals with infrastructure and school design including taking care of electrical, chemical and ﬁre hazards. All schools especially, Residential schools should have the preventive maintenance and repair measures in place and indeed requires with an ideal ratio of admin, electrician, plumbers and housekeeping staff. Health and Hygiene should also be a priority with facilities of safe drinking water, hygienic food preparation and a fully stocked inﬁrmary and a trained medical team to handle all sorts of medical emergencies to be taken by schools. Schools should also have clear norms and policies of safety measures during adventure trips and educational tours when students venture outside the boundaries.

How important is safety in residential schools? The essence of every school is safety. Schools especially residential schools exist because of the safety measures adopted and implemented by them. Children spend almost 10 months in a boarding school and no parent would leave their child behind unless they are completely sure about their child's wellbeing. School safety is not an added value addition to a school but should be the vision of the organisation. How important is a vision for a successful and safe school? Every successful organisation needs three important aspects: The Yantra (resources), The Tantra (strategy) and The Mantra (vision). Vision is the inspiring force that gives an organisation its very purpose and direction. It makes the output of a school very clear. Once the vision is clear, the school automatically sets up a budget and allocates the resources (yantra) and the strategies (tantra) also fall in place. School safety and security under physical, social and emotional aspects should be an integral part of the vision. It will then get its due importance.

What do you mean by social and emotional safety measures? What do they entail? Social and emotional safety primarily deals with a safe school environment and are closely related. Nowadays, increasing the threat of child abuse with frequent incidents of bullying, cyberbullying, sexual abuse in 10

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schools is raising a red ďŹ&#x201A;ag for the institution to safeguard their students. Schools need to start taking proactive measures to provide socioemotional safety to their students. It includes setting up vacation norms, regulations for visitors and workers, safety education, gender sensitisation classes and remedial classes under proper supervision. Ideally Parents also should be partnered with the school by providing necessary guidance for them. Emotional measures focus on building resilience in our students as we see mental and psychological disorders on the rise. A common factor underlying all is stress in schools. Focus only on academics and success have left the students unprepared to deal with failures. Thus, developing emotional competency involves equipping children with life skills, emphasis on nurturing goodness, increased participation in extracurricular activities and creating a proper mentoring and counselling systems in schools. All these will help in nurturing the emotional quotient in Children.

what is being taught in class, inquire and construct their own knowledge and there is no fear of failure or taking risks. Only then we can ensure the child's self esteem is not ignored which is important for emotional safety of the child. Can you share some of the best practises of your school to provide safe learning environment? Our school makes customised examination paper for the children at primary grades. If a child is weak on a particular subject, we make an easier question paper so that he/she is not disheartened by low marks. Over the years, we have seen a remarkable improvement and they easily catch up with the rest Every alternate day we have cultural talks in the assembly where we talk about our rich culture and heritage. We believe embracing one's culture goes a long way in respecting the social norms and being a good human being We have forums where students are free to talk and question about what they study and the textbooks. Supplementar y materials are provided to enhance thinking skills in Children. Holiday homework is typically based on values like sacriďŹ ce etc. where students have to present on how they practised the said value in their daily lives

How has teaching-learning changed with the time? Can a safe school environment ensure optimal learning? According to our scriptures, we had mantra approach to education i.e. a focus on intuitive knowledge against tutored knowledge. Tutored knowledge is about what is taught and intuition is that which is revealed to the student. The mantra education involved children meditating and contemplating and inter nalising, for the highest level of knowledge can only be revealed. Today, the approach is yantra education with excessive dependence on computer, calculators and book readers. Combined with what is imparted by the teacher as an authority, the students have become excessively dependent on others to think for themselves. This has resulted in killing the creativity in children. A safe classroom environment means where students control their learning, they question 11

principal@cirschool.org

SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

www.lxl.in

Collaborative Classrooms Vipul Redey

ipul Redey is the head of the school enablement at Khan Academy and in his role he fully leverages this versatile online learning tool that has revolutionised the world of education. Recently, Khan Academy has signed a MoU with Government of Karnataka to localise e-content for its schools and Mr Redey is involved in a talent hunt for people who can explain concepts through videos. Prior to Khan Academy, he was managing Cisco's IT training and certiﬁcations program, eleven schools under Global Discovery Schools' (GDS), twenty schools under Pearson's and 25,000 students pan-India. As the CXO at GDS and Director of Academics at Pearson Schools, he designed the daily classroom experience of thousands of students nationally. He is also a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, a TEDx speaker, and a Stanford University Graduate School of Education alumnus.

What are the benefits of collaboration at classroom level? Collaborative Classrooms have flexibility in teaching strategies and methodologies with multiple pedagogies being used It has the potential to bring in multiple perspectives giving a bird's eye view of concepts discussed Each teacher has a specific expertise and can complement the others by adding a different dimension of skill set Teachers can easily rotate in and out with no disruption caused by a substitute teacher Multiple student-teacher combinations are possible with higher chances of teacherstudent interactions with self-paced learning and lesser chances of teacher burnout. Increased probability of designing small group teaching sessions for speedy feedback The flexibility and inclusion of human element by relooking at teaching as a team activity will help in building a dedicated framework of peer support, mentoring and exchange of ideas in classrooms

