Zero to Five – Reflections from Facilitating School Transformation Programs

In May of 2016, SEF launched its first whole-school transformation program in the small neighbourhood of Gupkar in Srinagar, Kashmir. We started our journey with 20 teachers teaching in 20 classrooms across 10 schools in Sumbal and Srinagar. As of April 2022, we are working with more than 50 classrooms spread across 11 schools in Delhi and Tehri Garhwal.

Our work in Kashmir was wrapped up in 2018, when we completed our project with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Our program today has evolved to tackle the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundational literacy and numeracy mission in India and the social emotional needs of our children.

Everything we do today is guided by the need of the hour and our deep belief that to be able to live in harmony in an ever changing world children need to reflect, think critically and learn continuously. The last six years have taught us several things, strengthened some of our initial hypotheses and showed us how wrong we were with some of our initial bets.

Building a Learning Continuum Between Home and School with All Stakeholders

Our program has evolved over the last few years to deeply include all the three stakeholders in the life of a child, the teacher, the principal and the parent. We have spent countless hours ensuring that each of these stakeholders are able to come together and work as a team to ensure student learning. The impact of this choice was deeply felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where several schools and organizations struggled to connect with their children and parents, our teachers were able to connect and stay in touch with more than 80% children on a regular basis. While we could not engage all of them inside online learning spaces, we were still aware of their whereabouts.

Our parents continuously engage in learning activities with their children and this gives them a deeper understanding of what their children are doing and learning. This often encourages parents to mimic certain activities at home as well. Our teachers are also able to support students better because the parents are invested in the learning of their children. The principal plays a huge role in facilitating this relationship between parents and teachers in the service of children. We have learned that a great learning environment is built when teachers, principals and parents come together.

Addressing Social Emotional Needs

The last two years have strengthened our faith in educators and parents. They have navigated diverse challenges and setbacks, and continued to support our children. While their physical and emotional resilience during this time was commendable, we have also learned that they are struggling. Our educators and parents do not have the tools to support themselves and be their best selves inside the classroom or at home, every single day, especially in the midst of a pandemic. We learned that they need tools to support themselves.

In 2020, we launched Wellbeing Circles across all our schools to create safe spaces for sharing and healing. These circles used art, literature, media and writing to share and heal as a community. It also brought our teachers closer. A sense of community gave them strength during these times.

Educators Need Tools to Build 21st Century Classrooms

In 2016, we started our journey of equipping our teachers with the skills and knowledge they need to build, facilitate and review learning tools and practices. We believed that teachers need to be skilled at planning and facilitating high quality lessons inside the classroom. However, through the years of working we realized that this was an unrealistic expectation, especially from teachers who teach for more than four hours every day to plan and execute high quality lessons everyday. We also saw more than 65% of our teachers pick up tools and consistently use them in their classrooms when they were provided with these tools and the training to use them.

Over the last couple of years we have moved to providing learning plans to our teachers, which have helped them facilitate stronger learning inside their classrooms while giving them the flexibility to adapt things to their style. We have learned that high-quality tools with appropriate training and support to use them lead to high-performing educators and high-performing classrooms.

Integration is The Only Way Forward

With the government focusing on bringing in several complementary curriculums in school education, we noticed that our teachers and students were overwhelmed and struggling to learn anything wholly. Our team piloted a unit of learning where we used pedagogical practices from social emotional learning programs to facilitate academic content.

The principal plays a huge role in facilitating this relationship between parents and teachers in the service of children. We have learned that a great learning environment is built when teachers, principals and parents come together.

Our children became proficient in 60% of the content taught and also strengthened their proficiency in several dispositions to the same degree. This prompted us to build four complete units of integrated instruction for our primary school children and educators.

These integrated units of learning focus on all aspects of academic learning and deeply integrate practices of social emotional learning in them as well. We feel that this is the only way to enable our children to truly understand and practice social emotional skills and dispositions while also becoming proficient in academic skills and knowledge.

Designing for Collaboration and Nurturing Deep Relationships

At SEF, we believe in bridging the key enablers in children’s lives. This translates into our investment in creating collaborative environments wherein there exists:

Evidence-based practices and practicerooted evidences of the work carried out;

Innovative, integrated teaching and learning processes that secure the bets towards strong foundational skills and social emotional competencies in all children;

A human centred approach that values each individual’s context and needs which empower enablers to adopt practices meaningfully and sustainably.

Foster a culture that values dignity and worth of every person, thereby recognizing that each individual contributes in making our schools centres of excellence.

Our focus on these principles have enabled us to witness shifts in our educators and parents which have in turn strengthened our resolve to keep doing what we do.