The corona pandemic. The need to keep the teaching and learning going.
Every teacher scrambling and doing what they can with whatever they have.

This is what I’ve been doing, and hope this general, bare minimum, lean lesson plan helps other teachers teaching online (while remaining sane).

I teach in a grad school, and the classes run for 120 mins synchronously, twice a week.

Prep before the class:
UbD based Lesson Plan
a. What is the big idea of this chapter/session?
b. How do I know the students have learnt this big idea?
c. What structure/activities/materials/articles do I need?

Beginning…

When I reflect on my school/college days as a student, my responsibility as a learner was basically to:
- attend the classes regularly,
- act obedient
- listen to the teachers,
- take notes (copy notes),
- prepare (re-read and memorize) for the exams
and do it all over again and again for many many years.

On the flip side, the basic responsibility of teachers was to:
- teach the content
- act strict
- supply notes
- conduct revision classes (check the memory)
- give exams
and do it all over again and again for many many years.

The…

At EA, we are passionate about empowering teachers, students, and professionals so that they can create more impact in the society. And we do so by creating amazing workshop experiences. That’s what we have been doing — sharpening our skills in understanding, designing, and facilitating participant-centric workshops so that they leave with a sense of empowerment. Just like earlier years, 2019 has been an awesome year of sharing, learning, reflecting, and growing. We want to thank all the schools, colleges, and institutions we’ve worked with this year. You guys are awesome.

Just about an hour into a workshop session for teachers, we were having the participants write a short reflection on their teaching rituals. Suddenly, out from the last table in the hall, this guy comes walking towards me. He looked like a leaner version of Rajesh Hamal, only a bit shorter, possibly a lot meaner.

He blurts out: “You know I’m also a teacher trainer. What you have been doing is quite boring. In my training sessions, I use a lot of movie clips and motivational clips to motivate the teachers. Why don’t you use such videos?”

I didn’t see…

Recently, we held a two-day workshop for the faculty members of Prime College. After the usual ice-breaker, I had this slide up, asked the participants to write them down, and share their responses.

While they were writing down their teaching & learning assumptions, I somehow slipped into my past and thought about my early days as an English language teacher in a private school.

The first two years of my teaching career were a disaster. With shame and regret, I have to admit that I was nothing but an arrogant teacher who would walk into the class with “Hey, I’m…

Are you creative?

If you are reading this, think about this question for a while. Now I want you to give yourself a rating on the scale of 0 to 10: rate how creative you are. Now, ask. Why didn’t you give a 10 for yourself? (Oh, did you give yourself a 10? Awesome. Why did you give a 10?)

So are you creative? Yes, you are. And, that’s what Ulla-Maija believes. “Don’t make excuses of not being creative,” saying this Ulma-Maija started the day with her session on Creativity. Every one of us can be creative if we work…

Let me ask you. If you were to secure your physical property (your house) from any fire related damage, electric short circuit or electric appliance malfunction, what would you do as a precaution?

I’m sure, this is what you would do. You’d make sure that everything’ gets designed and fitted 100% accurate while constructing your house. You’d also get some sort of smart alarm system installed. And you’d probably also get insured.

And, you would probably contact us because we have a company called “Safemandu”.

That was an idea we could bank on.

Well, that’s what we thought during the…

Unlearning Learning Styles and Personality Types
(and what it means for teaching and learning)

I always believed every one of us had specific learning styles and we all fell under certain types. Like, I am a non-math type. Despite having scored well on both math papers of the SLC exams (thanks to tuition center and guess papers), I have always sucked at math.

But I was completely dumbstruck while watching Tesia Marshik’s Ted video “Learning styles & the importance of critical self-reflection” in which she claims that individual learning styles and types don’t actually exist. She claims the popular belief…