SHARING AN INSPIRING AND EVENTFUL JOURNEY OF DR. VANDANA GUPTA- A PASSIONATE EDUCATIONIST, AN EDULEADER AND PRINCIPAL OF EUROSCHOOL NORTH CAMPUS, BENGALURU.
DR VANDANA GUPTA
EUROSCHOOL NORTH CAMPUS, BENGALURU
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Dr. Vandana Gupta has close to 25 years of experience as a motivator and mentor, both in teaching and administrative capapcity.She was senior Principal at GEMS Public school Bhopal and at GEMS International school Karnal. She was the founder Principal at Shreejee International School, Sonipat (NCR) and has also headed a chain of DAV public schools at Karnal.
Dr. Gupta is the recipient of many prestigious awards and accolades. Zee TV Award 2016 as recognition of excellence in the field of outstanding contribution in the sphere of education, Avantika Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Award 2018 for the Best Principal, Nation Builder Award, 2018 by IITA are just a few of them.
MY K-12 Journey
I belong to a family of teachers. My mother was a school principal and her mother was a school principal and my great grandmother was a school teacher so it was something familiar and came easy. My 25 years of experience in education has taught me that School pedagogy & practice should focus on how learning practices are shaped in different educational spaces and using different digital technologies. The journey has been quite extraordinary as I saw myself gradually evolving over the years from a traditional teacher to the one who now understands that teaching is a joint productive activity; teacher and students producing together and how to put students centre stage. Learning occurs most effectively when experts and novices work together for a common product or goal and are therefore motivated to assist one another.
The days of the “Pin drop silence” in the class room are history!
The times have changed. The so called education culture has changed. We are into 21st century where the skills concept is motivated by the belief that teaching students the most relevant, useful, in-demand, and universally applicable skills should be prioritized in today’s schools and by the related belief that many schools may not sufficiently prioritize such skills or effectively teach them to students. The basic idea is that students, who will come of age in the 21st century, need to be taught different skills than those learned by students in the 20th century, and that the skills they learn should reflect the specific demands that will be placed upon them in a complex, competitive, knowledge-based, information-age, technology-driven economy and society. Therefore, it may sound very clichéd but “yes, catch them young”.
If you google you will find that the following have been the most significant shifts in modern pedagogy and therefore the need to redesign the learning task.
1. Accessible, meaningful experiences for all as a focus. Gone are the days where a syllabus is one size fits all.
2. A move to visible teaching and learning. No longer are the mysteries of learning and progress held in the teacher’s head, with students ready to be spoon fed next steps on Monday morning at 9am.
3. The move to flexible environments and systems. We see the new type of collaborative, flexible learning spaces being created and schools are challenging the old notion of ‘cells and bells’ and fixed timetables.
As teachers we need to understand that people learn in a variety of ways, so the challenge is to discover which approaches help them learn most effectively. Until a teacher becomes familiar with a learner’s individual strengths and needs, it is difficult to know which learning methods and pedagogy will have a positive impact on that person.
Another area of enlightenment over the has been that classrooms and schools need to be transformed into communities of learners through dialogic teaching, and when teachers reduce the distance between themselves and their students by constructing lessons from common understanding of each other’s experience and ideas it then makes teaching a warm, interpersonal and collaborative activity.
Sometimes it is important to unlearn and learn again!
The most important thing in this journey which I have learnt is that for any business to stay current you need to change and that goes for education too. Who will ultimately survive is one who will have the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn and that goes especially for the teachers and the educators essentially! We must re define the purpose of education as such. The goal should be to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers, writers who can establish the foundation of knowledge based economy.
What I have also comprehended during this great voyage is that a teacher’s true appreciation comes with age!
Teachers are looked upon by students as lovable and sometimes intimidating figures. Some days we are loved, other days we are hated for expecting too much from our students.
Too few of people understand a teacher’s value and effort while they are still students. The students after all are children and want to spend their time having fun, not doing tons of homework. They don’t realize yet that being good at something takes practice, but we as teachers do. It is only once the students are mature that they truly admire their teachers and begin to recognize the positive difference these teachers make in their lives. There comes a point where students start being thankful to all their teachers, good or bad, but the most memorable will always be the ones who believed in them when they didn’t believe in themselves. These teachers used and advocated a type of teaching that did more than just impart knowledge and teach skills. Knowledge and skills are undoubtedly important, but true education requires far more. It requires helping students use their knowledge and skills to understand, appreciate, and grapple with important ideas as they develop a depth of understanding for a wide range of issues and questions.
The journey so far has been very gratifying and I am sure will continue to be interesting as the challenge is to know what it means to be well educated in the 21st century . About how we can better harness human potential in this fast changing economy. The world has already witnessed a forceful impact of technology especially during the pandemic as that was the only way to ensure that learning continued uninterrupted. We all had to adapt fast and take a leap into the future by five years. The very existence of schools came into question and at such times no body cared for what you knew but what yielded was actually what you did with what you knew proving that change is the only constant and that thriving in the education world will require real competencies and flexibility to learn fast than just the academic credentials. The biggest challenge is how to re-image learning and education in this new era and most important of all how to encourage a breed of super star teachers!!!
Message : "I wish to place on record the brave hearts who have been working tirelessly putting at risk their own life, all the volunteers, health professionals all over the country. Their selfless service is commendable. Let us in spirit wish and pray for all people who have been affected by the virus directly and indirectly. Also wish to salute the teachers across the country who rose to the occasion and kept the learning going for their students".
Dr. Vandana Gupta
Principal
EuroSchool North Campus, Yelahanka,
Bangalore, Karnataka
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