What do you mean by collaborative leadership in a classroom? Today we see teachers as lone warriors responsible for all the teaching-learning activities in the classroom. This existing assumption has lead to stagnation of education with the entire responsibility of quality learning resting on our teachers. Changing this perception, we want to visualise teaching as a team sport. Collaborative leadership in a classroom would entail a mixed age classroom of 75-100 students handled by 3-4 teachers with each student moving at an individual pace through the effective incorporation of technological aids. Like any successful recipe, collaborative model entails loads of ingredients with various processing techniques and depends on the types of teachers, training that teachers have undergone, content they bring on the table and the frequency with which it is served to the students. Thus, there are a lot of dynamic and inter-related variables involved in building this model. This is not just a theoretical concept, the model has been tested in the Khan Lab School with positive results. 12

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How can teachers ensure collaboration in a classroom setting? First, the collaborative model should be built on the expectation of good faith between the teacher players. If you have four teachers and they have to work together as a team, it is necessary they understand their individual strengths and weakness and also of the other players. Like any team sport, teaching in the collaborative model has to be of situations where if a particular teacher's weakness surfaces, the other teachers whose strengths are the same jump to help them and vice versa. As in any model, where people are involved, there is no full proof mechanism but what can ensure success is a team of people who believe in the model so that they go that extra mile to make it work.

H ow i m p o r t a n t i s t e c h n o l o g y i n t h e collaborative classroom model? Using technological tools and E-Content can liberate teachers from lecturing and free class time for true human interactions bringing passion and fun to learning. Students can learn at a personalised pace with technology enabling visibility at the most granular levels. Before computers, this was done through worksheets developed for every student making the process cumbersome and only undertaken by schools with ample resources. Technology has made this step easier, userfriendly and economical for all schools to put in a classroom setting. Technology has the potential of bringing quality education to anyone anywhere in the World. The One World School House written by Mr Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy details how schools can connect with their students in the digital age and in collaboration create a fresh approach to learning.

“ Technology has the potential of bringing quality education to anyone anywhere As the model relies on teachers being aware of their weaknesses. How can we help them recognise their pain-points? Mentoring of teachers day to day work by an independent neutral third party is an efﬁcient way to help him/her travel on a remedial path. The third person should observe the classroom teaching, recognise the problems and the ways that the teacher can get past them. This person should not be a part of a hierarchy or someone who can negatively impact the teacher's career or inﬂuence the long-term career growth. Bringing in peers or a neutral teacher coach can go a long way in helping them improvise their teaching-learning practises.

How can schools adopt this model of collaboration. Where should they start? While bringing any quantum change, start at a speciﬁc point to experiment and learn from it. Middle grades are usually adopted by schools to bring in pedagogical changes as they are usually where learning crisis starts and also they are away from the threat of board exams to ensure room for experimentation. 13

vredey@gmail.com

SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

www.lxl.in

Collaborative School Leadership Prashant Mehrishi

rashant Mehrishi is the founder of iTeachFellowship, India's ﬁrst in-service Teaching Fellowship. It is a two-year professional development programme for regular teachers helping them polish their teaching skills. Mr Mehrishi is an MBA with ﬁfteen years of corporate experience in the IT and Insurance sector. Despite a successful career, Prashant felt something core was missing and he found his true calling in the education sector. He joined the Teach for India Fellowship (TFI) from 2013 to 2015 where he piloted their entrepreneurial idea through the 'Be The Change Project' and post a great response, he started 'iTeach' to address the need of professionally trained and skilled teachers. Mr Prashant still is associated with Teach for India and is a founder member of TFI Pune Entrepreneurship Club.

recognize that none can succeed without the others. Each has special expertise or unique capabilities that the others need. Each type of relationship identiﬁed above has special requirements and demands. As an institution proceeds from networking to collaboration, they take on more complexity, added commitments, time and resource requirements. Each relationship takes longer to develop and more supports and resources to sustain. Because of the required investments for relationship building, school leaders and managers should think strategically about what types of relationships they may want or need

Collaborative leadership is a management practice built on collaboration and focused on the leadership skills across functional and organisational boundaries. All workplaces including schools operate on either of the ﬁve relationships given below: Networking: most basic and informal way for individuals to work together. It Involves exchanging information and ideas and excludes working together on any activity C o m m u n i c a t i n g : a fo r m a l w ay fo r individuals to share information and ideas (newsletters, letters press releases, updates etc.). Little happens beyond the sharing of i n fo r m at i o n t h r o u g h t h e s e fo r m a l mechanisms Coordination: involves synchronizing operations or activities in order to make services more accessible and less redundant requires more trust than networking and greater time commitments from people Cooperation entails a much higher level of commitment and trust.It involves sharing of Resources, knowledge, staff, physical property; clients, money and reputation Collaboration develops when entities

Characteristics Of Collaborative School Leadership Tr u s t : T h e r e s h o u l d b e t r u s t a n d understanding between all collaborative members. Collaboration is built on mutual respect Shared Responsibility, Power and Authority: A c l e a r d e m a r c at i o n o f r o l e s a n d responsibilities through delegation and decentralisation of power 14

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them Access to services; faster delivery of services And reductions in Problem Behaviours School Suspensions Duplication and fragmentation of programs and services, including service and program gaps Feeling of isolation among agencies and people Student transience

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Collaboration develops when entities recognize that none can succeed without the others

Decision Making Systems: With delegation, placing appropriate decision-making authority along with participation of every stakeholder helps in building commitment ConďŹ&#x201A;ict Resolution Mechanisms: Flexibility to react to circumstances change and opportunities emerge and discovering new ideas of agreement and freedom to talk to express their views Consensus Building: Collaboration works on interdependence and symbiosis so leaders should help their people reach consensus. Only if they are in agreement, they will own the idea and its execution

Key Outcomes of Collaborative Leadership Shared ownership of goal setting and decision making Shared responsibility for each other Empowered teachers Better commitment and improvement in teachers Effective communication between all the stakeholders A productive school culture centered around learning Thus, collaborative leadership focuses on strategic school-wide actions directed towards improvement in the learning environment and shared among principals, administrators, teachers and others. It empowers employees, encourages broad spectrum participation in decision making and fosters shared accountability for student learning. This results in developing a school leadership for promoting lifetime learning.

