“We Must Create A Strong Culture Of Thinking”

GEMS International School, winner of ‘Academic Excellence in K-12’ at the BW Education’s Top Education Brands Awards, has evolved an education philosophy based on deep research, engaging teachers, students and parents equally as partners, and ensuring social and emotional learning of its students. Dr Amrita Vohra, COO and Director Education of the school, explains at length the school’s approach to holistic education. Excerpts:

In changing education ethos characterised by significant technological inroads, what leads to excellence in academics and how is your school striving to achieve academic excellence? 

Technology has become an extension of our very brain today. Augmented working alongside AI has become one of the core employability skills. Our young learners today are growing in an environment that is evolving magically. Today we have already lived through a quarter of the 21^st century. Thus, the skills of this century, discussed elaborately over the past two decades are certainly a given for today’s young leaners. Children are born creative and critical thinkers. They are born incorrigibly curious and in their very effort to learn to walk and talk, they display exceptional ‘growth mindsets’. The purpose of education is to hone these innate qualities in every learner. Today’s learner is also born into technology as a native. The school cannot stay alien to this reality. Like all else in a school space, technology will remain underutilised, if limited to the hands to the teacher. It has to be in the hands of the learner. Learning and teaching has to evolve in a student-led environment where student agency, voice and choice are a given.

How are the teachers equipped to engage the classroom through new ways of teaching-learning process in the school?

GEMS teachers are exceptional facilitators of learning. Each one of them is an instrumental part of our thriving professional learning community of seasoned educators. Thus, a GEMS teacher, or rather ‘Coach’ and ‘Facilitator’ (some terms we prefer, as language is a metaphor we live by), is a forerunner in embracing the latest research in the education space. ‘Action Research’ and ‘Collaboration’ are buzzwords at GEMS schools. They flourish in a safe space created by beautiful relationships of care amidst educators, parents and young learners.  

Much has been spoken about the need for emotional wellbeing of students in the midst of academic pressure. How does your school address these issues? 

Social emotional leaning has to be mainstreamed in education. If it remains relegated in the school routine to a life-skills lesson or a moral-science period or just some bits in the morning assembly, it still remains in the periphery. If parents sense a lack of objectivity in the random SEL evaluations shared on Progress Cards, we are only doing a lip-service to a promise all progressive educational institutions make today - ‘holistic development’.

Our emotions and feelings are a feature of our human self, not a bug. As caregivers, we must create a strong ‘culture of thinking’ that values emotional expression and empowers all of us to be reflective, to truly be ourselves. ‘Children grow into the intellectual character of those around them’ said Vygotsky. Children today are living in a flawed social media democracy. Intellectual discourse no longer defines public opinion. Teenage years are encumbered with yet another dimension of complexity – one that is absolutely ruthless and unyielding in today’s social order. No wonder, we see mental health concerns rising incoherently. All this, when we need to raise a radically compassionate generation that is ready for a future where the survival of our planet itself is a question. As the OECD Learning compass defines, our young learners need to develop transformative competencies to reconcile conflicts, tensions and dilemma, to create new value, to take responsibility. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is an enculturation experience. Dispositions cannot be taught directly. We need immersive experiences and mainstreaming of SEL in the school ethos.    

Meha Mathur

BW Reporters The author works as Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld