ATP 2025 Reflections

Class 1

Timbuktu Wireless Video

Reflections: (Revised the in-class notes. I found this project closely tied with service learning pedagogy. In-class group TPS was helpful, especially because some of the points such as empathy, failure-management were not discussed in our group earlier.)

1. What qualities does the teacher show in the video shared? SI seemed to deliberately realign our answers about ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘creativity’ with being ‘agile’ and having ‘flexibility’. How are these linguistically different - open-mindedness and being creative may be more nuanced and interpretive terms to describe a teacher. It feeds into these questions of whether one inherently possesses this attitude or whether it can be developed by practice. However, agility and flexibility are terms that are responsive and learnable, primarily focusing on execution and adaptability.

2. What qualities do students need - in the video, the student expectations seemed to be met when performing the project. Was it their intrinsic motivation (IM) or the experiences enhance their motivation? In a large class, should an IM pre-test inform who should participate in an experience-oriented pedagogy? How can that be fair to a student who did not have prior motivation? 

 What do you think one needs to "know" to teach and how did I get to this answer? (3 and 4 are some reflections related to this Q with anecdotal means)

3. I face the question of my SME domain - it does not feel like I can conduct such an experiment independently in the domain I have studied for bachelor's or master’s programmes (Domain may be EdTech, there. I feel confident to take on such an experimental context and think of an ‘out of the box’ teaching-learning scenario.). Even after doing well at work associated with these two, the calling has always been toward teaching and new educational ideas. 

   1. Self-efficacy perception may be required to be cultivated - for that, more of hands-on project experiences. In my prior education, there was quite little exposure to problem-solving apart from a fixed project. So, authentic experience may be one factor.

   2. Value of successes and achievements? As much as dealing with failures is required, having success and achievements might matter - because there is a low success rate in prior educational experiences, perhaps the sense of ability to face challenges or navigate challenges is difficult to achieve.

   3. “Does one know something enough to teach?” and “Is one the best person to teach something?” are the two faces of this Q. In the first case, ‘something’ could be a broad ZPD, not necessarily domain-centred. In the other case, domain matters, and the extent to which it matters could vary based on context. 

4. We had a discussion with an alumnus during CompEd last year, and he had to teach his students a new course that he is learning - his struggle being connected to imposter syndrome. And I had suggested - what if you let the students know you are learning “with” them? In this view, the not-knowing domain is a positive - because then you teach your students as a peer - learning with them might make them more comfortable with not-knowing and exploring or getting to know. In such instances, why do we worry so much about being ‘qualified’ to teach?

5. There were many students in IITB’s Aero dept ‘Advitiya satellite Team’ who were the SMEs of their group of peers. Some of us corresponded with them as a communication and antenna design team from SAMEER while I worked there. As a student, how does one acquire the confidence of being an SME in these instances? There was definitely something more than extrinsic motivation involved for students in Pratham or Advitiya teams since (personal observation) these experiences, camaraderie and learning from peers may be more than course projects to them to earn credits or amp up resumes. We often see such camaraderie developing extracurricular in ET. What is the ‘value term’ for such instances? (others can comment if you know the terms, thanks)

Class 2

Supporting students through failure

Failure-related discussion about understanding the problem-

Isolation - stigma associated with failure 

23-27 yr age group - PhD fixed term contracts, time constraints - battling depression

Supportive system - still suicide-level scenarios

Lack of purpose - meaning of life - sense of purpose and perspective 

• The book Victor Frankle's "In Search of Meaning of Life" - aligns with Karishma's PoV of having purpose-driven motivation to live

• Great point, maybe not one large purpose, but multiple smaller purposes one after the other so you are driven to do something meaningful all the time.