Building Collaborative School Culture Collaboration fosters a climate of working together accelerating positive changes in the school. Stakeholders work together toward common goals and assume responsibility for every student's success. This results in improvements in: Academic achievement Productive learning during out-of-school time Attendance in school School climate Healthy youth development School safety Communication among providers More resources and better utilization of 15

pmehrishi@iteach.co.in

INNOVATION

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Digital Expressions Roshan Abbas

oshan Abbas has spent two decades gathering domain expertise in radio, television, theatre, events and BTL and has recently entered Bollywood with his directorial debut under the banner of Shahrukh Khan's Red Chillies Production. He is a reputed television and radio anchor having won 7 National Awards. Roshan entered the Event Management and Communication arena driven by the desire to provide an all-encompassing service to clients and thus, Encompass Events was born. Roshan is also currently a mentor partner at Glitch and is now a media entrepreneur and an angel investor in the media and technology space. He is passionate about and regularly conducts workshops on radio, mass communication and events.

important platforms of communication for any institution.

The modern life today is consumed by technology with digital communications becoming bigger with each passing day. Business institutions especially schools can no longer ignore this fact that digital mediums are shifting the process of consumers i.e. their parent's decision-making process. Presently, schools remain an island in the fast-moving and shaping digital world. While the schools have a control of internal communication i.e. information exchange within boundaries, they do not communicate well with the society. In this article, we will discuss a simple plan on how schools can start transitioning their communication on digital platforms.

Deciding the mode and mood of communication: As a start, Schools should decide whether they are building content for i n t e r n a l o r e x t e r n a l c o m mu n i c at i o n . Depending on that, the Facebook page can be made private or public respectively. Then, schools need to form a committee to decide whether the tone of communication would be formal or informal or categorise the topics under both the tones. Make a Content Plan: A content plan is a roadmap of what the school wants to post online i.e. making broad content buckets and then categorising all the information under them. The schools need to prepare their communication content and work at least a month in advance.

Choosing the right communication platform: Schools today g rapple with too many communication mediums including a few apps that are still in designing stage. Instead of trying new software, schools should invest in already build platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram that has mass outreach. The schools also should build a structured website and regularly update the content. Website and social media are the most

A digital media committee: Like schools have an editorial board, they need a committee with few representatives of the school including administrators, teachers and students on 18

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board. The students can be actively engaged in creating the communications content for the school with the teachers being the final filtering agents. The schools should also hire a public relations officer or press relation officer who could be a single point of contact between schools and their end audience. Structuring the Content Communication and Content are two sides of the same coin and A school can categorise their stories in four content buckets: Origin Story Every school should have their own mythology i.e. what prompted the school to happen and why is the school here. Old schools can present a rich historical and cultural timeline of them shaping and also being shaped since time immemorial. Small and relatively new schools can have a philosophical standpoint. It is important for every school to get their origin story right as it represents their vision i.e. the why of their existence.

public goodwill of a school . Hero/Shero Story Every story has a protagonist to cause maximum impact. So, why should schools be any different? In addition to achievement stories, the schools should celebrate an individual or a team accomplishment. For e.g. a school in Bombay recently uploaded a Facebook post of their students making a robot, another school posted inspiring stories of students who went to slum to let the dwellers become aware of digital payments. Building content for students, for students and by students is the best way to tap the power of expressing on digital media.

Value Story Schools should express their own value story similar to folklore like Jataka Tales or Aesop's Fables. A value story encompasses the traditional, cultural and value practises that are common to a school. For e.g. a school which place a high emphasis on students doing community work.

Engaging Students in School Communication It is high time; the schools start delegating the responsibility of developing and editing content to their students and include them in a school committee formed of representatives trained on digital media and communication. Podcasts which are an episodic series of digital audio and video ﬁles is also gaining popularity amongst students. The school can use the school journey time of students to engage them in communications through podcasts. Our millennial generation is well versed on the nuances of digital platforms and roping them in would not only help them learn a 21st century skill set but will also increase their accountability, ownership and loyalty towards school.

Achievement Story An achievement story makes the school visible i.e. is a concrete evidence of what the school has accomplished. It can be students participation on prestigious platforms or the social campaigns run by the school. Here, the schools need to engage with newspapers, reporters and other social media platforms through a public relations person. It is important that schools running a social drive increase their presence through digital platforms including coverage on maybe local news channels. This is very effective in building 19

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Digital Marketing for Schools Karthik Srinivasan

arthik Srinivasan is a communications professional with more than 17 years of experience across corporate communications, public relations, social media and digital marketing with over 6 years in social and digital media leadership roles. Currently, he is the National Lead Social for Ogilvy & Mather and heads their social media practise. He has worked with brands like IBM, Lenovo, BlackBerry, ARM, Intel, Cricinfo, IIM Bangalore, Vodafone, Crocs, Ford, Flipkart etc. across client and agency roles. He has won gold at Socialathon India 2015 and at Emvie 2015 for Best media innovation in social media and bronze at DMA Asia Echo Award 2015 for Interactive, creative use of data. He has trained business leaders, management professionals and IAS ofďŹ cers on social media, digital marketing and digital communications in organisations like GE Healthcare, IBM and Mphasis etc.

