Masterclass With Fearless Educator

Topic: "Journey of an Experiential Learning School"

• As the co-founder of the number one leading school in India, Heritage Group of Schools (A group of K-12 progressive schools with over 7000 Children), Mr. Manit Jain has redefined quality in school education in India. 

• Manit championed the cause of experiential learning, launching it successfully in the mainstream environment. He is driven by the cause of real and humane education and continues to advocate and address the need for re-imagining schools. He is a thought leader in education who has spoken and written extensively on the need for transforming education. 

• He co-chairs the FICCI’s school education arm (FICCI ARISE) in India and has been instrumental in engaging with various government organisations from time to time to restructure and reimagine education. 

• Manit has personally facilitated multiple workshops and webinars across the schools with school leaders, parents, and teachers. 

• Widely acknowledged and regarded for his work in the experiential learning arena, Manit understands the dire need for reforms in teacher education in the country and the inadequacy of the system to prepare effective teachers. He continues to found new ventures like ‘I am a Teacher’, a Post-graduate diploma in learning and teaching that is changing the paradigm of Teaching in India, an initiative that is developing a model for practice-based teacher education in collaboration with Boston Teacher Residency. ‘I am a Teacher’ now runs its second centre at the American School of Bombay. He has committed himself to bring about this much needed change in teacher education that could fundamentally transform our classrooms and schools.

• Manit is an alumnus of Harvard University and holds a master’s degree in Education from the university.

Topic: "Fall in Love With Math"

Manish Jain graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (1993) with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He also finished a few courses at Stanford. A chance meeting with Padmashree Arvind Gupta triggered him to dive into the space of popular science education full-time. Prior to that, he worked in the area of chip design for 19 years at Synopsys in Bangalore and Mountain View, California. Most recently he was a Director R&D leading the Low Power Simulation efforts. 

He is Associate Professor of Teaching at IIT Gandhinagar and he heads the Center for Creative Learning at IIT Gandhinagar, which aims to provide an ideal space and environment to learn and understand concepts joyously; working hard to bring back the gleam in the eyes! Before CCL-IITGN, he worked at IUCAA Science Center in Pune.

Manish has always had a passion for science and in 2013 he decided to spend all his energies to make education engaging and experiential. He spends a lot of time these days designing toys and activities, conducting workshops and teacher training and is passionate about sharing the magic with people. He is very interested in making esoteric science/research pedantic so that it can reach general populace and can speak in their language.

Manish firmly believes this approach can revolutionize learning since toys speak the language that children understand

Topic: "Importance of Life Skill Education in a time of crisis"

Swaroop Sampat is an Indian actress who has acted in several Hindi language films such as Naram Garam and Nakhuda and is known for her performance in television serials like Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi. She won the Miss India contest in 1979 and represented India at Miss Universe 1979

Swaroop obtained a PhD. in Education from the University of Worcester. She did her doctoral thesis on using drama to enhance life skills in children with learning disabilities.

She is a trainer, traveling across India to conduct workshops for teachers to impart this knowledge for the benefit of children.

She was selected by the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to head an educational program for children.

She was selected as one of the top 10 Global finalists for the Global Teacher Prize conducted by Varkey Foundation, amongst 10,000 nominations from 179 countries worldwide

Swaroop is married to actor Paresh Rawal. She directs and acts in plays starring her husband. They have two sons, Aniruddh and Aditya.

Topic: "Innovative Education"

She is the Co-Founder and Director of Door Step School. Since 1988 she heads the organization and has  created a dedicated team of more than 200 volunteers. With her persistent guidance and continued support in field of educating young underprivileged children she has impacted more than 1,00,000 children annually. 

Her educational models include Non Formal Education for out of school children, School on Wheels - Mobile Schools, Naming Streets are few other unique initiative which were spear headed by her. 

She is an ASHOKA fellow Change maker of 2002 

She has received the Street Skati Purushkar  from the President of India in the year 2013 for her stellar grassroot work in the field of education.

Besides this , she has also received the Maharashtra State Ahilyabai Holkar Puraskaar for the year 2006-2007, the Mayor Award, All grassroots Women of the Decades award from ASSOCHAM any many more achievements through her journey as a change maker

Topic: "Future of Work & Learn - Post Covid"

Amit Goyal is the India & S.E. Asia Head for edX - world's largest E-learning platform founded by MIT & Harvard University. Amit is credited for making India as the second largest B2C learner base world’s largest learner base for edX. 

