July 2012 Volume 6, Issue 7

Inspiring Teachers
Driving educational change through excellence in teaching

This month:
Mentoring pays off FoM Prof ML Saikumar...2 Learning from the Soligas.3 News from here and there ..4 There is more to Bloom ..5

Five years since the first workshop

Its July and five years since my first workshop under the banner of Inspiring Teachers, at Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College (NMREC) (on 7th July). Before this I had done some short in-house sessions at G Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science (GNITS), where the seed for teachers training was sown in my mind. The relationship with NMREC continued and several initiatives have been taken here. Some of the successful practices are regular training, writing student centric objectives for all courses, classroom observation and hands-on projects by faculty. But it is still a long way to go for innovative practices to get into classrooms on a regular basis. Of course, we have worked on students also language development and internal projects are some things which are regular now. Close to 4000 teachers have attended sessions and every month I eagerly wait for feedback from them. The fraternity is not quite active on internet though. The newsletter is already 58 issues old. Now its time to reformulate goals based on the last five years. This month we have featured Prof ML Saikumar as the inspiring faculty. Apart from innovative teaching, close rapport and mentoring has had good impact at IPE. I had visited BR Hills and saw a school that is being run for the tribals called Soligas. I have shared my experience in an article. The buzzword in all pedagogy is Blooms Taxonomy. In an article I have tried to explore the other significant works of Benjamin Bloom. And just to remind you that all these articles are available on our blog too..http://www.theprofessor.in/blog --Uma Garimella

Inspiring Teachers Page 2 of 6 Long term mentoring is very important

What has influenced your decision to take up teaching?
I was born in Vijayawada and spent my early childhood in a tiny village Mustabada with my grandmother. She has been one of my mentors. In Prof ML Sai Kumar, Dean and Prof, IPE the final year of schooling I was fortunate to have an excellent mathematics Prof ML Sai Kumar, Prof and Dean at Institute of Public teacher Shri. Yadagiri. I got inspired by the way he used to teach us. Later Prof. MSR Murthy has inspired me to understand how noble the profession of teaching is. Teaching is a job with many unique challenges, but the rewards of teaching are numerable. I experienced the joy of making a difference in my students lives. which makes the students prepared for their real time environments. My approach to teaching is more of questioning which is thought provoking than simply providing them with the answers. This makes them to think beyond the textbook. I believe in 360 degree learning process where in I make my students to form dynamic teams in solving the problems so that they get an opportunity to learn from peers and also from me.

When my mentees commit themselves to submit reports by the date of their choice and dont submit I really get frustrated. In fact sometimes they fix a schedule for meetings and dont turn up which is much more frustrating.

Enterprise, is a well know name and face in the IT education circles. With three post graduate degrees one in Applied Statistics, another in Agricultural Statistics and a third in Computer Science, he chose to work in the area of software engineering. He has written / co-authored four text books and published several papers. He has organized more than 15 conferences/seminars at national and international level and brought out the proceedings. He is known to be a great teacher, he was awarded the Inspiring Teacher Award by Teachers Academy in 2010. He goes much beyond the curriculum to make a difference to his students.

How do your colleagues react to your ideas and initiatives?

I started the concept of mentoring classes about 5 years back with an idea to enhance the employability of the students. In each semester about 150 hours of my time is invested on the students outside the college timings to nurture them for placements. Initially my colleagues felt that I have no other work and I am wasting my time. But over the years even they started realizing and started mentoring the students. Read more at http://www.theprofessor.in/fac ulty-of-the-month.shtml

What kind of teaching methods do you use to keep students interested in your classes and learn?
Generally we expect students to be sitting in a classroom which are enclosed by 4 walls. When they come to professional life we expect them to be more of outbound natured which is quite contradictory to their learning process. This made me to conduct classes both inbound and outbound,

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Inspiring Teachers
children return to the community to help further education and other causes. After being declared as a sanctuary first and now being a tiger reserve, the Soligas cannot depend entirely on the forest produce for their living. They have also been educated on the importance of preserving their habitat, so they have willingly learnt new livelihood skills and they coexist harmoniously with nature. The trust has also ensured that the tribals have legal rights on their property. Dr. Sudarshan, founded in 1986 Karuna Trust for integrated rural development to eradicate leprosy and bring education to other tribal areas. Karuna Trust runs 72 Primary Health Care (PHC) Centres in all the districts of the state of Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh. About Gorukana This is an eco-tourism resort whose proceeds go to VGKK. More than 75% of the 40 odd staff are Soligas. They also promote non-timber forest produce (like honey, amla juice, pickles etc) made by Soligas to guests. The furniture is made by Soligas in the vocational training centre. The naturalists who take you around are also locals trained in their forestry training centre. If you like wildlife and tranquil nature, have Gorukana on your agenda! I spotted elephants, deer, bison, several birds, boar etc Uma Garimella like god. If he just brought healthcare and education to the Soligas, this project would have sounded like any other philanthropic effort. The main feature of the trust he founded, the Vivekananda Girijana Kalayana Kendra ensures that the wisdom of the Soligas in herbal medicine, their language called Soliganudi, their systems of agriculture and their traditions are not only passed on to the next generations but that they are also documented. VGKK has also given vocational skills to the Soligas and tried to find employment for them in their various projects. The hospital is now a 20 bedded hospital with 24X7 doctor available. They also operate a mobile unit to reach the people of the far flung hamlets. VGKK started a school with a handful of students, but with the clear vision that it was essential to help these Soliga children learn about their tribal traditions and keep them alive, in order to remain connected to their roots. So, along with studies, the school imparts knowledge on the several plant and animal species that abound in the nearby forests and the children are taught to cultivate vegetables, medicinal herbs, poultry, bees and silkworms. The first few years of schooling is also in Soliganudi. Three among the first batch of students have completed their post-graduation, with one of them holding a PhD. Most of the

