Upskilling Of Teachers: An Absolute Necessity In The Current Times

We are living in an era of accelerating change, not only with regard to technology development, but also on the economic and social level. In the past decade or two, teaching has changed significantly. Schools today may not be what some of us remember from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the challenges of teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for a teaching career. Recent technological advances have affected many areas of our lives, including the way we communicate, collaborate, learn and, of course, teach. Never before could learning be happening the way it is now - everywhere, all the time, on any possible topic, supporting any possible learning style or preference.

Teachers must plan lessons and tasks that students actually understand. At the same time teachers must also keep track of the major learning goals of the curriculum. As they gain experience in teaching, they will no doubt find additional strategies making classrooms increasingly diverse, with the inclusion of students with disabilities into classrooms with their peers. An open ended approach makes sure that instruction does not waste students’ time, and makes learning truly efficient, effective, and valuable.

Teachers must embrace new opportunities to focus on learning by innovating and finding their own ways to focus on the needs of the students. They should ensure delivery of effective and quality learning, on virtual platform since it presents many opportunities to them to revisit not only WHAT students are learning; but, also, HOW students learn. An educator must develop facilitation skill to guide their students how to think, converse, participate in learning process and not just hammering home the steps to their students’ achieving content mastery. Today’s students should develop their own driving questions, conduct their research, contact experts, and create final projects to share, all using devices already in their hands. All they need from their teacher is guidance on Project Based Learning. In order to be a good facilitator, teachers need to upskill and understand how Project Based Learning works.

Teachers need to be flexible in designing online recorded sessions to help student to access for better understanding. Technology allows collaboration between teachers and students. Creating digital resources, presentations, and projects together with other educators and students will make classroom activities resemble the real world. Educators must connect with likeminded individuals using twitter chats and social

media and learn how to produce and publish valuable content, how to create sharable resources and how to collaborate making their classrooms truly global. Teachers today also have an additional responsibility and must be able to navigate student anxieties and mental challenges, making their classrooms a safe and empowering space where students can successfully absorb what they’re being taught and share their worries without feeling judged.

We can transform education, but it will only happen when our teachers realize they can no longer rely on the techniques that worked for hundreds of years but just aren’t sufficient today. They should innovate; such as teaching with social media or replacing textbooks with web resources. Not for the sake of tools but for the sake of students.

As new tools and new technology keep emerging, learning and adapting is essential. Upskilling helps teachers stay relevant in the classroom - especially in the virtual scenario where there are so many free tools available online. These free tools were being used by some of the teachers occasionally but now they use them in content creation content delivery, collaboration and evaluation. They have and are attending numerous sessions to know about different tools and their usage.

Upskilling doesn’t restrict one in conducting classes only. Teachers need guidance on conducting assessment marking them online annotating the answered papers. This is essential just to make them future ready. The present scenario makes it very obvious that System redesign is a must for post covid world - schools will not exclusively be offline or online in the near future – the educators will need to make a right mix by training themselves.

Our education policy has emphasized on Upskilling of teachers through CPD and different other long term and short term courses. It’s a great opportunity for the educators of our country to achieve their dreams and be an empowered practitioner. It will open doors for better employability.

Remote learning is here to stay and embracing the teaching skills outlined above, our educators will be ready and able to navigate the new world that student development has become! As new tools and new technology keep emerging, learning and adapting is essential.

Prodipta Hore

Guest Author The author is Program Director, Aditya Birla Education Academy