In today's fast pacing and ever-changing world, the requirements of children are also rapidly and constantly shifting. To be able to help them access their highest potential and become the best versions of who they can be, those around them also need to adapt and evolve, and we can start from the basics - our education system.

Today's education system needs a major transformation so that children's needs can be catered to in a holistic manner. It goes without saying that educators play a huge role in this. Here is our founder, Ms. Sreeja Iyer, in conversation with The Better India about today's education system and its role in shaping today's generation and the many more to come, and why it could be an 'unconventional' career path.

**Long Post Alert**

If you think of the word interview and the words ‘nervous’, ‘scary’, ‘dread’, ‘boring’ or any of those come to your mind, it is clear that you have probably not had an interview at Sparkling Mindz Global School. At SM, we have a learning area called ‘LIFE’, short for Learning Is Forever and Everywhere, and we take that very seriously. Even an interview is a learning experience for both, the interviewer and the interviewee. In the beginning of April, we had an interview which led to the resolution of deep-seated beliefs about the learning of math for one of the facilitators who was part of the interview team. It was also a refreshing experience for the interviewee, S, who saw math and math anxiety in a whole new light. As if this was not enough, all the people involved in the interview also had an ‘aha’ moment about maths during the interview! 

The interviewee, S, writes: 

Expect the Unexpected 

“Expect the unexpected” that’s exactly what you should expect in Sparkling Mindz. And I had my first such experience in my Interview itself!!! 

I had to do a demo session on Parallel lines for 4-6th graders... After the 1st demo session, I had a few comments as the areas of improvement and then the very next day I had to redo the session. 
All the feedback was explained well with examples and the need for making the specific changes. I was able to relate to them and understood how to implement the same. With all those inputs and a quick connect with one of the facilitators helped me to gather my thoughts and structure my day 2. 

All Set!! 

My session was now on an overarching umbrella - Lines... the students were a mix of those liking math, those not liking, some knowing some of the topic, some not knowing much of it......But when I started, each one of them was enthused and excited, because I asked them to draw their favourite imaginary toy!! 

That’s how we started “the lines” After putting their imaginary toys on the paper, talking about them a little.... It was the moment I introduced the lines – vertical, horizontal, slanting... 

Then I brought in the second line!! 

So while explaining the parallel lines, One of them called out- 
“Ma’am are all HORIZONTAL LINES Parallel lines? 
Woooohhhhhhoooo!!! that was the Aahaaaaa moment!! 

It was exciting... the student discovered something so did I... And so did my interviewer who was silently watching all that was happening in the session!! 

All VERTICAL LINES are PARALLEL lines too!!! The joy and the pride on the face of the student for being able to say something so important was satisfying and is unexplainable in words for me.......It was not a part of my script.... 

While there will be those difficult questions that the I would not have thought thru during the preps and may throw me completely off track, I realised at that moment, there will also be THESE moments when I will discover many the wonderful things with children!!!And that’s what all the hard work will be worth for! 

The Facilitator, P, writes: 
The Class in which I found math (and the ball found it’s lines) 

As I sat for the second math class of my adult life, I was not sure if history was going to repeat itself. Well, it had already repeated itself yesterday, when in the middle of the class a veil fell upon me. The old familiar veil of ‘I can never get this’. Now this is a transparent veil, and it is difficult to spot it. Also this is a layered veil. It is made up of many emotions and thoughts, like: ‘I hate this’, ‘I am not getting this so this must not be worth getting’, ‘But the others are getting it so maybe it is worth getting but I lack the ability to get it’. Between all of these though, and the most difficult one to spot, is ‘I want to get this!’

This veil has often been the reason I have had a strange relationship with math. As I write ‘have had’ in the past tense, I realize that an opening has been made and I have a chance to open the veil and look through in some way. 

So, what made the unimaginable happen?

This was a repeat of the class on parallel lines conducted by one of the interviewees, S at SM. Just yesterday, I thought parallel lines are a farce, an illusionary concept that does not exist in life. I gave a lot of feedback during and after class to the interviewee with the view that another child shouldn’t ever sit through a math class and feel anxious like I did, another child shouldn’t have to face the veil and be helpless about it and if I could do anything to change how a child might feel in a math class I’d do it. So, today again, despite my meltdown and math anxiety, I went with an open mind. Let me give the person a chance, let the person use the feedback that was given by us to account for the emotions of students, look at the big picture of a concept and not just narrowly look at parallel lines, define and establish purpose and connect for the students etc. - I went to try and understand what lines are, what line segments are. I told myself let me not be that student in the English class who, in the middle of a very evocative poem, asks,“but how can the moon talk!?”...It can’t, but the poem does not mean to say the moon is talking literally, it is a representation, a symbol, a form. So I thought let me not break apart the form of mathematics. Let me stick to the piece of paper, to line segments and see what unfolds. Little did I know that a lot was going to unfold. 

