Tr’s Perspective on Professional Development
My journey as teacher and PDPs
Mrs. Vasavi Ayyanan, Teacher, UAE
After completing ten successful years as a teacher, who has been loved, admired, and welcomed, I let complacency set in. By this I simply mean that I decided to stay within my comfort zone. The cocoon that was woven by me, for me which everyone calls comfort zone is in everybody’s life, especially teachers. Is it mandatory to leave your comfort zone? break the cocoon? I mean is it not comfort that we all are searching for? Well! I was inside my cocoon, and it was comfortable, now I am flying with colourful wings and looking up from the sky and things are prettier, more beautiful and life seems vibrant.
Breaking the cocoon, leaving the comfort zone, acquiring wings, it is nice to read, but is it possible? Is life still comfortable? The answer to both the questions are yes. Who would have thought Professional development Programmes could do such wonders? I began my eleventh year as a teacher with Professional Development programme. I was a trainer and a trainee. The programmes that followed through out the years moulded and are still moulding me into a better teacher. It is not just the programmes, but the complete process of the programme gave a lot of insights. It was an invigorating experience, as the whole training sessions were a rewiring of the thinking process and it culminated into “SIS – Learn”
Everything started with delightful teachers. The steps to acquire the characteristics of a delightful teacher was the steppingstone, if the teachers become delightful then the outlook of the teacher’s get modified. There is an overall positivity that leads to a strong belief that every student deserves to be successful and that every student is capable. The training on active teaching methodology changed the teaching methods even in the higher secondary. The boring teacher talking and students listening became an old methodology and the active teaching methodology took its place. How to intrigue the students, the necessity to create the need to learn, the building blocks for learning were not new for me but that was what one would call as paradigm shift. I worked for ten years for the students, but I realised that I had to work with the students.
When I thought I heard learnt every stroke in swimming, we were struck by corona. Corona was a hard blow, a tight smack on the face as we must unlearn certain methods and learn new techniques and methodologies to incorporate technology. The training over the years in SIS, way before corona, “Technology and the Teacher: An era of reckoning”, “Tools and Techniques of Classroom Management”, “Progression in Artificial Intelligence will Revolutionize School Education” made the changes an easy breeze for me. I knew tools and techniques that teachers and principals were just hearing about.
I am a trainer and a trainee now. I have been acquiring skills and knowledge and keeping myself updated. Information is wealth and it is available in abundance everywhere, but how it is delivered and how it is perceived and received makes all the difference. I personally think that teachers alone can make that difference, by being facilitators, moderators, guides, and mentors. For this reason, PDPs, designed to equip them to face their modified roles and to build communities that are stronger is quintessential. PDPs that aim at throughput are the need of the hour, the demand is more and demand seals the fate of the future.