My
Philosophy for Globally Oriented Education
“During
the middle school years, young teens undergo multiple physical, social
emotional, and intellectual changes that shape who they are and how they
function as adults”, (Juvonen et al, 2004, pp.3). This is the time when seeds
of the adult life are sown and sprouted. Middle school is a space of tension
because of “…the need for middle schools to ease the transition from elementary
school, with an emphasis on the developmental needs of young teens, versus the
need to facilitate the transition to high school, with an emphasis on academic
rigor”,”, (Juvonen et al, 2004, pp.4). And this is when I taught maths to
students!
It may seem very narrow to some, but my curricular
decisions, developments and all that I have done in education was provoked by
the utter phobia for maths I saw among a lot of students in my classes. Phobia
“…may be defined as a feeling of anxiety that stops one from efficiently
tackling mathematical problems”, (Raghunathan, 2012). They were riddled with
low self-esteem, believing that they are fools because they are not good at
maths, and would often chase me for few marks after each summative to get their
overall grade up. I believed with all my heart that this was something very
false in education, although I was a new teacher, all of 23 years and did not
know what to do!
My work to face this over 20 years spent in the
classrooms of schools spanning traditional education, free progress and IB
resulted in chiselling out my philosophy. This was based on ‘humane connection’,
for “…what you realize is that connection is why we're here. It's what
gives purpose and meaning to our lives, (Brown, 2010, 3.01)”. I realised that
for me, the purpose of education was to learn to build humane connection with
the students or relationships. “And to me, the hard part of the one thing that
keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of
connection” (Brown, 2010, 6.59). The students with low self-esteem did not
believe that I would accept them and I would keep hearing, ‘I can’t believe
that you talk to me for I suck at math!’
My philosophy has been chiselled out at two levels,
Inner and Outer.
The
Inner – Mindful Relationships
“Mindfulness meditation asks us to suspend
judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind,
approaching our experience with warmth and kindness, to ourselves and others”,
(Getting started with mindfulness, 2018). This is what helped me to be aware of
my own conditioned response to some students and get over it. That in turn
worked towards accepting them fully and build a relationship of acceptance by
suspending my judgment. I look at students as human beings in full
expansiveness and not through the small window of ‘performance in maths’. I
opened myself, learnt to live “…with vulnerability and to stop controlling and
predicting”, (Brown, 2010, 10.35). “Vulnerability is basically
uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, (Schawbel,
2013).
This relaxed the
students, adolescents, as my base is middle school, for they felt accepted
unconditionally. The sense of safety that they felt enhanced learning. “"From a neuroscience perspective, learning is a
change in the receptivity of cells brought about by neural connections
formed, strengthened, and connected with others …” (Schunk, 2012, pp.33). To expose myself emotionally, I stepped off my authority as a
maths teacher and became one of the adults with the kids. It was a risk for
having an attitude of ‘I love you as you are’ could have had students taking it
easy, but surprisingly it never happened!
Not only did I
connect with them, I also made it a culture of the classes for students to be
kind and empathic to the others. As the schools I worked in were inclusive
school, I found that it was needed for students to be empathic to each other. I
did whatever was needed for this, such as (a) going out into the field and
playing cricket with the class, (b) trying different types of collaborative
learning, (c) bringing in buddy system in the classes or (d) having extensive
discussions with the students on relating to each other. It was not very hard
as students of middle school are open to listening to rational perspectives if
conveyed positively. This is what sowed the seeds for the global mind-set of
empathy, compassion and kindness among the students.
The
Outer – The curricula
The outer is how I teach maths. The tools and
techniques of teaching and assessing. “Two factors strongly influence whether
the brain pays attention to a piece of information: (1). If the information has
meaning. (2). If the information causes an emotional response”, (Sun Protection
Outreach by Students, n.d., pp.7).
To make maths classes meaningful, I brought in context
in maths by answering each time the question ‘why are we learning this?’ was
raised by the students. “…to make
learning meaningful—and thereby build more extensive neural
connections—teachers should incorporate context as much as possible” (Schunk, 2012, pp.40). I brought in real life applications to answer the
questions incessantly put by the students. I brought in History to give a
perspective to the evolution of maths. I made them explore the ‘what, why, how,
who and where’ of maths.
"You can take any unit and change it a little so
that students really start to see the world globally," (JSIS, 2013). I
integrated maths with global issues. For example, data handling became the time
to explore population growth; ratio brought in human sex ratio; calculus
brought in the question of war as the time of innovation and symmetry brought
in a deep reflection of teenage life, (Kochar, 2011).
To make the class emotionally positive, I used variety
of strategies. Collaboration, flip the class, use of colours in the notebooks,
projects, self-assessment, peer assessment and problem solving. There was also
a steady rhythm created by the routine of work with feedback on regular basis. As
I moved from national to international curriculum, the diversity of students
widened more and more. In attempting to include all kinds of learners, my
toolbox of strategies grew. Gradually my classes were an integration of life
skills, Multiple Intelligences and Perspective.
Conclusion
What kind of a human am I creating? The road to my
philosophy stems from trying to answer this question. It is an exploration and
an inquiry into my own mind-set to question the kind of human-being I am moving
towards. As the layers of conditioning peeled off, I realised “…that
vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for
worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of
belonging, of love” (Brown, 2010, 12.21). When I stand before a student deeply
open emotionally, a connection is formed, and creativity explodes fully into it.
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