Why digital branding and marketing is necessary for schools In the past, the decision of shortlisting the schools by the parents heavily depended on word of mouth of few trusted people. Now, parents' opinions are being built and shaped by strangers online. It is ironical that there has been a lot of chatter around the school on digital forums like parents asking which school to consult or whether the school is good enough for their child and the school in the equation is missing in the conversation. Hence, schools are missing a great opportunity to do their reputation building and branding online and in the long run, they will be at a disadvantage. Online platforms give a chance for the school to lay down their perspectives, address concerns and also provide the sought after information.

name, geographical location, top people who work in the school and are active in the industry etc. After identifying the set of keywords, good digital monitoring tools give them information on people's implicit and explicit intent i.e. broadly what are people speaking and what kind of information they are seeking about the schools. Can you elaborate on how can digital monitoring be used to seek information on people's implicit and explicit Intent? Implicit Intent: Implicit means what is not told directly to the people but has an implied or hidden intent. Schools can work with Google and twitter like platforms to ďŹ nd how many people are searching their school, in particular, the broader geography where most searches are coming from and the keywords used by them in particular etc. so schools can actually undertake focused advertising on social media or Google ads mentioning best new age school on Sarjapur Road in Bangalore.

What should be the ďŹ rst step to taken by schools to start Digital Marketing? Digital Marketing for any company or institution requires them to start with Digital Monitoring, also called listening. This requires schools' to list down a set of brand keywords they identify with their school like the school

Explicit Intent: Explicit is visible where schools can get into open conversations with parents 20

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interpreting the required information. What tools can school use to structure their content and respond to their target audience? Tools like sprout social can help the school to schedule their posts for an entire month on their chosen social media platform like Facebook or Twitter and can also locate where people are speaking the most about your school. It will then send school the information like a Gmail inbox and the school can respond to the same email so that it goes to the target audience. Will schools' visibility on digital forums make them vulnerable to bad publicity? I think schools' participation online is a moot point because people are already discussing a lot about schools. It is happening in mainstream media, social media everywhere. It has become imperative for schools to be present online and share their point of view. So, in future when prospective parents are looking for that school, they don't form opinions based on strangers online but also understand the school's perspective. Schools for every parent are seen as a long-term investment making it important for them to keep their reputation intact in the long run.

and other people talking about them on forums like parenttree.com, indiaparenting.com etc. Here, schools should hire an appropriate person or a team which uses a human name can enter into conversations directly with the end audience. Please suggest some frequently used tools for Marketing Online? The top three digital monitoring tools currently used by all brands are Mention, Radian6 and Crimson Hexagon. These tools are being popularly used for broader digital monitoring and social media marketing. They actually ďŹ lter a lot of chatter that happens online within a set of keywords used and generates reports. The reports broadly include the public sentiment about the given keywords, the interest the topic has generated over a period of time and the key people talking about the school.

Can teachers be involved in the space of digital marketing for school? An interesting spin to the question would be involving the students in Digital Marketing of schools. For high school students, it could be a fantastic internship opportunity right at the school level wherein tandem with the teacher, they can do something hands-on. Most of these students passing out from college would end up doing digital marketing for companies, so why not start early. Ironically most children are already active online, so it makes perfect sense to channelise their potential in a more constructive and purposeful way.

Can the reports generated by these tools used by the schools directly? No, these are reports with raw data and have a lot of junk information. Like any software, they require human intelligence and processing to make sense of it. This is because most of the key words that schools use are not unique. Here, the school needs a data analyst to generate a sensible report by ďŹ ltering and 21

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Making School Into An Iconic Brand Sonia Manchanda

onia Manchanda is a Design Strategist and Graphic Designer, with 20+ years' experience in building creative organisations, training and leading interdisciplinary projects teams on massive transformational projects nationally and globally. Her work involves designing systems, creating sustainable brands and unique experiences besides building capability and capacity by designing learning systems. She is a Founding Partner at Spread Design + Learning where her mission is to spread design as a way of thinking and doing things. She is a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She is an appointed member of the India Design Council, is on the CII Design Council and is a Governing Council Member of Forge, an incubator in Coimbatore. Her Open Innovation and Design Strategy Project Dream: in has been awarded as a global game changer by Metropolis Magazine, USA.

Brand starts from the Brand Purpose.

Is a school just good education infrastructure or is it a construct, an idea that is shaped consciously, a unique learning experience. This construct i.e. the School Brand is not a static entity but an alive and moving picture. The perception of this construct is shaped in present in here and now by the many lives touched. If school infrastructure is the body, Brand is the soul of a school.

Brand Purpose Purpose is about a human centered approach in answering, “Why do we exist and what unique human problem exists in which we spotted an opportunity?” This is a human centered approach to integrate and be relevant while reframing problems as opportunities. Brand Strategy What will be the overall strategy to fully share and fulﬁll the Brand Purpose, Communicating ONE message and moving in ONE direction with integrity in our words and deeds. For this, the culture, rituals, values, symbols need to be imaginatively coded. If the Brand were a person, how old would she be, what would she wear, how would she speak will be brand strategy. After soul and body comes the mind of the brand i.e. the Brand culture and personality. Without this your brand can feel like a split personality. And every new teacher, student, incident will be shaping the spirit and culture of your School Brand.

