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Thinking Careers at School

Students have a very nascent view of careers. Some think of it as a source of income after school and college, some consider it as a continuation of their parent’s legacy, and some consider careers as just another engagement in life as much as school and college.

We as parents and teachers have a role to educate our children but not making this education an end, but rather a means to an end. The result being making education an enjoyable process of self-discovery where every child learns and discovers on a continuous basis their inner talents, how these talents influence the world around and how the world can be made a better place to live in the future.

Formal Career guidance is a must-do process in the new Educational Development Plan 2020 set by the government. Some universities have started teaching this as a formal master’s program so that these graduates can go to schools and conduct formal career guidance to students so that they continuously think about their future while at school.

Our school educators are following a two-pronged approach. The first stop is continuous monitoring, assessment and advise students about their strengths in languages, logical reasoning, sciences, communication, art, music, and physical activities and making the students to work on these strengths to find their unique potential to influence the future world. The second method is to expose students to careers early on in their student life which is from grade 8 or 9 onwards where they build their individuality and are continuously interacting with peers and elders to know what is there for them in the future.

The success rate of a child landing in his or her right career has an inside out view and an outside in view and both views are important to understand. The inside out view should tell the child whether the chosen career gives them personal satisfaction, a sense of fulfillment and a means to influence the world towards a better tomorrow. The outside in view should see the child never looking for a job but rather jobs looking for them, it should see the child growing steadily towards achieving not just recognition and appreciation but the ability for the child to bring even better talent to the same career in the future.

Children are our future. If we want a better future, then we adults must work today and build a career for our children not by making our children do what we think is right but rather what they think will be their best fit between skills, capabilities and the needs of the world.

Digital Addiction

Is the younger generation heading for a new phase of technology addiction?

– Nahla Nainar

A 2011 UNICEF report estimated India’s population of adolescents to be around 243 million. A huge chunk of this demographic is also the likely target of internet service providers, as the average age of the web surfer gets younger every year.
With landline phones all but phased out worldwide, it is no surprise to see toddlers and preschoolers being allowed to use (and usually master) their parents’ electronic devices.
Despite the uneven spread of broadband internet in India, the love for smartphones and other hand-held electronic devices has exploded across nearly every sphere of life, and overturned ultimately, the way we behave. The pandemic further has introduced online education into everyone’s life, spinning a web with far-reaching changes.

Getting over-involved
It is very difficult to control gadget addiction, because it increases every day. Parents would have bought the children an electronic device worth lots of money, but it gets outdated after six months. Keeping updated is a constant struggle.

Cases of children turning suicidal over not owning a gadget of their choice are getting more common.

Being online constantly and seeing their parents using e-commerce portals, children are getting too accustomed to instant gratification, say doctors.

The internet-using generation of children has grown phenomenally in India since the year 2000. These digital natives see internet as a basic necessity. In the bargain, there is a compulsive desire not to wait for something to happen. Instant gratification is the worst for a child, because they don’t want to grow up to know how difficult it is to achieve or buy something.

Parenting puzzle
Parents, on the other hand, remain divided on the spread of gadget addiction. Some feel that a complete ban on technology products would never work in today’s competitive world.
Earlier, children could ask a teacher or visit the library for help with their lessons. Today, they use Google.
Children who don’t own their own devices tend to use their parents’ phones until they are old enough. But very often parents fail to check or specify limits on the time they may spend on the gadgets.

This has led to many children suffering from changed sleeping and eating patterns directly linked to phone overuse.

Adult problems
Using gadgets for babysitting is not a new phenomenon. But the isolation that handheld electronics force upon their users can have serious side-effects.

Adult health problems like weak eyesight, chronic upper body pain and even carpal tunnel syndrome due to prolonged use of smartphones and tablet computers are becoming more common among youngsters today. Of greater concern is their loss of social skills, and the ability to interact with the world outside the internet clique. Overusing gadgets affects sleep patterns, so most children are too tired and late for school. This affects not just academics, but also their relationship with other children.

