Sabhas are Teach For India groups where the fellows, alumni and their friends get together and talk about focus areas around education, personal experience….actually anything.
In the Sabha I attended yesterday, there were 5 interesting talks focusing on very different areas and provided me with a lot of insights. I will try to summarise them here.
The first talk was around how human personality is one of continuous change based on the information fed into the brain. The information coming in, forms perceptions and gets transformed into imitation when those perceptions have a positive impact. So the perceptions formed becomes very critical for the beliefs and behaviours developed over a period of time. How we perceive and what instructions we give to the brain becomes the foundation for our development as human beings with distinct personalities. A fundamental shift in personality happens when the perceptions are challenged, new instructions are fed and takes a stronghold in the human brain.
It was an interesting analogy to compare the set of instructions we give to the brain as a method or a function in a software program. The global variables and the runtime are predetermined and can be compared to the circumstances, context and the blessings we get for free. The local variables, the logic and the behaviour of the method or a function are the circle of control where we can manipulate and ensure the method is doing something substantial and contributing to the global context. The same method or a function can slow down or be non performing in a context or a runtime where it does not belong, but when it executes in a context where it belongs the process would execute efficiently as its instructions are better executed there. So, for a personality apart from effective instructions, the execution context becomes important as well – which in our case relates to where you “belong” – The thing that makes you feel you belong to a place or you have arrived !
The next talk was on the experience on pursuing an art form(dance) over a long period of time – 18 years in this case. How art influences the personality and how art teaches some of the key values of being different, not following a pattern just for the sake of it and so on. Interesting aspect around using art as a medium of expression of emotions which otherwise becomes difficult is a worthy information to digest. Art also helps in developing empathy as you get into a character in an immersive experience. Art becomes a key contributor for developing the emotional intelligence. This clearly relates to this talk where Ken Robinson talks about how arts and humanities are critical for the classrooms. Another discussion which was insightful was art takes time to be cultivated, you do not realise from day one that this is the art form you would want to pursue, so it is not totally wrong to give repeated exposure to an art form to students over a period of time to see which flower blooms. (Can be true for subjects too ! , follow what you like right from kinder-garden may not always be the right approach)
The next talk covered an interesting aspect of how the TV shows helped the person in learning about various things about life. Understanding of personalities, knowing about social issues, how micro failures do not affect macro success (term copied from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/ by me). The best take away was how you can learn from everything around, not necessarily what we are tuned to learn from. How entertainment can also be a source of learning is something worth to be pursued further.
The next talk covered experiences around how life gives second chances to you and with the help of these how you can find where you fit in the larger scheme of things. The person giving the talk was into a family business and then decided to pursue the fellowship and how the context switch came with a world of difference and finally led to the realization of where you actually belong and would want to contribute going forward. One thing which clicked on my mind is the question of whether the second chance is really the second chance or is it the first time you get mature enough to make a choice without the influence of the constraints which we are pulled with in different directions – society, finance, stability, social status etc. May be this is the first chance you take where you rise beyond the constraints and decide on the direction or the next step which you want to take – it can happen to you when you are at 20, 50, or 70 !
The concluding talk was on effective teaching methods based on neuroscience. How students get things into the short-term memory but many a times miss to put them into the long-term memory and the methods to try to move the subjects you teach into the long term memory of the students in the classrooms. The talk covered areas which I read in an article talking about cognitive load and how one particular type of cognitive load -> https://cognitiontoday.com/2019/02/cognitive-load-theory-definition-types-and-applications-for-learning-guest-post/ , called the germane cognitive load relates to the methods and techniques used to create long-lasting knowledge schema. The speaker covered similar techniques where he used analogies and mnemonics which the students can relate to, to push information smoothly into the long-term memory of the students in the classroom.
Lot of interesting perspectives, lot of interesting people, time well spent.
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