The interviewee had taken the feedback well and planned a very different class. At the outset, we were asked to draw an imaginary toy and I drew a ball. Why did I draw a ball when I could have easily drawn something with straightforward lines on it? Well, partly to test mathematics, and partly because well: I think it was just to test mathematics. 
“Oh! You say lines are everywhere. This is my ball, where are your lines?” 
“A circle is a curved line.”
 Okay, I melt a little bit. 

Who said learning has to ever stop even when we are quarantined? 

Today we met our 5 to 6 year olds on Zoom for a year end reflection session. As discussed, they all waited for their turn to share, learned to speak by independently, talked about their favorite memories from their class. They also bid farewell and sent love and good wishes to those they will not be seeing next year as they move to Dolphins (1st grade) and mostly, they held space for each other.

They learned that learning can happen anywhere!

#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
#21stcenturylearning
​#everychildcan

It was time for all the preschoolers to go home. But Pari was just not in the mood to go get her bag. She had tears in her eyes instead. 

Pari: I am upset. 
"What happened Pari?"
Pari: Kar is not my best friend anymore. 

And she starts crying. 
Kar walks by, we call him and he comes in with his bag and hat, all set to go home. 

"Pari called me Bad Kar!"

Pari looks at him, keeps crying, expecting him to apologize. But he doesn't. 

Unfortunately, the situation was not resolved. 

"Pari and Kar, can you please talk to each other?"

Pari:" I am upset."
Kar:" I was also upset when you said that."

That was the end of their discussion. Upon hearing that the words she chose to say to Kar had made him upset too, she quit. She turned around and walked away. It was also time for her to leave as the van was waiting to leave for the drop. Kar looked lost and unresolved. We talked about resolving it on Monday when we meet again and parted for the day. 

Monday arrived and they came back together to talk about it. 

Kar:" She called me a bad boy."
Pari, with her hands folded and face angry:" He came and closed it!"
Kar: "I was making door"

"Door for what?"
Kar:" Car. They were making a car!"

"Oh! Pari , he was helping you make a door for your car!"

Pari's face broke out into a smile, "Oh..."

The whole mood of the situation elevated into pleasant smiles. 

"Kar, but if you want the play with somebody, don't you think you should ask them and then do the necessary things?"

Kar nodded a yes. 

"Pari, next time you don't like something, you can always tell them what it is that you don't like about what they are doing, instead of calling them a bad boy or girl."

Pari, still smiling also nods a yes. And they walked back to class in harmony. Pari pulled Kar's cheek to show affection and happily went back to play. 

The situation stayed with them for more than 2 whole days, unresolved. It was necessary to get them together and resolve their issue. Even if as adults we perceive these issues as 'little', it could be a great deal of distress for them, and is necessary that these loops get closed. It sure is beautiful how a lot of emotions got processed and conveyed throughout this little episode, from anger, hurt, compassion and kindness, calmness, etc. Children are capable of so much more than we realize and it is important to keep an open mind when we are with them. It all makes it worth the while in the end.


Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

"Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Our morning inspirational stand up today was inspired by this quote by the author Khaled Hosseini. We thought about how we might interpret this and take it forward.

We were trying to think of the very many connotations this powerful line could have. First, we spoke about how, just because we have colours and just because we think children are empty books, we may feel the need to fill them up. But can we resist that urge and work on our belief instead?

Could we try and find other means to actualize our impulse to colour and create? For, our children are neither our work of art nor our trophies to display on the mantelpiece. They are living, breathing, growing, changing beings who have their own journeys to create.

Where does this urge to fill up colours come from? And not just colours but our favourite colours. What happens when we fill our children with our favourite colours? They start to look just like (and ONLY like) our favourite colours. What about the entire spectrum? Do we know the entire spectrum ourselves? And even if we don’t, do we want our children to know them, experience them and colour their lives with the entire range of possibilities?

What about the fact that we are coloured books ourselves and we can’t help colouring (or influencing) others. The mere act of being becomes an act of colouring. We are bound to at least ‘impress’, if not consciously 'colour'. How can we help this? One way to minimize the effect is to be aware of our colours ourselves and to know how these colours would or could interact with other colours, and with blankness. Some colours are darker than others, some stronger. Once we can know and see ourselves for the colouring books we are, we can begin to take steps to add new pages to this book…

Once we realise that we are coloured books, we might also realise how we need not have been. And perhaps, our children need not be either. Because if our children are colouring books, then even if we do not fill them in with our favourite colours, someone or something else might. What if we were to not think of our children as colouring books or blank slates but instead as seeds…which have lives of their own? 