But even before purpose, survival is a problem, Heartbreak - dropping out of course/ degree, 

Challenging to move to higher cognitive outcomes until achieving the previous levels- cascaded effect

Expectation and shared responsibility, peer behavior (feeling that the problem is with me)

Teachers and professors are not always equipped to deal with students with depression or mental health challenges

What am I doing? - overcoming failures.. Physical aspect - body - not well - makes more focused to the suffering

Failure is a normal event.-

– The thing that comes after failure - branding from societal connected elements

Aftermath - categorization after failure

Behaviourist projects - everywhere in education

Death - how a similar idea which is as complex can be taught

Performance goals vs mastery goals 

Failure is a spectrum, a continuum - contextualized. Aligned with the combinations - less number of educational settings where everyone wins or everyone loses. IRL - competitiveness is rare - very contextualized

Some discussed/ ideated ways which may motivate to bring back from failures-

Departmental academic mentorship programme - Need for mentorship, but even mentors need training and the program has to be well designed

attempts to impact the situation through conversation

Important to show the students that you believe in them - own pace, “it’s okay”

Independence in life - dependence on someone who appreciates you, needs you

REBT, LOGO therapy

Ikigai

Exercise - self-help videos - moving physically helps

SI-

Societally declared/ recognized support is needed to bounce back

Batchmates - takes 5-6 long yrs - struggle

Support was strong from peers

Normalise asking for help

How do we bounce back from failures

• Some socially defined success to anchor your bounce-back

What is the boundary of the teacher to support someone

• Define internally what is your goals of becoming a teacher

• Reason for being a teacher

Being a better teacher - being a parent - being a better friend

Boundary - how much support do I provide - when am I becoming your parent?

Spectrum - 

This boundary must be dependent upon the teacher's intrinsic interests too - also on capabilities.

Also contextualized to students, 

—--------------------- Newly Opened Questions —----------------------------------

Level of failure - life vs a course vs a programme - how to recognize this level of severity? Teacher should be so sensitive to be able to judge this need for support

Defining Is dropping out a failure?  Path-finding. Maybe struggle in the new path too - then come back or move on

Difficult to detect depression when a person behaves normally otherwise but is depressed inside

• How do we know that all the students with successful course completion were happy?

________ Parenting Parallels - relevant for self________

Parents need a license for parenting, like we need a driver’s license

You don’t need to always look for purpose, sometimes purpose just drops in your life, like my kids

Pendulum has swung the other one in student-centered schools, eg its ok if you don’t do your homework, students have so much choice but this doesn’t prepare you for the realities of life

S3 -

Key in timing - I wonder what is the appropriate age or timing at which we need to support the child/ person, and when do we let them go through the difficulty? Is it better to teach my child (as a parent) to face difficulties and experience problems, not have answers, and face problems at the cost of systematic challenges and non-cooperation than to feed him with support form an early age?

KS - I think constant reiteration is needed across ages, the challenges are different at every age

Allowing students opportunities to practice solving problems so they figure out a process that they start mastering so in the future without any scaffolding they can still deal with those problems

Class 3

Local action for systemic issues

The class and after-class discussions about solving systemic problems with local solutions had three thought streams for me -

1. Great, with local solutions, we may not radically disrupt the dysfunctional systems but at least can create a delta change in the working of the system, which has potential to have a cascaded or a chain reaction-like effect. Or, even if it has no effect in the future, at least yourself as a person get the satisfaction of doing something instead of just discussing the problem more.

2. Sometimes when we discuss practical solutions, are we just calling them practical and accepting the simpler (or an appropriate word) level problems as a solution? For example, I thought of the situation where I could not pitch to the local school why they should have students participate in our workshop.. And the solutions discussed were - case 1: go to a school which is more likely to accept your proposal, or case 2: create a value-proposition that will make your case evident. 

In case 1, I have to be ok with the students from this school missing the workshop. In the second case, I submit to the system in a way, don’t I? I have to ego boost the system and make them have a hyperbolic view of the workshop value. How does one feel truly good in either of the scenarios. This second case I think is aligned with Ram’s question above - “Or does education merely reflect deeper societal hierarchies?”