I am Brand. Brand is me! The School Brand is a manifestation of the aspirations, of the parents, the children and the teachers. It is a mirror to their future, an ever changing reﬂection and exchange between the Brand and the Believer. Brand is a narrative, spirit, belief, faith, relationship, behaviours, journeys, yearnings, aspirations. Brand is a living, breathing, consciously created, constantly evolving construct! To develop a Live Brand, we need to consciously do what is called Brand Design. Brand Design is the grand design of your brand story. That will be touched and experienced by all concerned. The Brand Design of your Live 22

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Brand Experience The Brand Image is no longer created through advertising but through shared experiences. Thanks to the online space, the word spreads faster. Brand experience is living the purpose. Experience manifests in every touch point, every interaction and exchange. That has to be designed to have a unique feeling and response. This is where The Brand Identity, Positioning, Mood, Voice, the Physical Experience, the Online Experience, even the way you teach can and must reﬂect the difference you make and touchingly remind the recipient of your Brand's purpose and translates in into experiences with integrity and imagination.

Brand Image is created when the Brand Purpose, is translated into strategy, identity, c o m mu n i c at i o n a n d e x p e r i e n c e . I n a competitive space, if purpose is not translated into experience, for lack of connection a Brand can lose out. However, Iconic Brands are ones that are driven by purpose and have found ever n e w y e t u n o b t r u s i ve w a y s t o m a k e connections, create fresh stories, be different, experiential and alive!

marker for your school! Go one step further – what about branded pencils that have a hint of citrus oil to enhance happiness Sonic Branding: Capturing and conveying the essence of a brand in a sound. Why not a MOGO for your Brand. A musical Logo that has the essence of your brand in a sound Cultural Branding: Leapfrog the norms to create new ideologies that are relevant to the category. How about going against the grain, moving aside from the herd. In our work – when everyone in India was going a little crazy for International Schools, we created a bold new brand – the School of India. A school with Indian culture and values, global standards. An idea from India for the world Humanised Branding: Create an avatar that represents all the qualities and traits that you want your brand to have. A school is a journey for the child – we represented that journey as little boy and a girl going through the school, sharing moments of play, reﬂection and joy, in a School called Juniors' Journey Dynamic Branding: Where the entire experience in every moment experienced and expressed is unique. Why not a dynamic brand, like google – that is expressive. Why not a brand designed by students of the school everyday! Given evolving technologies, so much is now possible Content Branding / Branded content: shapes a continuous conversation. Videos that highlight the problems of the school's neighbourhood and solutions possible, created by the children of your school. But that's relevant only if the purpose of your brand is to nurture creative action

In a nutshell, Live Brand is a compelling new strategy where once you have been through a Brand Design process, you ﬁnd new ways to humanise the Brand.

Categories of Iconic Brands Sensory Branding: Using the senses to relate at a subconscious level. What about a 'smell', a 'sound', a 'colour' – a sensorial

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Mission Guaranteed Learning Anil Kher

nil Kher, a Chemical Engineer from BHU-IT, the Managing Director of Micro Interconnexion Private Ltd, a company manufacturing high tech 'Gold plated PCBs' for leading global players in sectors such as Watches, Automotive, Defence etc. Mr Kher is a member of Board of Technical Education, Goa, ex-member of Board of Governors of NIT, Goa and a member of CII Primary Education Council. As a Past Chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry Goa Council, he has also successfully completed project involving rural Government Primary Schools in Goa where at the end of four years, the rural schools outperformed the elite primary schools of Goa. Now, this project is planned to be launched as a National Mission to guarantee learning.

Need for an Enabled Future Prog ramme for Inter national Student Assessment (PISA) is a global survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students. All the assessment papers go up to 6 levels with increasing complexity. India last participated in the survey in 2009 where the results showed that not 1 in 7500 students could answer a level 4, 5 and 6 question while global average was 18% of students should go above 5. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in 2009 which is the largest household survey in Rural India focusing on child's schooling and basic learning i.e. reading the text and solving simple arithmetic found that 80% of students of class 4th were not able to read text or do simple two-digit multiplication. These shocking results exposed the deplorable state of Indian Education System and after much deliberation decision were made to focus on the building block i.e. our primary education.

enable 100% of grade 4 children to read and u n d e r s t a n d a s i m p l e p a r a g r ap h i n a newspaper?” The standard answer to this is 60 hours. Now if a child is spending 4 hours at school and from standard 1st to 4th, he/she goes to school for 200 days, that makes a total number of tuition hours to be 3200 hrs. So, something is genuinely wrong as these ﬁgures don't explain why the child after spending quality time in school is not able to grasp the fundamentals. In the quest for an answer, a state experiment approved by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to ensure learning was started. In 2009, a MoU was signed between CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) and Government of Goa. Five government schools were adopted and it was assured that using the school resources, the experiment will try to give better learning outcomes and evaluate the impact through independent testing. Unlike the majority of educational assessments based on storytelling and anecdotal evidence, this experiment used a benchmark against a control i.e. what has been the impact before and after. In this case, experimental group were the ﬁve rural

Start of an Experiment “How many hours of teaching do you need to 24

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capability of teaching basic concepts. The best way is to build competence in teachers on teaching skills he/she is not confident with. Ever y school has senior and experienced teachers along with new teachers. Encouraging weekly and monthly meetings where both sets help each other to make unit plans and daily lesson plans by giving inputs on teaching the fundamental concepts is an efficient and economical way of training the teachers without spending on external teacher trainers. This also improves relationships between the teachers and brings unity Hands-on Management: From the Director of Education to the Area Inspector and School Supervisor, everybody is looking at the service conditions i.e. whether the children are coming to schools or the lessons they have written down in the notebooks implies they know the particular matter etc. Thus, top to bottom nobody is interested in quality learning outcomes. It is necessary to launch guaranteed learning as a mission from the Centre so that the State and the officers have to mandatorily follow it

government schools involving around a hundred students and control comprised of same number of students from leading private schools of Goa. After four years, the experimental group outperformed the control group with 1% failure against 16% failure of students from the control group and the class average of rural schools was 75% as against 60% for urban schools. The key to success was found to be quite simple i.e. involving the teacher in accomplishing clear goals that have been mandated by State. The performance indicators of teachers were made measurable i.e. ensure that children by standard 4th are able to read and do simple arithmetic operations.

