Learning Forward

Season 2 Episode 8: We LOVE this episode because it is so AMAZING what Abhijit Sahni has been able to create (Project DEFY: Design Education for Yourself).  His story itself is amazing.  He was taking the typical path, school to career, and realized he was much happier creating and making amazing things, so left the typical path and started a new one.  And began to create spaces where community members could do the same.  Sandeep Dutt, social entrepreneur, author of My Good School, Learning Forward podcaster, and HundrED ambassador,  adds his thoughts.  And our very good friend, Cath Fraise, founder of 100 Roads and Workspace Education, adds to the fun.  Hear how Abhijit has created self-directed, community-driven spaces of “creating, making, and doing,” where the community is creating their own learning and making their own solutions. A big thanks to Chris Unger, Jim McCue and the team at A Revolution In Education.

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Episode #75: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Ravi Kaimal, has been involved with The Fabindia School since the first brainstorming discussions with John and William Bissell.  Ravi is a professional architect and is responsible for the design of the school buildings. He was also Chairman of Bhadrajun Artisans Trust (BAT), the non-profit, tax-exempt charitable society founded by William Bissell which established the school in 1992 and continues to help guide the school and provide financial support.   Ravi writes, “The first block was designed to be built using maximum local materials and local skills so that it could be done with the least cost and time. The buildings are made almost entirely of stone available in the local area, and there is no wood used as wood is expensive and vulnerable there. This also came close to Mahatma Gandhi's approach of using only locally available materials.  So our buildings are very much of their place, geography, climate and people. They are also optimized for their function, with very little energy being used. On the start of the hot summer of 1992 at the start of digging for the foundations of the first block at the school in Bali, the earth was so hard that water- bought from a farmer- had to be poured on it to break it! As you can see today, the land was barren, and there was no soft greenery, only thorny bushes.” Ravi Kaimal, visiting the area frequently before the school is set up to collaborate and brainstorm with John and William Bissell; As the Principal and Founder of Kaimal,  Chatterjee Associates, an architectural firm in New Delhi, formal training includes a B.  Arch (1987) from the School of Planning;  Architecture, New Delhi and has been practising in Delhi since 1990. Ravi's interests and experience extend beyond architecture to photography, art direction for films (Art  Director of Arundhati Roy's feature film) and rural education; Ravi has travelled extensively in India,  Nepal,  Sri Lanka,  US, Spain, Italy and UK  photographing places of architectural and environmental significance. He is the recipient of a prestigious UNESCO award for heritage conservation for his work in Rajasthan. In the show, he credits his passion for education to his family and grandparents, shares how the focus on the girl child and push for quality education in rural India has made a huge difference. As a parent, he adds that today with technology and tools, couples and balance work and family raise children who are better equipped for the world.

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Episode #74: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Chad Dumas, an educational consultant, international presenter, and award-winning researcher whose primary focus is collaborating to develop the capacity for continuous improvement. With over two decades of successful leadership experience, Chad has led significant improvements for students and staff. He shares his research and knowledge in his new books, Let’s Put the C in PLC and An Action Guide to Put the C in PLC, and his consulting includes research, stories, hands-on tools, useful knowledge, and practical skills. Meaningful collaboration is a surefire way to get sustained results for students. In this podcast, Dr Dumas shares about growing civilisations, how we need to collaborate, work together on projects, accept service opportunities, and address 'who am I ?' The steps must be simple, realistic and actionable. Our work must be meaningful and profound; we could start simply writing out needs or stories, list the actions, next reflect and then address the challenges that come on our way to plan. To learn more about Chad's work and contact him about consulting or speaking, please visit www.NextLearningSolutions.com.

