Emotions play an integral role in education, affecting student motivation, attention, social functioning and ethical decision making. Enjoyment of learning motivates students to apply greater effort, whereas boredom only discourages effort. Apart from this
anxiety lessens students ability to solve problems, whilst hope and pride increase self-efficacy. Thus, creating a safe and caring classroom which promotes positive emotions in students, must always stay top priority.
To discuss the above, a training programme for master trainers titled Happy Classrooms was held at ITL Public School on 5 August 2019. Ms. Jigyasa Khokhar of The Indian School attended the workshop.
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The one day workshop was divided into three sessions which were attended by various teachers and principals of schools across the country, including DAV School Atari, Sunbeam School Varanasi etc. The resource persons for the day were Dr. Sandeep Jain, Deputy Secretary and Head CBSE COE, Dr. Smita Desai co-founder and director Drishti, Mumbai and Bangalore centres and Ms. Sudha Acharya, Principal ITL Public School.
The first session was conducted by Dr Desai. The agenda of the workshop was a discussion on emotional quotient ( for which self-awareness is very important), strategies for self-regulation, understanding relations and decoding language gestures. The session was conducted using various audio visuals which kept the teachers actively engaged in the workshop. The visuals were of different classroom situations where we were asked to state our perspectives.
The second session was conducted by Dr. Jain which began with shaking a leg on a Bollywood song! Everyone shook a leg to the peppy music and got ready for the session ahead. He was quite successful at not only transferring his energy at the beginning of the session but also sharing the message that a happy teacher means a happy classroom. He shared the happiness formula as stated by psychologist Martin Saligman and plodded us work on the happiness scale invented by the same psychologist. The speaker directed us to compare our scores and look into areas where we can work to keep ourselves calm and composed and transfer the same feelings to our immediate environment.
Towards the end of the session the participants were divided into groups and asked to design their own happiness formula. GAP ( gratitude, appreciate and positive attitude) was one of the formulae created by one of the group.
The third session was conducted by Ms. Sudha Acharya who presented a case study of her school to share the initiatives taken by her teachers to keep students happy. Some of these were: patterned drawing on the floor on which students can play while following the instructions noted upon the same.
The workshop was informative and enlightening as it taught the important concept of incorporating happiness and emotions in the class. It concluded with the words of the CBSE director Dr. Biswajit Saha who also took the feedback from few of the teachers and principals.
It was an informative and enriching experience.
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