Use and abuse
Stories of children ordering products on the sly with their parents credit cards are also getting common. Accidental purchases made due to parents leaving their card information on e-forms are another problem.

This is because, unlike a human parent, a gadget will not say “don’t do this”. So though there are good things about the internet, there is only a small difference between its use and abuse.

Getting Students out of the Box – Outdoor Learning

–  Priya Nicholas (Grade 3 B Homeroom educator)

Today, with practically limitless access to electronic devices and the Internet, it may seem that for students it is enough to open a website that contains information about forests to be satisfied. However, exploring the world with the help of computers is not as effective as taking students out of the classroom and letting them see the real world with their own eyes.

You can find Inspiration outside…

The biggest advantage of the outdoor education is that children start to enjoy the process of learning because they not only read about birds in their region, for instance, but can get experience by finding this bird in the forest recognizing its unique singing or discovering its usual location. When children are not only observing but are also actively involved to the process of education, they feel more interested in the subject because they see how much sense it makes. Besides, if you see that your children are engaged by discussion about these birds, you can be absolutely sure that they start to enjoy your class even more.

Why do teachers love Outdoor activities?

   Outdoor learning is getting more popular because students usually benefit from being involved into different activities. First of all, theoretical background should always be supported by experience-based learning. Learning outside the classroom helps children feel the nature better and become more concerned about the environmental issues, which is also crucial today.

  By learning outside the classroom together, students become closer with each other and learn how to collaborate and perform teamwork. Another important outcome of the outdoor education is that students improve their social skills and experience their individual growth. This makes sense because what a student is afraid of doing in a formal classroom setting, he/she can easily do outside because he/she won’t have any psychological limitations and will be more relaxed.

Critical thinking-An Important life skill

–  C.R.KIRTICA (Grade 1A Homeroom educator)

Introduction

  Critical thinking is a process of using focus and self-control to solve problems.
Critical thinking skills are part of everyday existence of human mankind. They help us to make good decisions, understand the consequences of our actions and help to solve problems. From putting together puzzles, completing a maze, to figuring out a solution to a problem are few day-to-day use cases for critical thinking skills.

How do identify if my child is a critical thinker?

  Being able to say whether a child can agree or disagree with something, and why, is a sign that the child is thinking critically.
For example: you can encourage the child to give instances or reasons that show why they agree or disagree with something.
Also, suggest further to probe the child on their perspective of right or wrong, true or false, okay or not okay on different instances/scenarios/situations.
In other words, let the child take the position or be in that situation, evaluate, if necessary, eliminate.

To develop critical thinking

  The best way to develop the habit of critical thinking in children is by encouraging into a habit of questioning about his/her opinion and thoughts.

There are some simple ways to try out this:

Requisites to become a critical thinker

  If the child is to become a critical thinker, he/she must be a good listener with good questioning skills. Being a good listener means not just stopping yourself from talking, but it is an attempt to understand, giving the other person space to think and talk, and also not imposing your thoughts or inferences on them.

Creative ways to practice critical thinking

• Doodling: By encouraging the child to draw a scene to explain his/her thoughts. He/she needs critical thinking skills to depict one’s own thoughts into pictures.

• Role play: Bring in a real-world problem like water scarcity, improper drainage, littered roads, etc….to pretend play. Ask the child to think of novel solutions and also, if possible, to implement at their level. It is one of the best ways to inculcate critical thinking.

• Model yourself: As a parent, the most important that you can do to make your child a good critical thinker is to model yourself as a good critical thinker. They notice, monitor and evaluate your thinking skills. As an adult, if necessary, take steps to improve your skills.

• Promote child’s interest: Knowing your child’s interest is the important step in critical thinking. The child can think critically only to the problems that they are in their area of interest.