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Episode #73: Sandeep Dutt, in conversation with Lavalina Sogani, founder of Vimukti, providing high-quality education free of cost to girls from low-income families living in urban slums of Jaipur. Convinced the community to send their daughters to school. Earlier, girls were either forced to take up some micro-level income-earning activity, work as domestic help or stay at home and look after siblings while parents went to work. VGS was looked upon merely as a place where girls got free meals. But as girls learnt to read and write, helped their parents with mathematical calculations and reading newspaper/letters, parents realised the importance of girl education. Girls who have completed vocational training programmes are now gainfully employed. Listen to her story of awe and inspiration, starting with 20 girls to near 750. They have tirelessly worked not just to educate girls but families.

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Episode #72: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Jonathan Nalder, who love building communities of practice, sparking futures thinking, exploring Space, and seeing learning goals with supporting tech that lift students towards a bright future realized. Over 20 years in Edu, He has seen how Learning, digital tools (STEAM, AR/VR, mobile) & futures thinking (futurewe.org/framework) transform lives. Now, as a globally awarded innovator, Futures Learning Coach at STEM Punks, Digital Coach at St Peters Lutheran College, Advance Queensland Digital Champion, Apple Distinguished Educator, CoSpaces Ambassador, ShapingEdu Ambassador, & iWorld STEAM Ambassador, I actively help leaders & learners shift thinking to embrace the coming fully digital, AI era. He is of the firm belief that most human things are important - like relationships, curiosity, problem-solving, design thinking - and best, we figure it out together. The world is seeing a transformation in learning, and it is all about attitude, very much human before and technology later. What will a space base look like? How do we make you happy on earth and beyond in our co-spaces? And works to get the punk back in education!

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Aspiration JMMS @John Martyn Memorial School, Salangaon, Dehradun - Renu Raturi, Sandhya Thadani, Sonali Sharma and Asha Bhandari: a story about Hope and Friendship, the teachers share the joy of learning with a story about how nature shows the best of the two values. Learning Forward India Academy Cohort of 2020-21 is exploring the future of education, built on immutable values alone: Appreciation, Caring, Cooperation, Courage, Freedom, Friendship, Happiness, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Love, Patience, Peace, Quality, Respect, Responsibility, Simplicity, Thoughtfulness, Tolerance, Trust, Understanding & Unity.

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Episode #71: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Yogendra Singh Mertiya CEO at Godwar Farmers Collective, A social enterprise that works with small and marginal farmers and connects them with premium urban markets. It's a project supported by Fabindia and ORGANIC INDIA. He has worked with  Bennett Coleman and Company (Times Group), India’s largest media conglomerate. He completed his master’s degree in Public Policy from the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy in 2016 and holds an undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from St. Stephens College, Delhi University. After completing his undergraduate studies in 2011, he worked with Fabindia as Executive Assistant to the Managing Director. Yogendra has also worked with Cultureaangan Tourism; a social enterprise that promotes rural tourism to create sustainable livelihoods. He served in the media team of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajasthan unit from 2014 to 2016 and worked on social media campaigns of the party. He is an Open Society grantee for Rights and Governance. He worked with the Economic and Social Rights Centre in Kenya on a research project, to evaluate the progress made in the implementation of Right to Education ever since it was guaranteed in the constitution of 2010. An alumnus of The Fabindia School, he is also the Hon President of the proposed Alumni Society. He is deeply interested in issues of democracy, environment, human rights, education and agriculture. First-person in 16 generations moved out of the village Bali in Rajasthan (India), he talks about his formative years and how liberty and freedom are very much an intrinsic part of holistic learning. Back to his roots, the 20 square kilometres where he grew up, he has found his calling for life.

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Sandeep and Kiran share their stories and their passion for changing how we support youth around their heart, love, making a better world, and relationships. And then Chris asks: For someone listening to this, what can THEY do? Sandeep Dutt is the author of The Good School, founder of Learning Forward India and the Learning Forward podcast, Ambassador of hundred.org, Chairman of the Bhadrajun Artisans Trust,  entrepreneur mountaineer doing what he can to create "happy schools" for a better world.  Kiran Sethi is the founder of the Riverside School in India, which has, over the last 20 years, become a  beacon of possibilities when you focus on students and empower them to make a difference in the world, which has subsequently created a global movement called Design for Change.



