Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Alternative .... teaching

This new experience of teaching a full course (25 hours of EMSD: Environmental Management and Sustainable Development) has been pivotal in many ways for me:

  • in the way I envisage teaching
  • in the messages and topics I would like to put across...
  • the way I try to ... leave them on the table and let students pick and choose, evolve in the way the topic is presented, together, the way they are discussed, not really taught
  • the person I can and want to be, finding the right balance between the friendly presence and the distanced helper (that is really hard for me though)
  • the people I want to take on with me on this specific journey, how to get the right emulation, motivation... and in the end get the whole team rowing in the same direction with pleasure and purpose

Here are some of the tools I used:
  • taping into different senses: visual, oral, scriptural..
  • various medias: videos, writing, case studies in group, individual positioning exercises...
  • taping into different roles: leader, rider, researcher, time keeper...
  • allowing, forcing even... mistakes as a core way to learn
  • knowledge hacking
  • making your own class, and go with the flow of... uncertainties

And all this has been so enthralling... just at times a bit ... tiring!

Please check these 2 videos of Hacking education, very inspiring, motivating:
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/01/07/this-is-what-happens-when-a-kid-leaves-traditional-education?
The perspective of the kid Logan Laplante and the teacher, Sir Ken Robinson, very witty, but very serious too!

I hope I helped those MBAs to think by themselves a bit, to learn how to learn, to get learning where it is: everywhere, to dream... to dream about changing their world, to participate to a Better India, to do it their own way!

and my farewell to them:

"Be well, be happy. Learn to love what you do, to do what you love. Love and be loved in everything you do!
Life is a gift of God, what you do of it is what you give back to God.
May you all feel proud every day of what you are giving back."

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