Contributed by Poorva Agarwal, Assistant Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global inspired by an inspiration standup that happened at school in the morning of 21st Jan 2020.

​
#sparklingmindzglobalschool
#inspiringconfidentlearners
#youngachieversacademy
#21stcenturylearning
#everychildcan
#socialemotionallearning

Thursdays at SM are always exciting!
Every Thursday we pick a book and read it with our 4- 5 year olds. Another reason why children look forward to Thursdays is because they get to take home a new book from their library. And this Thursday we chose to read a book called “Not a Box”. To help children connect better with the book, the class was set with empty cardboard boxes of different sizes for them to imagine and play with. 
 
As children came in, some were confused, some amused and some curious. Sh came inquiring about the boxes in the class,
Sh: Ma’am, why are these boxes in our class? Did you put them here?
F: Yes, I put them here. You can do whatever you want with them.
 
After this conversation, it was amusing to see the things children could imagine with mere empty boxes!
 
In the image below, all that can be seen at the first glance is probably just a bunch of children standing inside an empty box. But if looked a little deeper, a whole new world of theirs is what we will see.

For E, they are on a bus traveling to school where V is the conductor of the bus. For Ash, it's an aeroplane ship, an aeroplane that turns into a ship when it falls into the water and for Av, it's a submarine.

J pulled out a long strip used for compartmentalizing from inside one of the boxes, wrapped it around himself and said “Ma’am, this is my seat belt”.
​

Ad and An playing ‘Peek a boo’.  And on and on they went with their wonder, excitement and endless bouts of imagination!
​

Often as adults, we are so clouded by our understanding of how things work, that we forget to understand what it means to play. It then gets easier to teach children what things do before letting them tinker, experience and learn by themselves first. If we step back and observe with an intention to know them rather than teach them, we will see that everything that comes across as ambiguous about our children will begin to inspire us. They are exploring the new world around them, constantly making connections, learning from everything they see or do and reproduce it in different ways.

​And we can contribute in their journey by learning to explore with them. 


Contributed by Yashika CG, Asst. Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz.

Our 3 year olds were exploring emotions and they began to connect emotions to nature. Is Sun happy or sad to play with clouds? Do clouds cover the Sun in anger? What about rainbow - is that a happy sign? Are moon and sun friends? The wonder never ceases in their world, nor do their connections....a sample conversation is shared below.

Ab (smiling at the facilitator): The sun is happy ma'am.
F: Why is the sun happy?
T: Because the sun is behind a tree and it is happy.
An: No it is sad. Because the clouds come in front of him. They are all angry clouds.
F: Why are they angry?
H: Because they are dark. Rain is coming.
An: Yeah, the sun is angry because there are so many clouds in front of the sun and it is hiding.
<Everybody goes into a pensive mood>
F: Ok. Looks like we have interesting things to think and wonder about. How about we all go upstairs and wonder at the sun and other things that are up there? We can even wonder which emotion the sun and the clouds are having. Would you like that?
S, T, An, Aa, Ab, H: Yes ma'am. 
F: Ok. Let's put a sticky note here and write it down. This week let's find some time and go upstairs to look!

Emotions of the sun, sky, clouds:
The children were taken upstairs to watch the sky and wonder about the various emotions they might be feeling.
Aa: I can see the sky
K: I see the sun ma'am
Ab: Ma'am , I can see the clouds
F: Very nice! How do you think the sun is feeling?
Collectively: Happy
Av: Because he is out today and he is not sick
<Collectively spot clouds>
F: How do you think the clouds are feeling today?
H & K: Happy, good.
H (changing her mind in an instant): I don't know.
F: Where is the moon then?
H: No, it's too far we cannot see it.
Av: No, the moon and the stars will come only in the night
F: Why?
Av: Because I saw a book like that in the office yesterday
They all came around, sat in a circle to watch the sky.
H: I see sky and sun
S: Sun is sick ma'am
F: Why?
An (consoling S as he is getting upset): No see, the sun is feeling so happy. He is on us.
Av (adding some love and care): Because see he won't get sick today.

As children explore emotions through nature and make connections they generally tend to project how they feel, learn to express it, work with each other's emotions, respond to it and even present other perspectives for the same situation - building emotional range and flexibility. 

Children represented in visual form the feelings they felt during the sky watch. It is generally very illustrative to watch them represent their feelings through colours and motion. 

The emotions came pouring onto paper through strokes and colours and left indelible marks on their minds. We continue this discussion on emotions on another day, with another set of natural elements...wondering what they will pour next, connect next?



Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.