How‌ ‌to‌ ‌improve‌ ‌child’s‌ ‌hand‌ ‌writing?‌

– R.‌ ‌Steffi‌ ‌(Math‌ ‌Educator)‌

This might be the prevalence question that most of the parents are worried about, when it comes to the writing part of their young ones.
“How to improve child’s hand writing?”
but we’ve got some step-by-step tips that can help you out!
As handwriting is multi-tasking! Imagination that your mind tells your fingers give the shape, Focus from your eyes to hand movement.
It is one of the most important fine motor skills that every child needs to develop.
So don’t get all puzzled if your little one isn’t a calligraphy genius!
Rather enjoy/admire the beautiful scribbles of your little one to develop their pre-writing skills.
It is our responsibility to help our kids make a change from their scribbles into fine writing by the age of 6.
Over the years, there has been a lot of change in the classroom because learning has become more digital.
But home extension and notes are still maintained in the very own hand-written form.
Before we deep-dive into how to improve handwriting in kids, It’s important to understand more about fine motor skill which is essential for your child’s development.

Essential Fine Motor Skills For Improving Handwriting

Fine motor skill is the coordination of small muscles like hand and eye. The best part about fine motor skills is that these skills can be developed at any time during the day.

Hold and write properly:

The first most important thing is to hold the writing tool in proper position. They have to learn to get a comfortable grip of the pencil. Children love sketch pens and crayons, Colouring activity can make the hand movement easy. Can start with slanting, straight lines, circles and curves.The pencil should be held in place with the thumb, index and middle fingers.

_ Using salt writing tray is a great way to support handwriting development, which helps in building hand strength, muscle memory and its one of the key to build pre-writing skill.
– Do not provide the child plain white paper or regular ruled pages to start off. It can be done at the initial stage of scribbling but not for writing. They need to first learn to size their alphabets and space the letters right.
– They should be provided four lined pages with brightly coloured lines. This will help them to straighten the font size.
The posture and angle play a role too. They can also sit in a way as shown in the picture or Provide them with a convenient table, chair. Will give
Do not provide bean bags or rocking chairs as this will impact both posture, focus and the handwriting.

Patience, patience, and more patience:
Every child learns. Every child has potential. Some take a little longer than the others. Patience plays a huge role in this handwriting-honing process.
Children have a low attention span and get easily distracted if they do not get something right at the first shot.
But, we must find alternate ways to keep them interested.
Be it a game, a challenge or an activity, a child must be provided with a new stimulus often to encourage him or her to try again… and try harder to improve their handwriting.
Children are our mirror image, they also mimic our behaviour, so while modelling and writing in front of children will solve the purpose but we must make sure that we write slowly, neatly and legibly.

Hone motor skills:
Enhancing fine motor skills will, in turn, help children write neatly as they will learn to hold a pencil properly, balance the book and page, maintain posture, and enhance dexterity, control, and coordination.

Even simple activities like:
Folding paper, playing with soft toys, folding the laundry, arranging the toys, cutting paper, colouring using cutlery, playing LEGO, clay Moulding, stringing beads
Help strengthen a child’s wrist and fingers.  A foggy window or a sandy beach can be used as a slate or a patch of mud. It also enhances coordination, focus, and dexterity. Children can develop gross motor skill with the above activities and execute them for the better hand writing 

More the Practice bigger the result:
Handwriting is an art. It is a proficiency that can be acquired with a lot of practice. Making this activity interesting is not very hard. There are many handwriting-based games and fun handwriting practise worksheets available online.

Neat and Legible Hand writing:
A neat handwriting shows consistency.

• Form

Stick to the one letter form.

• Spacing

Keep the letters close to each other and make sure parts don’t touch. Try pen or sticks to practice spacing between the words.

• Size 

The title and uppercase should be in bold / taller than the other letters.

• Slanting

Stick to one type of letter slant.

• Alignment

Avoid tangled letter and proper alignment.

Conclusion:

Every moment can be a teaching-learning moment. Encourage your child to try hard and not worry about failing. More than everything, your encouragement, patience and practice will build the confidence in your child and it will result in neat and legible hand writing.