What makes leaders

Recently a three day workshop was organized in the state office on "what makes a leader." The basic proposition on which the entire discussion hinged was "are leaders born or made." "What distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones." In conducting this three day hands on workshop which involved a number of evaluative exercises, focusing on increasing one's level of self-awareness and understanding one's emotions, I focused on the "Covey time management matrix," "the 360 degree evaluation based on the seven emotional intelligence indicators" and the "Jungian personality types." 

It was a very interesting experience for me in trying out the 360 degree evaluation on the EI indicators (emotional intelligence)  and I do sincerely feel that I tried my best to make my team members peel apart the hardened layers of social conditioning in trying to understand their own emotional make-up and thereby how they act and react to different events and circumstances in their day to day life - understanding one's emotions, strengths and weakness, needs and drives and their effect on others. It was a lot easier for the team members than under normal circumstances as they have worked together for a sufficiently long period of time. The workshop also focused on the physiology of the brain - especially mirror neurons, spindle cells and oscillators and how they determine one's actions and reactions. Great leaders are those whose behavior powerfully leverages the system of brain inter-connectedness. The main point I wanted to drive in was that "emotional leadership isn't just putting on a game face every day. It means understanding your impact on others - then adjusting your style accordingly."

The "Jungian dichotomy" was used in evaluating one's personality type while the "Covey Matrix" revealed how effectively we spend our time in the course of a day - especially by realizing in which quadrant we are - true emergencies, personal pro-activity and power, fire fighting and waste.

Resource Group Meeting

Resource group meeting were held in all the three zones recently. Selected teachers who have demonstrated effective use of technology in teaching learning, were invited to attend these workshops. These workshops cater to the special needs of the star performers as far as technology integration in teaching learning is concerned. These workshops were preceded by extensive discussions at the school level in which both the teachers and the monitoring experts participated, leading to the identification of hard spots, which formed the basis for designing innovative teaching aids as part of these workshops. The central zone workshops, held in Kendrapada and Cuttack respectively combined a hardware training as part of these workshops. This training basically focused on identifying minor hardware problems and rectifying them at the school level - thereby preventing delays as far as repair and maintenance is concerned. There was a focus on the preventive part also such as virus scans, defragmenting, registry cleaning etc.

Personal Effectiveness/Effective Leadership Workshop

A two day workshop on "Personal Effectiveness" and "Effective Leadership" was recently held in Gopalpur-on-Sea. The workshop focused on personal effectiveness leading to effective leadership through self-awareness. The Jungian theory of personality types was extensively discussed and used for mapping and self-assessment.  The wind, surf and sea provided an extremely relaxing atmosphere for the team members and facilitated self-introspection and deep diving within. A quick interaction with selected team members showed that the workshop was extremely helpful, timely and more such workshops are needed in future. A detailed feedback form will be administered to all the participants and based on their feedback the next workshop, will be planned. I do sincerely hope that the team members will consciously try to implement the learning's at least in a piece meal manner to start with - because by bringing about small changes, one can ultimately bring about the overall change that one wishes to see in oneself.

Core Group Meeting - Bangalore

A sub-group of the core group met recently in Bangalore last month. The meeting was chaired by the Director DE. A number of areas and issues were discussed. The most interesting discussion focused on the o3 project - fully funded by the US Govt and currently being implemented in selected schools of India and Pakistan. The project basically focuses on understanding each others culture with an exchange visit, built in. The most interesting part of the presentation by Roopak, my colleague, who heads this project, was on the methodology to be followed in going about the collaborative projects basically using the Internet and allied technologies. Apart from this the meeting basically focused on quantified targets and process level checks at all levels. Going ahead a detail school visit plan / template, will be worked out for the coordinators across all the states to arrest leakages at the school level, which is the result of a lack of proper planning, non-availability of a contingency plan and absence of crisis management skills as far as the coordinators are concerned. 