Successive experiments have proven that success of any educational programme on a global scale is correlated with the willingness of teachers to get involved. So, every initiative needs to take place through the regular teacher. The new trend of interventions is heavily focused on substituting the teachers with a temporary volunteer to ensure quality teaching. These initiatives won't work out in the long run as the moment teacher takes a backseat, his/her accountability to the job, students and school are lost. We now need to recognise that we are talking about the deﬁciency of a life essential service for more than 70% of our region and it is high time we as a Nation do something that is reﬂected on a National and International scale and not just in our reports.

Learning Takeaways: This experiment provided us with very important learning: Clarity in goals of teachers: Goals of our teachers and many and vague. Her obligation is to complete the curriculum and not to ensure visible learning outcomes for the children. Making goals clear, measurable and associated with quality learning is the ﬁrst step that needs to be taken Training of Teachers: Today most of the teachers recruited have D.Ed. or B.Ed. but again these degrees fail to reﬂect their 25

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CARES Management Framework for Schools N Shekar

Shekar has more than 35 years of experience as HR Entrepreneurship as well in Corporate Management. He has also developed an organisational development framework called “CARES” which has been used in part or full by leading Corporate Organisations. He was the Chairman of Carnegie Consulting Private Limited- a talent management consulting ﬁrm engaged in training, research and executive search services. He has also helped SME's like Stump Scheule & Somappa Deshpande Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, IDS, etc. in establishing Culture of Accountability and Recognition and Performance improvement. He was the mind behind the Talent Management function of the company- called 'Team Tejas Cares' and helped the organisation to establish Business Strategy as well as Recruitment of top talent from US and Multinational Organizations in India.

CARES Management Framework for Schools Schools might be an institution of creating human capacity but like any business, they need a management framework to safeguard their human resources (HR). HR Management is creator and manager of the human capital. To work effectively and efﬁciently, HR needs a regulatory framework around which they can do their task of managing resources related to the employees. Here, we will discuss the CARES Management Framework for Schools.

Objective of CARES Framework CARES is based on ﬁve objectives: Maximising Learning Maximising Pedagogy Maximising Employee Retention & Satisfaction Optimising Financial Performance Maximising Safety/Administration To accomplish all these objectives, the CARES framework lays down proper systems, tools and mechanisms in place.

CARES looks any business entity as a living organism symbolising the four functional faculties as major organ systems (biological) and the last one as the system of set of traits that deﬁnes the person (social) i.e.

Community Value (Respiratory System) Community Value deals with Strategic Quotient (SQ) that depends on the institutional goodwill. For this, the schools need to ensure these: Have a clear vision, a core set of values and a strong ethos that underpins all that they do and is communicated clearly to all the stakeholders A school's mission should be grounded in values and beliefs of creating public goods including effective education. A united mission based school culture can inspire and unite a school as a community

C - Community Value (Respiratory System) A - Achievement Value (Skeletal Muscular System) R-Recognition Value (Cardio Vascular System) E-Education Value (Neurological D/E system) S - Social Value (Personae) 26

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Recognition Value (Cardio Vascular System) For Recognition Quotient (RQ), the schools need to do the following: Recognising the contribution of every person in the system and making them feel valued from top to the bottom A clear and comprehensive career growth pathway Proper Grievances processes in place to help resolve situations and prevent escalation Adequate compensatory beneﬁts Performance management, assessment and rewards and recognition should go together Including Welfare programs to enhance the security of acquired human resources

A well-articulated vision and mission follows clearly deﬁned objectives and timebound goals and strategies Curriculum, programmes, administration, management, parents, teachers all embody the school. So it is necessary to incorporate the culture and values of the school community in all these elements Enrolments of students or recruitment of teachers should be done keeping it cohesive to the school climate Satisfaction of every stakeholder is important in this value chain for long-term investment

Education Value (Neurological D/E system) Education value deals with Competency Quotient (CQ) and focuses on creating a culture o f l e a r n i n g a n d d eve l o p m e n t i n t h e organisation. For this the schools should: Do an extensive competency mapping of understanding every person's skill set Competency development and training through updated and evolving pedagogical processes is necessary Social Value (Personae) Also called the Image Quotient (IQ), it is the reﬂection of vision, mission, values, knowledge and skills on which the entity has founded and built upon. For this, the schools need to: Build them into a brand Comply with all statutory provisions Structure their governmental processes by delegating and decentralising work to avoid delays In practice, no workspace operates in a vacuum and there will always be a combination of factors driving Human Resource Management in any organisation. Schools need to be able to identify and understand what they are in order to incor porate them into the CARES framework to put an effective plan together. Always remember, nothing is set in stone and there is no one size ﬁts all model.

