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Mandar Shinde
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Monday, January 31, 2022

Bridge courses, mental well-being part of state roadmap for learning

Bridge courses, mental well-being part of state roadmap for learning
Jan 31, 2022 | THE TIMES OF INDIA


The focus in the next academic year would not be limited to just improving the fundamental learning objectives of the students, but also helping them with their mental well-being.

While another learning loss survey would be conducted to gauge where the students stand so that a roadmap can be prepared for what more needs to be done to bridge courses as well as for planning extra classes, there would also be programmes to mentor children and help them tide over the two years of gap in offline education they encountered, officials from the education department said.

Apart from this, the state has also planned to reduce drop-out rate and encourage girls’ education by adding standards VIII to XII in neighbourhood schools where classes are only up to Std VII.

The change would be reflected in the textbooks itself as bilingual textbooks are being introduced to improve student engagement and language skills.

“From next year, we will introduce a single textbook formula to reduce the weight of school bags carried by students every day. This will be introduced in Std I from the academic year 2022-23 and will be implemented for all primary classes later. Once the new State Curriculum Framework is designed, work will also be cut out for us to revive the textbooks as per the new Education Policy,” Krishnakumar Patil, director of Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production & Curriculum Research (Balbharati), said.

Unlike this year, when students received the textbooks months after the academic year began, they will be delivered on time, Patil added.

Vikas Garad, deputy director of State Council of Educational Research and Training, said that the next academic year will focus on introducing more co-curricular activities for better interaction between pupil and teachers as well as among pupils. The focus will also be on a robust assessment process, and more emphasis on the mental well-being of the child.

“As you know due to online education, there is limited teacher-pupil interaction and there is almost no peer learning. We are seeing a trend where students are lagging not just in classwise learning objectives, but also behaviourally, there are some drawbacks. Our priority is that in the coming years, we would try to bring things back to normal and in this project, we would also seek help from child psychologists, counsellors, NGOs and interested parties. A school is like a small ecosystem where the student gets to learn life skills too. While academics is a major part of it, so are things like working in a team, accepting failure, helping each other, working with people from different backgrounds and thinking processes which we learn along the way in schools. We also need to inculcate reading habits in them and de-addicted from online devices. We need to make them listen, ask questions, seek answers and so on. So various co-curricular activities are also planned,” Garad said.

Garad said that a learning loss survey would be done to understand the lacunae and accordingly bridge courses would be suggested. With the possibility of another session on online learning, Garad said that classwise, chapter wise videos are also on the cards which will be uploaded on the YouTube channel of SCERT so that every student can access it whenever they want for free.

There will also be a survey on out-of-school children so that proper measures can be taken to bring them back, said Vishal Solanki, commissioner of education.

“Only when the physical schools start regularly will we be able to authentically conduct a survey on out-of-school children. Secondly, we already had discussions with many NGOs and others regarding sex education in schools pre-pandemic. It is important to impart age-appropriate sex education in all schools and efforts would be taken to introduce affective measures. The talks are also on introducing free channels for class I to XII so that students can learn from TV in an audio-visual mode,” Solanki added.

Setting it right

• More focus is required on developing literacy skills, particularly for the students from Std I to III

• Textbooks and other learning material should be made available to all the students on time

• Textbooks and workbooks should have more detailed instructions for self-learning

• Good quality digital content should be designed in the regional language

• Satellite education centres should be started in communities, equipped with digital devices and learning material for children

• Sports, arts and other activities should be encouraged at a community level

• Resources like sports equipment, art and craft material, etc. should be made available at the community level

•Out-of-school children surveys should be carried out more seriously to understand the impacts of pandemic, lockdown, migration, school closure, on education of children, especially girls

- Mandar Shinde, Convenor of Action for Rights of Children



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Friday, January 8, 2021

The Dark Room 3.0 (Immersive Theatre)

The Indian Express

Pune: Theatre company uses smell to craft immersive performances and expose concealed sentiments

Ruchika Goswamy | January 8, 2021


The room is dimly-lit red, with an array of containers which, when opened will fill the space with a variant of olfactory sensations. There are trays with liquid while photographic papers are hung to dry overhead on wires. The sensory movements usher the audience through three plays, namely Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story Khol Do, Kafan a short story by Munshi Premchand and Durga Poojo by Anonymous, which are staged in the photographic darkroom in Rangaai Theatre Company’s The Darkroom 3.0.