DE Demonstration Workshop

A "Demonstration Workshop," was held on the 2nd of March, 2012, in the conference hall of the School and Mass Education Dept. The meeting was chaired by the Hon'ble Minister School and Mass Education. All the other senior departmental officials were present including the Principal Secretary. A lot of background work had gone into the preparation of this workshop and it did pay off. Nine teachers were selected from the 6 districts, were we are currently operational. These teachers were selected on the basis of their performance on the output indicators at the school level. All the selected teachers are members of the resource group and as such are leaders in effectively and appropriately integrating technology in teaching learning at the school level. I was delighted to watch an excellent presentation on the "Human Eye" prepared by one of the teachers. This was an example of an excellent teaching aid which was well designed and completely covering the topic from all angles. The most gratifying part was that the teacher was able to confidently and satisfactorily answer all the questions posed by the Minster and the Principal Secretary, related to the program and how the teachers and students were actually benefitting at the school level.

My entire presentation revolved around the core understanding - technology as a pedagogic tool and therefore integrating technology is a pedagogic decision. I hope I have driven home the point and only this can clarify the misconceptions surrounding "DE Program" whereby people label it as a computer aided learning program (CAL) and as such predicated on a grosser misunderstanding that it focuses only on teaching computer fundamentals covering MS Office suite. This is how partial truths begets total errors. On the contrary "DE" is an education program focusing on effective technology integration in teaching learning.

I tried my best to make the program stand right side up. The necessity was evident from the fact that people posed the wrong questions and at worst were at a loss when they saw the videos of classroom transactions - on whether to appreciate or critique as the videos mostly started with a normal classroom transaction, which was interspersed with technology use. People mostly expected to see the use of technology from the very outset.

Review-cum-Refresher / Satpada

A four day review-cum-refresher meeting was held for the DE team members in Satpada. The meeting focused on the following:

Thematic plans

Designing effective teaching aids

Understanding what effective integration of technology in teaching learning means/through demonstration

NCF 2005

Methodology followed in doing projects in DCC schools

Swati Jha, Program Manager, DCC attended the meeting and shared some very interesting projects and assessment rubrics followed in DCC schools. Team members did learn a lot from the interactions and have planned to graft the learnings from DCC into the centralized model currently prevalent here.Especially the discussion on competency mapping for teachers and the rigour with which the processes are adhered to in making student projects proved to be very helpful.

The session on NCF 2005 proved to be a very interesting one and Sangita did a good job in planning out this session. The topics for group discussions and presentations led to some very animated and sometimes heated arguments among participants.Especially the discussion on the curriculum framework proved to be a very interesting one.

Satpada proved to be a very refreshing experience for the team members and it's idyllic setting gave an opportunity for recreation and fun.

Field Trip

I was visiting Sambalpur and Bargarh district sometime back and made it a point to visit some of the schools located in the rural pockets of both the districts. Although as part of the trip we had to negotiate some very difficult terrain but the enthusiasm and motivation to effectively use technology in day to day teaching learning by both the teachers and students made me forget all the hardships. Personally it has been a very satisfying experience for me in that all my hard work and that of my team members in working out a new model is finally showing results at ground zero - the schools. Teachers are upbeat and enthusiastic about the training and kudos to my trainers for that. The monitoring experts are doing an excellent job in hand holding and mentoring especially after an intense training, when teachers require this the most to sustain their motivation levels and prevent them from backsliding given the difficulties at the school level, in terms of workload, infrastructure etc. Studies world over have shown that however good the training unless backed up by effective mentoring, leads to a total washout,in due course of time. Centralized training has really proved to be effective as evidenced by the output at the school level. Teachers are designing excellent teaching aids using technology and this combined with lesson plan and micro-plan is proving to be very effective when combined with collaborative projects, as part of which teachers and students come together to learn through various activities which are planned. Teachers play the role of a facilitator and the students interact amongst themselves and with the teachers in constructing their knowledge related to different hard spots. Groups of students even make a presentation with PowerPoint or otherwise at the end and it was interesting to see the students of some of the rural schools in Bargarh and Sambalpur, breaking their cultural conditioning and finally coming out of their shells to interact and have fun while they learn. I noticed this time and again in most of the schools that I have been visiting spread over all the six districts where we are currently operational at the moment. Collaboration as a teaching strategy is finally working. My interactions with the teachers have shown that teachers still need to understand the fine print that technology integration in teaching learning is a pedagogic decision and get this firmly embedded in their DNA.