Achievement Value (Skeletal Muscular System) Also called the Execution Quotient (EQ) , it gives shapes to great ideas by schools through Workforce planning that is an integral part of people management and ﬂows from organisational design to talent planning and forecast. The schools need to have an understanding of the kind of people and skill sets they need and how they can attract them Staff engagement practices which is a continued part of resource planning Performance Management of people recruited and clarity in demarcated roles Maintaining the ﬁnancial health of the institution Innovation in every structure, design and system 27

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Legal Protection for Schools Rahul Matthan

ahul Matthan is a partner with Trilegal and heads its TMT practise and serves on the management committee of the ďŹ rm. In this capacity, he has advised on some of the largest technology and telecom acquisitions in the country and domestic and international corporations on a wide range of regulatory issues. He has been included in The Mint newspaper's list of 25 People who Matter in Indian ECommerce. Mr Matthan has been involved in a number of policy initiatives including assisting the government in preparing the country's privacy law as well as its Unique ID law. He is currently a member of the Reserve Bank of India's Committee on Household Finance. Mr Matthan is also a frequent speaker and has a weekly column on issues at the intersection of law and technology.

Why are legal safeguards necessary for schools? Today, education is no more a social service but is becoming a business especially in light of all the legal compliance and regulations that relate to or can potentially impact schools. Since schools deal with Children, seen as the most vulnerable, the impact of what happens in a school is much greater. Today, we live in the digital era where information is available with a touch of a ďŹ nger making any incident viral in a few seconds making it necessary for schools to take the necessary precautions.

Please list the top two areas that schools need have legal protections in place. The Process of Outsourcing: Needs to be taken care by a legally binding contract mutually safeguarding both the parties.

Does the process of commercialisation have any legal implications for schools? How can schools overcome them? With commercialisation, schools have also started to outsource a lot of products and services e.g. school security, transportation, trainers for extracurricular etc. Outsourcing leads to dilution of the core of any business resulting in a need for added legal checks, balances, systems and processes. Schools need to frame a legal contract for protecting both parties interest when they outsource. These contracts share liability and schools should

Data Privacy and Protection: India doesn't have a proper legal framework for data protection resulting in an upsurge of cyber-crimes on a global scale. In an era, where theft and sale of stolen data are on an explosion, India being one of the largest owners of outsourced data processing in the World becomes the epicentre of such crimes without proper legislation. Here, schools which are hosts to all sorts of sensitive data of children like personal information, health records and even the crude location of the child through the new GPS Tracker on school transportation systems,

understand what the terms of the contract are and understand its nuances. The school management should never underestimate their ability to be involved in making legal frameworks, yes it should be vetted by lawyers but it is you who know the school the best.

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should have a number on their speed dial that they can call when there is any legal problem. Schools can also look at their parent's pool to ﬁnd a lawyer and approach him/her. This is an effective measure as the parent would have a personal reason in protecting the school which the child goes to and in turn the school will be beneﬁtted by the right advice Legal Safety Drills: At least once a year, have a refresher session on legal provisions, framework and safeguards and do drills and trail runs with school management and the staff. It is important that every stakeholder of the school is prepared to deal with incidents that may require a le gal intervention for e.g. training the principal, senior management and in some instances the teachers on how to deal with the press as sometimes one may unknowingly be admitting things in press which can raise prejudices against their own case

could be left vulnerable without equipping themselves with the right legal provisions. In a landmark judgement, a nine-judge bench of Supreme Court has declared that right to p r iva c y i s a f u n d a m e n t a l r i g h t w i t h information on Children requiring the highest level of protection. Thus, schools need to take proactive measures on what sort of Children's data they are holding and how best to protect it. What are the steps schools can take to protect themselves legally? A Legal Game Plan: Schools should know what all areas they need to comply with and then have a strategic plan for them. The best way to go about it is to run simulations or trial runs of situations that could potentially happen. Legal ﬁrms suggest this to their clients as when an incident happens, the affected party has a short time to react and if unprepared, their response leads to confusion and chaos. If simulations are run, a party is better prepared and can take appropriate reactive measures like if the situation needs internal investigation or calling the police etc. and prevent the situation getting out of control A lawyer on speed-dial: Ideally all schools

In case of a school incident involving children and requiring internal redressal, ideally who should preside? Should the child's teacher and parents be involved? Schools should have a Legal Addressal and Grievance Redressal Committee which is a neutral third party and has no bias towards the affected individuals. Logically and methodically, teachers are not able to make this distinction as a lot of teachers decide on facts which have been shaped over the years; preconceptions on the children involved etc. so they might not make the right decision. Involving parents except those who are lawyers is usually counter-productive as all parents have vested interest in decisions that only beneﬁt their child and have minimal knowledge of legal policies and systems in place. At the most schools should make the parents aware and assure them that necessary steps are being taken to protect their children.

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Exploring Mythology and Beyond Eika Chaturvedi

ika Banerjee is one of India's leading women business leaders and a corporate mythologist. In her current role as the CEO, Future Learning, Eika leads one of India's largest – Skilling, Employability & Livelihoods, Education and Corporate Capability Building organisations. Ms. Banerjee is an MBA from FMS-Delhi and holds various Diplomas/ Certiﬁcates in the area of Comparative Mythology, Ethics & Morality, Business & Lifestyle Coaching, Gender Policy & Governance and Behavioural Assessment. She has worked for over 17 years with Blue Chip companies in various Leadership roles as well as founded and created two entrepreneurial ventures. Eika is founder and curator of Aakhyaan, India's First ever Annual Mythology festival, a knowledge platform that she has conceptualised with department of Sanskrit, University of Mumbai – to integrate the corporate world, academia and popular culture.