Prior to edX, Amit was the Head of Education Solutions business for Samsung Electronics. He was responsible for product development of various education mobility products being used by leading Ed-Tech & Test Prep companies of the world today such as Byjus Tab learning. 

Amit was also known as the man behind launching world's cheapest PC Tablet Aakash - One Laptop Per Child initiative of the Indian Government. 

Amit holds a bachelor’s degree in IT, Master's in Business from Oxford Brookes University-Oxford, and various IT & Business certifications from The World Bank, MIT, IIM, Microsoft etc.  

Amit also chairs the IoT India Congress and advises Indian Government and Start-ups.  

Topic: "Role of Yoga in Modern Education"

Dr. Venugopal V BNYS, M.Sc Diabetes (UK), PhD Scholar

Dr. Venugopal is a Yoga & Naturopathy Doctor. 

• He has completed his Masters in Diabetes from Edinburgh, UK and 

• Masters in Yoga from Tamilnadu Physical Education and Sports University, Chennai

• PhD in Yoga from S-VYASA University, Bengaluru.

• He has over 16 years of experience in yoga. 

• He had been serving in many prestigious institutions and played roles as Scientist, Research fellow and also as Assistant Director of a nationwide diabetes movement. 

• He is currently working as Assistant Medical Officer & Lecturer at Govt. Yoga and Naturopathy Medical College, Chennai. 

• He has worked with a couple of projects on School children education in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai- on improving their cognition, attention, memory and overall health education, between 2016-2019.

• As a researcher and scientist, he has over 25 scientific research publications

Topic: "The Challenges of an Educator Today and Ways to Overcome Them"

Sandhya has been journeying the teacher education space for over three decades. She holds a Bachelor’s in Education and a Masters’ in Social Work, and true to her belief in lifelong learning, she pursues several courses to strengthen her understanding of education and life. She holds the IB Certificate in Planning, Teaching and Assessment. She is a Certified Programme Leader for the Cambridge International Diploma in Teaching and Learning and Educational Leadership (Cambridge, U.K).

She has designed and taught international teacher education programmes for several years. She holds a Globally Standardized Certificate in Master Training and Facilitation from a reputed training institute in India. She is a CAER certified trainer for Assessments, Differentiated Instruction and CBSE’s Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). She holds the Master Trainer Certificate for the Intel Teach to the Future Programme. and the Coordinators’ Training Certificate from the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network, MIT, Boston, U.S.A.

Having started her career as a teacher of Social Sciences and English, at primary and high school, now for the past fifteen years, she has been actively involved in Teacher Education (International Courses), designing and facilitating modules in creative classroom practices, across India. Besides these, she has written articles for several magazines, including ACER (Australia) and Teacher Plus. She has also co-authored a book on Teaching English Speaking Skills, published by the Cambridge University Press. Trained in the Whole School Quality Circle Time Model (U.K.), she headed an experimental, research-based project that looked at transforming the transactional and didactic culture of interaction in Indian schools.

Earlier, as Coordinator of Programmes at an NGO, she designed educational projects incorporating emerging technology and the creative facets of art, music and theatre for school children and teachers. She is a resource person and content developer for Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Pearson. Currently, she heads of International Professional Development Qualifications at a reputed educational company in Bangalore. In partnership with IPE Global, she leads a large-scale project involving training of government school heads and teachers Meghalaya. Besides these, she is on the advisory boards of several schools in Bangalore. A deep reader and Zen practitioner, Sandhya lives unconventionally, loves challenging status quo, and designs all her training programmes with the aim of generating transformative interaction among participating educators. It is with this completely unconventional outlook and approach, that she founded the unique initiative ‘Teacher Ink’ with the sole purpose of empowering teachers to take charge of their own professional and personal growth, and to challenge them to think like reflective academicians and researchers.

Topic: "Kick for Change"

Abhijeet Barse is responsible for the rapid scaling of Slum Soccer which has more than quadru-pled the organisation’s outreach in his tenure as CEO. He has established a pan India presence for the organisation by setting up offices and centres in the cities of Chennai, Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi in addition to other centres in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh  Haryana Gujrat and Chhattisgarh. 

Dr. Barse has revitalised Slum Soccer’s football based curriculum through effective engagement with a focus on women's empowerment, hygiene, nutrition and social inclusion. His vision has also led to the development of a comprehensive participant development path-way in the organisation that has helped streamline and focus activities. His strengths lie in overcoming challenges of limited resources and financial constraints to design and deliver high-quality, cost-effective and comprehensive football for development programs. 

