Teachers and heads of 2 schools sat together to plan for academic planning for the new year commencing from June’26 onwards. I had an engaging conversation with these wonderful teachers who shared many ideas for curriculum implementation in each subject. New updates, learner requirements, school’s vision and mission, sustainable development, exciting teaching and learning approaches, more meaningful assessment strategies, school development initiatives were all discussed.
Somewhere along this session, I felt the need to understand what may have worked well and provided the joy of success for teachers and leaders in the current academic year which may be about to conclude. We often overlook small but significant achievements and moments of joy as part of a routine. Success being achieved need not be in more quantifiable ways necessarily as a typical school day is filled with many challenges. If we overcome these and work well, each day is a successful day. This line of thinking provides us more hope and confidence. I drew attention of the participants to make a note of such small but effective steps taken by them to ensure uninterrupted learning each day. This is success and achievement. This must of course include anything that needed their intervention and not handled well for whatever reasons to be worked on for better results next time.
We have school leaders in varying capacities as Principals/Heads, Coordinators, subject Heads, Supervisors, In-Charges, Heads of Committees and more who work along with teachers and administrative staff. Each of them carries expectations and commitments to fulfil. Many a times in a typical school day, unexpected challenge/s arrive that demands time and involvement of teachers and school leaders. Some of these may be minor and others major. How do we handle these define the success for that day. School is probably the only place where we have people from youngest to the oldest coming together for learning and spend major part of an year outside their home. Hence, it is important to have each one in the school involved and participative at all times.
I asked the teachers and heads to make a list of some of the incidents occurred and or initiatives taken by each one of them which may have helped the day to be successful. Each of them may have managed the challenge with presence of mind and keen interest to ensure learning of their pupils in a safe and fair manner while handling a challenge. This opened a pandora box of examples that made them laugh, feel emotional and sombre and more. We must come together to share these moments of small achievements and create a way to record and reflect regularly as the school runs smoothly thanks to such efforts by teachers and leaders. Hats off to every teacher and school leader who make learning possible for our children while handling many tasks and challenges each day.
I present below some of the challenges handled and overcome by the participants to see how committed and engaged are school community each day. These are shared by teachers and leaders who felt happy to be doing so as a success story-
- A child who was constantly missing school and disinterested was spoken to by a concerned class teacher. The warmth and confidence shared by the teacher made the learner to share the discomfort of an emotional domestic disturbance. This further affected academic performance and led to anxiety. The teacher worked out a process of regaining confidence with suitable support available in the school and taking parents of the child into confidence. The teacher continued to monitor progress each day and the joy of watching the slow but steady positive progress by the child was shared by this teacher. Well, this is success and it need not be always quantifiable like a topper of an examination, isn’t? I ‘m proud of this teacher and all others who do this probably each day.
- Encouraging a hesitant student to attend a sport activity who felt that she was not good at it. The teacher mentioned how some or the other excuse by this student to skip sport activity was noted. The teacher got determined to see that this student was encouraged and included in sports as the participation being most important. This certainly is an achievement as the said student started to feel more enthusiastic and happier gradually. The teacher felt happy recounting this. This may be true for other school activities too.
- An alert teacher saw students skipping meals and not valuing food sent by their parents as they were busy playing during break time. Also, some students did not like the food carried in their lunch boxes. This teacher decided to carry her lunch box and together ate food making it mandatory for students to complete before rushing out for a quick play time. I couldn’t appreciate this enough as there is magic happening each day in this group of teacher and students. She mentioned how there are some rules set for beginning and ending the lunch, keeping the area clean post lunch and valuing food. This routine set and followed is an achievement indeed.
- This success is not just with students but amongst colleagues too. Sharing some responsibilities of a colleague, helping another staff member with support in completing a task, offering a patient ear when a colleague is in distress and helping in handling a difficult situation contribute to the smooth functioning of the school. I have seen this being managed by the teachers so beautifully always.
- The success and achievement like above are plenty and every teacher had something to share similar or different. Encouraging a student to attempt independently, feel confident to present on stage, sat down with a student who was unhappy with poor performance in an assessment, post school doubt clarifications with a student before an assessment and many more.
- School leaders face situations where expectations run high from teachers, staff, students and parents. Ensuring uninterrupted learning becomes the priority each day. Filling in for an unexpected holiday, a teacher or staff on leave due to any emergency, working on training and professional development, completing all the activities as planned for the year, continuous monitoring of each aspect of the functioning of the school and more. Each school leader is involved and performs these and more with brilliant approach each day.
- As the Principal of the school, I always felt a sense of joy and relief when all children went home safe each day. There were days when we exchanged incidents of some non-participative students becoming active for a particular learning activity, a change of attitude and better involvement by a student, an assessment submitted with amazing inputs, excellent presentation by a student and many more. There were days when we had either students or staff facing some medical emergency, or loss of life. This used to leave all of us sad. We always worked on supporting for students and staff during such times which ensured the overcoming of grief. I consider this as achievement too as humanity wins with such compassionate approach and understanding.
- We concluded the session with teachers and school leaders feeling happy to note several achievements for a successful academic year being undertaken by them. Let this joy continue and multiply further in the new academic year.
- Wishing all the dear teachers and school leaders a happy New academic year post the well-deserved vacation!
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