'Our responsibility is to help children to actualise their potential’

Being a teacher for 25 years, Rumjhumi Biswas, principal of Swarnim International School in Kolkata, believes a teacher must be a ‘lifelong learner’. She also believes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a big part of how education is changing, and her school is starting to use AI in teaching. Millennium Post speaks to her on NEP 2020, mental health, and much more. Excerpts:

NEP 2020 states that school curricula and pedagogy should equip students with key 21st-century skills, reduce curricular content to enhance essential learning and critical thinking and focus on experiential learning.

As educators, our responsibility is to help our children to actualise their potential, make life worth living, be good human beings, live in coherence with nature and make high-quality decisions. Sanskriti-Prakriti- Karma- education is the interplay of these three.

Even before the NEP was announced, Swarnim’s pedagogy and curriculum prioritised the 6C’s of 21st-century deep learning, namely, creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, citizenship and computer or digital literacy. We added a 7th dimension – caring. We employ a variety of activities to develop these attributes. We nurture personal, social and educational growth, which prepares a child to live and work in a globalised economy and to contribute responsibly both locally and globally.

Our lesson plans are based with the focus on conceptual learning. We discourage rote learning from the early years. To enhance the language skills of the students, we follow the LSRW sequence aided by our fully equipped language labs.

A few examples can be learning fundamental mathematical operations by playing hop-scotch or snakes & ladders in preprimary classes, virtual museum tours for social studies or integrating yoga with math classes to learn about angles in primary classes besides mathematics, science and language lab activities.

NEP focuses on holistic education. At Swarnim, how do you ensure that?

At Swarnim, we have always focused on the holistic development of each child through an eclectic pedagogy aligned with the NEP which emphasises on multiple intelligences and inclusive classroom modules. Thus children are engaged in blindfold activities which nurture their spatial intelligence. Street plays and public surveys are conducted where students hone their bodily-kinesthetic and interpersonal intelligence. We have been constantly working in collaboration with other institutions globally to ensure fruitful learning exchange and hone the curious minds of students who certainly learn better with peers.

We prioritise developing reading skills in our children. We have an annual reading week where a gamut of activities are undertaken to motivate our young learners to read books. In the primary classes, there is a reading period daily.

Even the highly qualified teachers aren’t always the best teacher. What makes an ideal teacher?

I believe teaching is a vocation. The day of a teacher never ends since she is the custodian of a child’s growth which is a continuum. PHD – passion, hard work and determination are the three pillars of any profession. But to be an effective teacher, I prefer to use the adjective ‘effective’ to ‘ideal’ because ideal is open to individual perspectives and interpretations, one must be a lifelong learner and ready to ‘learn, unlearn and relearn’ since they deal with the new generation of new times. Most importantly, the priority of the teacher must be the student and the student only for whose good she/he can face any challenge.

How important are the workshops and training programmes for teachers?

Teachers need training programmes to build newer teaching skills and be reflective practitioners through action research. The purpose of any capacity-building programme for teachers is to improve the learning outcomes. We have continuous professional development programmes for the teachers which include a professional development week at the beginning of the session. Resource persons from different fields ranging from experienced teachers to storytellers to psychologists are invited to the school. Teachers attend training programmes online and offline throughout the year.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the education landscape. How has Swarnim leveraged the power of AI to revolutionise the traditional educational paradigm within its school environment?

Artificial Intelligence is an integrated part of the modernised education system and Swarnim is updating regularly likewise to provide quality education to students and ensure the best comforts for students while they are in school. It is still new and we are gradually learning and imbibing it into our academic structures.

We aim to provide personalised education by using various apps which use adaptive logic. Our classrooms have smart boards where we try to use the best available technologies and audio-visual aids to help children learn. Every variety of plant in our school is tagged with labels containing information and QR codes. Interested people can scan the QR codes to gain intensive knowledge about the plants. Sensors for fire alarms and an automated system of ringing the school bell at regular intervals are a few examples of AI used on our premises. Tracking devices are in the school buses which use AI too.