Beginning of a mythological journey My journey in Mythology began to seek answers on why we are the way we are. Mythology is our more tangible unit of valuable belief system. Between mythology and history, the major difference is that history always has a judgement and mythology is beyond judgement. So, a mythologist is somebody who studies civilisations and understands their cultural codes, value and beliefs systems providing a very interesting insight into future answering the 'why' part of our existence which other disciplines like sociology, anthropology fail to provide.

answers and dying for solutions. In the last few years, we have seen a corporate crisis, structure and governance crisis of multiple proportions and therefore to me 'mythology' seemed a good place to know 'why' and 'workplaces' seemed to be a great place to 'apply' it in. Mythology to help embrace our lives in workspaces In our day to day life, we are inﬂuenced by three main estates in life i.e. Academics, Popular Culture and Work life. Academics as an estate is fairly established with research and ability to give us answers through solution providing human beings. Popular culture refers to mass media and information where we consume everything and quite intelligently with no conﬂict. It is only the workspace where we think we are governed by somebody else's rule, are victims of a system, organisation culture and politics. Therefore, the whole idea of mythology is to apply the learning from our personal lives from the ancient scriptures, wisdom to our workspaces which need the most.

We as humans are fairly set in our personal, political, governance and social structures but struggle in our workplaces. It is because the idea of a corporate workspace is a hundredyear-old binary idea that is being applied to a society that is plural, non-linear and born of civilisations thousands of years old. In the corporate world, we struggle with maintaining the right work-life balance, working with structures, hierarchies, politics that we don't in daily lives. So, this is an estate that is crying for 30

January 2018

Mythology in School Space Our education and science are built on the concept of focusing and growing your strengths to be successful while mythology as a discipline is more about strengthening your weaknesses to be your best self. Schools prepare us to compete with others and seek answers outside while mythology prepares us to compete with ourselves and seek answers within to unlock our potential i.e. reach within to launch forward. Thus, mythology can give a fresh perspective on school pedagogy, structure and governance.

they were but how well prepared for the future they are. Educators are gearing up for the change by changing educational framework, now it is the question of degree of the change that will emerge. For e.g. the way students are g ive n t h e i r a s s i g n m e n t s a n d k i n d o f conversations they indulge in are drastically different from our generation. Recently my daughter was given an English assignment on the occurrence of a strange phenomenon. She chose Bermuda Triangle and for her English p ap e r, s h e r e s e a r c h e d o n ge o g r ap hy, environmental sciences, physics of magnetic ďŹ eld etc. to completely analyse her chosen subject. Before, our debate teams used to argue 'for' or 'against' but today the teams prepare their arguments for both sides and the curriculum offering them room for it.

The whole idea of Learning by Rote and Smriti and then applying it was useful back then and has led us to where we are today. It was the right thing to do at that time and it was done well. But the world of future will have no boundaries and we no longer can be a State, Indian, American or English System. We have to be a World System. A lot of educators and educational institutes are realising the importance of preparing Children to be global citizens and have started adding new elements to their curriculum.

Future of Our Education In the past, our education system was designed to differentiate us on the quantum of information or content we had. Content being a binary commodity could easily label us by relative rank or rating. Today, in the digital world everybody has access to content and therefore moving forward it is how one analyses the information will be the differentiating factor. An interesting point is unlike content, the analysis is not a binary commodity and suddenly one cannot compete because everybody's analysis will be different.

The schools have started to realise that their own existence is not a function of how good

Thus, in an absence of a competing landscape analysis can only be a function of your best analysis pushing you to be your best self. It is a function of real-time, fast thinking, problemsolving, contextual thinking and joining the dots. Our education system needs to take that leap of understanding that there are no binaries and everything is in a continuum to meet the needs of the future World.

eika.banerjee@futuregroup.in

INNOVATION A village school at 7500 Feet in Doda District of Jammu & Kashmir with more than 400 Students coming from around 15 villages in the area.

A PICTURESQUE STORY Mentor Conclave 2017-Questioning and Co-Creating Education was an opportunity for educators to bridge the learning divide and collaborate to design a dedicated framework of meaningful education. This came to fruit by an inspirational story of a village school shared by its Director, Ms. Sabbah Haji in the Conclave. Post her talk, all the Teachers and Principals applauded Sabbah and enthusiastically offered their help through student exchange programs, trained teachers as volunteers, sharing their teaching-learning resources etc. giving an insight that education is deeply rooted in empathy.

Mode of Transport

This touching talk has been beautifully captured in pictures and brought to our readers in this section. It is a thought-provoking story of a school set in a difďŹ cult geography. Despite, several shortcomings, The Haji Public School through fr ugal innovation and resource optimisation is providing the best of education to the village children. The objective of sharing this story is to encourage all the educators to build a network across boundaries to share innovative ideas and create a lifelong passion for learning amongst all pupils irrespective of caste, creed, geography or economy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Remember together we are always better."

Socio-Economic Plight: Parents practising subsistence farming with marginal investment in education

January 2018

An initiative by the educated in the community to bring quality education to all A vision to let them illuminate the earth A mission to teach the ďŹ rst generation learners and bring them on par with the urban counterparts Designing a cultural contextual but modern learning system to accommodate their special needs. Unlearning and Relearning the lessons of life through the student-centric curriculum to develop a lifelong love of learning.

A school that hibernates in winter, only to awake with vigour on the ďŹ rst dawn of spring and nurture the young minds to follow their dream of ďŹ nding their unique place in the World.

January 2018

UPCOMING

Design Thinking Tirthankar Dash Design Thinker, COO, Quantum 360Â°, Design Solutions Lab

Humanistic Mind

Synthesis Mind

Creative & Collaborative Mind

Building Mind

Get an insight into Design Thinking from the perspective of Mr. Dash in our forthcoming issue.

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Education

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