3. Some of the solutions we discussed, how do we ensure that those were not successful due to a chance of everything falling into the right place at the right time? A lot of alternate results to the solutions could’ve occurred for the scenarios in a different setting, at a different time. So, if some local solution that I may have ideantified works only for that specific context, then how do I feel good about that, or sharing the solution and feeling like we’ve contributed to the class, if it was a game of chance?

Today’s reflections are brought to you during the midst of reading some complex moral philosophy thought experiments - like the Trolley problem, for instance. So, I hope people do not read too much into them w.r.t. the class itself.

W.r.t. The class - it took me back to some of the inspiring stories of teachers from books like “एक होता कार्व्हर” (about the story of George Washington Carver’s work) or “To Sir, with love” where the long-term actions of teachers had a great impact on the lives of their communities. I guess the reason I thought of the local solutions as a game of chance might be that none of them were as long-term or persistent efforts, those were some quick fixes we discussed. Nonetheless, I appreciate how the collective energy of the class was directed toward acknowledging and mending the problems in an individual’s own capacity.

Class 4

Mental Health of Teachera s

I see mental health in professional setting as a complex, mixed up, difficult topic. I have faced troubling times in quite emotional situations, less professional and more personal (within the professional setting) and segregating the two is difficult. 

A spoke about his conundrum with the admissions problem and facing a threat to job while preparing for a new responsibility in family life. 

It is possible that one cannot disintegrate the two (personal and professional) all the time, even though some are able to manage everything perfectly in a balance. The expectation of not letting your personal troubles affect your professional life is a wise marker to walk the straight path, but it is not easy. 

As a child, I saw one of my favourite teachers break down in the middle of reading from our Marathi class while reading about Manu (Mrunmayee, a delicate tale by Go.Ni.Dandekar). That was the first realization that our teacher is human, too. Another time, I had a colleague who broke down during a presentation while he was going through a breakup, and our manager later on talked to him personally and made him feel okay. The colleague, once past his grief, became a lot more invested in work. I think empathy motivates and alleviates people at such times. And giving time to people to be is necessary.

I felt in the class; we did not really speak about a deeper meaning of mental health - we had discussed more freely about failure topics with respect to students. Everyone’s stage and recognition of mental health is different, and with due respect, I followed the class. I felt that there was less time available for panellists to reflect on their journey and think about their mental health situations, but some of them recognized their difficulties when another one spoke up about them. It is hard to recognize and be vulnerable to speak openly about such topics as F has written, I understand that. 

I often romanticize mundane life events and thus end up writing poetry or sketches or write-ups, but I think those are good ways to be vulnerable and get into a space to be comfortable while being vulnerable. (V also spoke about writing a diary on similar lines.) Another suggestion by SI was to write down and mark the time when you ‘will be’ or ‘intend to be’ able to address the situations that cause turbulence. It has been helpful when I was not able to function due to overthinking.

I was listening to the Mandukya Upanishad podcast, and it said that there is a quality expected to be developed as a knowledge seeker- Titiksha (fortitude), which is about being able to cast a wall between your learning and the external and internal turbulence. I guess it would be applicable for all teachers too, to be able to cast an invisible wall when taking the stage to begin a class. I don’t know how they do it! 🙏 The class had me find a greater sense of respect for all my colleagues who have these experiences. 🙌

Class 5

What is Worth Teaching in the Age of GenAI

This question is very difficult for me to answer because, in the ATP course, I am looking for answers to my kids' holistic education and my responsibility as a parent rather than looking for what schools should teach or what college curriculums should focus on. But even from a school or a university (any institute), my expectations are the bare minimum - for qualification. The fact that ‘qualification bhi nahi ho raha theek se’ is a system problem, not a teaching problem to solve.

In the end, even as a teacher, I look at teaching as a people (human) centric field. So, the scope, breadth, and depth are all very subjective and vast. For example, as a research buddy (RB), one person may think their responsibility is to guide a learner to be critical of their documentation, whereas another RB (RB2) may be struggling to get their participant (P2) to finish writing the initial research idea itself. Here, RB2 may have focused on making the P2 get into the research practices and community as a goal rather than getting them completely ready with a perfect publication.