“Darkroom, our flagship project, is an immersive sensory theatre experience where we have different short stories which are performed in a setting very complimentary to the photographic darkroom. The fundamentals of our performance are borrowed from the principles of dark room in photographic development, wherein it is a place where you develop negatives into photographic papers with several processes in between. In our performances too, we try to present or develop the story in our audience’s psyche through principles used in developing negatives that have two major elements called burning and dodging. While the former equates to overexposing, dodging is underexposing the picture. We present the stories in such a way that in certain aspects of the story, we show things that are overly exaggerated or performed in a particular manner and certain cases, it is regular storytelling,” said Tushar Dalvi, founder and artistic director at Rangaai Theatre Company.


The opening performance of Manto’s short story Khol Do is a blindfolded experience, where the audience will experience heightened senses of smell, touch and sound. The Darkroom 3.0 slowly steers into the second story where the blindfolds have been removed for the audience. Premchand’s short story Kafan, which revolves around two insensitive men who ignore the screams of a family member in labour, comes with a modern touch to the traditional Dastangoi, an Urdu oral storytelling art form and will be presented with an open audience participatory format. The concluding story of Durga Poojo (A True Story) by Anonymous sheds light on a dark reality of child abuse which follows French dramatist Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty as template.


“The theatre of cruelty aims to invoke unusual emotions of disgust, anguish, anger whereas traditional theatres tend to avoid such dark reactions. But here, dark emotions are targeted as child abuse is a sensitive theme and the way it is presented is very abstract, absurd and experimental. It becomes darker, which runs parallel with our theme of the dark room. Even the first two stories are also socially driven stories, which touch upon some dark elements or concepts of our society,” said Dalvi.


Dalvi said the dark room is an open site-specific work and the space is generally an alternate space. “It gives us an opportunity to use the space in a way, that as an audience when you enter, you will feel that you are in a dark room where photographs are going to be developed. It is a sensory, olfactory experience and from the three stories we will be performing, we have about 10 to 15 scents that the audience can go around and smell. These are in containers similar to chemical bottles one can find in a photographic dark room with trays and photographic films hung to dry,” he said.


Akul Anandor, who has been part of Rangaai Theatre company since mid-July last year said that as a performer, “it has been both overwhelming as well as freeing”:“In terms of normal society and morality, you try to filter out some of your worst impulses or behaviour. So, the character I play, which I cannot reveal, is a means of venting out, but also brings about an awareness. I am excited and nervous about the performance at the same time,” he said.


“We are a new team of immersive theatre performers for the city and it is something different we are bringing to the theatre sphere in Pune. It is more involving, more participatory in terms of the audience. The stories touch upon social issues, especially themes on subjugation on women and the plays have some open spaces in between them where the audience gets the liberty to take the lead,” said Mandar Shinde, who plays a character in Kafan.


Although Rangaai Theatre Company started in 2016 in Mumbai, it has now shifted its base to Pune, thereby introducing theatre enthusiasts with immersive theatre. After an overwhelming response to Darkroom and Darkroom 2.0, Darkroom 3.0 is a revamped and improved version.


“Our shows were very regular for Darkroom 2.0. Considering all precautions and safety measures, although theatres have begun, performers like us who perform in intimate spaces, it was a challenge to mould our performance accordingly. We had to change a couple of things like earlier we used to blindfold the audience but now we ask them to do it themselves. Our setup is also such that the audience can move around and pick things up, smell or touch them. Necessity becomes the mother of innovation, which has been true for us. We pushed ourselves to become more immersive, with a more engaging experience for the audience where they have the liberty of experiencing what they want to rather than fixating on what we want them to experience,” said Dalvi.

The Darkroom 3.0 will premiere at Raah – Literacy & Cultural Centre on January 9. A second show is scheduled at the same venue on January 17.



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Sunday, October 4, 2020

Dine-in Restaurants Must Reopen

 


I support the decision to reopen restaurants in the city for dine-in. Let’s accept that restaurants are not just a luxury. Not at least in a city like Pune where a large section of working people, including both men and women, relies upon restaurants in their routine life. Also, many restaurants in the city have already started serving food discreetly, in an unhygienic way. Customers are eating on the street side. Dining halls are closed, but they have made temporary seating arrangements outside. People are sitting in the side garden or narrow lanes nearby, consuming food items purchased as a ‘parcel’. If allowed, the restaurants can sanitize their dining area and officially serve their customers in a more hygienic and safer way. It can probably save many restaurants from closing down permanently, many hotel employees from losing their jobs, and many owners from going bankrupt. Even after reopening, the small-time restaurants are going to face several challenges on the hygiene part. The increased sanitation expenses might eat up their profits or make them lose customers over increased food prices. I think we as customers should also look at the restaurant business more empathetically and support them in these difficult times.


- Mandar Shinde

Sunday Hindustan Times

October 04, 2020



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