Dr. Barse was elected to the network board of streetfootballworld (Strategic Alliance Partner of FIFA) where he served for two years with distinction. He plans to replicate his work and learn-ing from that time to develop a network of like-minded organisations in India to promote the interdependence and integration of all members. He also plans to increase global participation in Slum Soccer's initiatives and towards that end he has organised events which have seen the participation of football legends like Dwight Yorke and Steve McMahon. 

He is an accomplished public speaker and has delivered TEDx talks at Nagpur and VIT Vellore in addition to heading an expert’s panel at ‘Goal 2015’ and ‘ Goal 2019’- an international Conven-tion on Football Business organised by FICCI. 

Dr. Barse is an International Ambassador for the National Children’s Football Alliance He is an Acumen Fellow (Class of 2014) and is the 2015 winner of the Game Changer Award conferred by the HR Club of Mumbai.  He also completed Executive program for Non Profit leader at Stan-ford Business School in August 2015. His work also led to the organization being awarded FIFA Diversity Award in September 2016.

Topic: "Kalasamvaad- Creative Dialogues to Re-Imagine Learning"

Gitanjali is the founder of Snehadhara Foundation, an educationist, a social entrepreneur, an Arts Based Therapy Practitioner and an Arts Practices for Inclusion (API) Educator with over two decade’s experience in teaching a diverse population of children and adults. Snehadhara’s inception in 2012 was aimed at looking at innovatively using Arts Based Therapy (ABT) for learning. The motivation was to explore a significant train of thought from an action project to a long-term sustainable practice. 

The pioneering attempt was to look at interventions with an integrated, holistic approach to address the various learning, therapeutic and social inclusion needs of children/adults across special needs groups. This has got her to pioneer the first ever Arts Practices for Inclusion programme in India. Over the past few years Snehadhara has worked with around 1000 children through direct and weekly interventions, with over 50000 children through indirect interventions in schools and other receptive environments and trained over 2000 professionals in about 400 organisations across the country. Over the past two years, Snehadhara’s international journey has carried its best practices to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Qatar and Nepal. 

She has many awards and accolades to her credit and her work has been recognised in various platforms internationally. To mention a few - Snehadhara Foundation is one among the 6 global progressive institutions as a LEAPS (Leading Educational Advancement through Progressive Schools) partner school along with Lumiar Foundation, South America and UK; Hub School 21, France; NuVu, US; Kingsland Pre-Prep, UK and Agora School, Netherlands. Gitanjali was invited as a key speaker at the Conferencia Internacional in Buenos Aires. 

She is a recipient of the Millennium Alliance Grant 2017 as a social innovator of one of the top five Innovations in the country for Education for the project ‘Kala Samavesh -Inclusion and Education of Disabilities. Gitanjali has been awarded the 2nd Creative Art Therapy Award 2020 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of Art Therapy by the Sancheti Healthcare Academy as a recognition to the silent heroes who have done exemplary and exceptional work in the field of Creative Art Therapies. She has been conferred the Super Achievers Award, 2017 to recognize her outstanding contribution in the field of Disability in and outside Karnataka. 

She has also been an ACTIVATEE speaker at the 45th International Association for Experiential Education (AEE) Conference in Montreal and has also presented at the prestigious TEDx platform.

Topic: "Exploratory Self Learning- A Scalable Grassroots Solution"

Shuvajit Payne, presently the Head of Education at Barefoot College, leads its education initiatives comprising of a 400 student strong rural school in Rajasthan, 50+ non-formal digital night schools in 11 states of India and outreach programmes that train more than 4,000 government school children annually. He is working on transforming the digital night school model into an exemplary quality digital education solution for remote rural underprivileged communities who are outside the ambit of electricity access or connectivity, with a unique curriculum around gender, environmental sustainability and rights and citizenship. The work is supported by Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and was recognized as one of the top solutions for teachers and educators globally in MIT Solve, 2019.

Previously, Shuvajit has had a diverse career graph ranging from process management in MNCs, to M&E, ICT, programme strategy in non-profits, filmography as well travel photography. He graduated from IIM-Lucknow and Presidency College with qualifications in Management, Economics and Statistics. He was worked with corporates like IBM, Shell UK, CSR wings of SBI, Reliance and with non-profits such as MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. Today, programmes that Shuvajit has undertaken with different NGOs and corporate foundations, such as the SBI Youth for India Fellowship, have achieved remarkable scale thereby authoring significant change at the grassroots. Shuvajit is recognized as one of the top 50 global educators as per The Varkey Foundation's 2020 list.