Empowering the Soligas and learning from them

I had not heard of Dr Sudarshan or his work with the tribals until 21st June, though he is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (also called the alternate Nobel Prize) and the Padmashri. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanumappa_Su
darshan)

It was a chance holiday at Biligirirangan Hills (BR Hills for short) I took for three days that brought me to this idyllic village in the forests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biligiriranga _Hills BR Hills joins the Eastern and Western ghats and is home to 37 tribal hamlets and to many wild animals it has been recently declared a Tiger Reserve. A little more than 33 years ago, Dr Sudarshan started operating a hospital in a small hut for the tribals called Soligas. After his brief work with the Ramakrishna Missions charitable hospitals, he knew that working with tribals was his calling and not an urban medical practice. To cut a long story short, after a lot of apprehensions about a modern doctor turning up in their villages with medicine bags, the tribals accepted him and today they revere him

Inspiring Teachers

Page 4 of 6

Innovative tip Use sunglasses or a small convex mirror to avoid people sneaking up on you while wearing headphones at work

Interesting Links
http://www.daktre.com/ http://www.bhef.com/ http://www.strategicedsolutions.org/

Caf Sci is an innovative way to bring science to students from secondary school, intermediate or +2 and undergraduation. This is an informal, discussion-based format which is very exciting and interesting. This is a concept from Britain,(www.juniorcafesci.org) which is inspired by the informal meetings between scientists and public that happens in cafes and bars http://www.cafescientifique.org/. If you want to know more about how to organize a caf in your school or college, you can download the brochure from http://www.juniorcafesci.org.uk/sites/default/files/seven_steps.pdf

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Inspiring Teachers

There is more to Bloom than the taxonomy

These days the most frequently used words in education are Blooms taxonomy. Even those outside the system are concerned with Higher Order Thinking Skills a byproduct of the taxonomy. And how did this seminal work come forth? From a very mundane sounding job profile! 1943 to 1959, Bloom served as University Examiner, where his responsibility was to develop tests to determine if students had mastered material necessary for them to receive their bachelors degrees. This paved the way for his future work, from 1948, when Bloom headed a team of psychologists at the University of Chicago. In this work he proposed three psychological domains: cognitive, affective, or psychomotor. The cognitive domain deals with a person's ability to process and utilize (as a measure) information in a meaningful way. The affective domain relates to the attitudes and feelings that result from the learning process. Lastly, the psychomotor domain involves manipulative or physical skills. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain was published in 1956. Taxonomy of Education Objections, Volume II: The Affective Domain, was published in 1964. These two works are what we use most often to formulate learning objectives and assessment tasks. But this taxonomy was not formally used until 1990s in the governmental systems where curriculum design takes place. Benjamin Samuel Bloom, was born on February 21, 1913, in Lansford, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1935 with his Masters degree. In 1942, he received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Chicago. Apart from the famous taxonomy which revolutionized the idea of lesson planning and assessment, Bloom contributed to other ideas in education. In 1964, Bloom published Stability and Change in Human Characteristics. That work, based on a number of longitudinal studies, led to a rise in interest in early childhood education, including the creation of the Head Start program in the US. He tried to address the nature-nurture controversy in this study. He presents something that probably everyone knew but did not have evidence to prove. That the first few years of life have tremendous impact and many characteristics become more difficult to change with increasing age in Telugu we have a saying mokkagaa vanganidi maanai vanguna

puvvu puttagaane
parmalistundi another adage proved with evidence by Bloom. He showed that many physical and mental characteristics of adults can be predicted through testing done while they are still children. For example, he demonstrated that 50 percent of the variations in intelligence at age 17 can be estimated at age 4. He also found that early experiences in the home have a great Benjamin Samuel Bloom Born Died Chicago Feb 21, 1913 September 13, 1999 Lansford, Pennsylvania

More to Bloom than the taxonomy Teachers Academy

Another piece of work is Blooms 2 Sigma Problem
Hyderabad PHONE: 97011 41118 E-MAIL: info@inspiring-teachers.com

from page 5
Young People, published in reported the dramatic breaking study of 120 immensely talented fields like music, sport, science, math, medicine and chess. Most of these individuals counted on the enthusiastic support of their family, early exposure to required chores, the development of a sound work ethic, lots of practice and determination, and coaching by devoted

prerequisites. Although in changing the cannot be scaled up. With technology now though, it is Bloom also proposed that a combination of two or three altered variables may result in a similar performance improvement. He thus called teachers to "find methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring". All these form the basis for the modern day active learning techniques.

tutoring is the most effective 1985. His team studied and performance, it is costly and findings of a ground-

which he reported along with his team in 1984. According to this paper, the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods, that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class". This has significant impact on labeling students as low achievers. In the experiments they varied 12 parameters under four objects of change the teacher, the peer group and the home environment, the material and the student. The twelve parameters are tutorials, corrective feedback, tutoring, cues, graded homework, cooperative learning, home environment intervention, student time on task, student classroom participation, improved read/study skills, classroom morale and initial cognitive

an inexpensive intervention. individuals across different

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teachers. He criticizes the Bloom summarized his work current educational systems in a 1980 book titled All Our and the teachers for not Children Learning, which showed from evidence gathered in the United States and abroad that virtually all children can learn at a high level when appropriate practices are identifying the talents in the children and limiting themselves to depend on the test taking and memorizing capabilities of the children. Overall, Benjamin Bloom

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spent his life in undertaken in the home and experimenting in school. educational psychology and In the later years of his career, he focused on the process of gifted and talented performance. He produced the book Developing Talent in laid the foundation for many path breaking ideas that resonate with all modern teaching. He died on Sept 13th 1999.

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