SUMEDHA REACH OUT: TEACHERS’ WORKSHOP AT SOUTH CITY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, KOLKOTA

Dr. Jose Parappully, the Director of Sumedha Centre, was invited to facilitate a Workshop for the High School teachers of South City International School in Kolkata on 14-15 June.

The school building is impressive and its infrastructure and facilities state-of-the-art with central air-conditioning. The school is only 4 years old and has had a very impressive growth. Starting with about 100 students in the first year, today the school has more than 1000 students and about 70 teachers. The high school section has 35 teachers, many of them with prior experience in other schools.

Dr. Parappully organised the Workshop on the first day around the theme “Enhancing Institutional Excellence.” He used structured exercises, videos and latest insights from organisational psychology to present the crucial ingredients that contribute to institutional excellence and helped the teachers to assess the dynamics at South City International that contribute to or stand in the way of institutional excellence.

The explorations on the second day centred around the person and functions of the teacher and focused on the theme of “The Emotionally Sensitive Teacher.” Starting with Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence, the Workshop used the concepts of basic emotional needs from Self Determination Theory, and of Mirroring and Idealising from Self Psychology to help the teachers look at the level of their emotional sensitivity and provided tools and approaches to enhance it.

The teachers were extremely satisfied with the Workshop. A number of them said this was “the best of all the workshops” they ever had.  It had helped them to “enhance cohesion” among themselves, “open up communication channels” and create “greater connectedness and trust” and “be more aware of and sensitive to the emotional needs” of students and colleagues.

“The workshop has touched us not only professionally but also personally. Its effect goes much beyond our life in the school.” This was another common sentiment expressed by the teachers as they reflected on their experience of the workshop.