As much as our world changes – socially, economically, politically and technologically – for the most part, our schools remain the same.  Yes, there are some minor improvements.  And good ones too.  However, most of these are still employed within an antiquated system and practices that do very little to impact our youth's greater well-being and future truly.  To judge schools (as we have done) solely on students’ performance on standardized ELA and math assessments has unwittingly pressed most schools and their systems made accountable to these results to “double-down” on this focus at the expense of the greater well-being of our youth.



But what do we mean by the greater well-being of our youth?  Rather than answer that by myself, you can hear this from the voices of the dozen-plus outstanding educators who contributed to this podcast.  And not only do they speak to the need for a transformation/revolution of our schools and school system for the greater good of our youth, but in the end, the greater good of our communities and our humanity.



Touched upon throughout is the need to allow ALL of our youth to pursue the lives they wish to live.  Touched upon is the need to imagine the possibilities of learning and learning communities that can contribute to the well-being of our youth, our communities, and the world and the NEED to pursue these possibilities and learn as we go.  Finally, the contributors speak eloquently about the power of relationships within and across communities to transform education toward a greater purpose and engage everyone in that transformation.  We need to co-create so that we can co-learn, which can then lead us all to a shared transformation of outcomes rather than the transactional factory system we seem to be stuck in that resembles the "I Love Lucy" chocolate conveyor belt (if you are old enough to have seen this clip).



We need gardens that both value and support the natural growth of our youth.  And we need gardens plentiful with the resources that allow each individual and the garden to thrive and be abundant and generative.



These educators give us some insight as to what it takes to grow such gardens – the result of a revolution through transformation.



►Follow The Revolution Website: https://www.arevolutionineducation.org/

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Episode #70: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Rima Chibb, a communication strategist, filmmaker, education media specialist and creative educator, influencing the education, learning and development sector. Her forte lies in developing original content and message design to drive communication strategies that engage target audiences. Rima draws on the power of artistry in everyday life and makes it available as a learning resource. She works towards addressing urban sustainability through a diverse range of content with multicultural perspectives, exploring several mediums and platforms for content design and greater outreach. She has witnessed the immense potential and scale of using the audio-visual medium as a tool for disseminating information, spreading education and best practices. This strengthened her resolve to use video as a communication tool to inspire change; especially impacting learning, attitude and behaviour. Communication strategies for education, learning & development domains using a COMBI (Communication for Behavioural Impact) approach are an effective way to leverage her strengths. An advocate of flipped learning and transmedia storytelling, she has developed cutting edge learning communication design solutions and training content for corporate social responsibility projects involving schools, teachers, students, young adults, parents and communities. She shares her love for children, how they are influenced by the connections and how their behavioural change happens with the influence of people they connect with. Using her skills as a filmmaker she has done interesting experiments with video-powered professional learning and now is working to upscale her work. 



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The joy of learning diaries: Hope and Friendship - HOPE AND FRIENDSHIP are essential for a TEACHER. Friendships are strengthened only with the level of MATURITY. FRIENDSHIP is the ULTIMATE of HOPE. And HOPE lies within YOU!! We build the future of education on immutable values alone: Appreciation, Caring, Co-operation, Courage, Freedom, Friendship, Happiness, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Love, Patience, Peace, Quality, Respect, Responsibility, Simplicity, Thoughtfulness, Tolerance, Trust, Understanding & Unity. Joy Of Learning (JOL) is based on The Little Book of Values: Educating Children to Become Thinking, Responsible and Caring Citizens by Julie Duckworth and Ian Gilbert; explores twenty-two values that we can teach through schools. This program will inspire you by using examples of where the values are already being used by children and adults in schools and share practical tools to stimulate discussion and philosophical debate. It will also help people take stock of their values and wish to lead their lives. Narrated by Mohini Chauhan of The Doon Girls’ School at Dehradun.

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