Doon Valley Public School Principal: Why The Education System Is Long Overdue For Change

Seema Sharma is the Principal of Doon Valley Public School. With an experience of over 22 years in the educational service, she has won numerous awards and honours including Shikshak Ratan Award, Mahila Shakti Shiromani Award and the Indira Gandhi Samrasta Award. She has done her M.Phil from Manav Bharti University, M.A in English and Political Sciences from Uttharakhand and Meerut respectively, Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. A skilled orator and a confident leader, she shares her thoughts on the current education system prevailing in the country and why a change is imperative.

The computer and the internet’s evolution these past few years have been staggeringly fast. A computer that used to fill an entire building in 1965 has about the same computing power as a modern-day cell phone. Most of the popular forms of media like TV, radio, and print are slowly being nudged from their pedestal by the internet. Everything seems to have changed drastically these couple of years, and this includes the K-12 education system.

No change in years!

Some say that this change has been a long time coming. There is an analogy that uses fairy tale character Rip van Winkle to describe this; Rip van Winkle has just woken up from his hundred year slumber and stares in amazement about how much everything has changed in the time that he was asleep, he almost did not recognize anything, until he went into a classroom. Rip van Winkle recognized immediately that it was a classroom because nothing much has changed in the K-12 educational system since he fell asleep in 1906!

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Thankfully, educators are starting to change with the times. The trend in K-12 education these days is that learning institutions should try their best to keep up with the recent advances in technology to teach their students better.

Here are some of the more popular trends in K-12 education today:

1.The Use of the Internet and Social Media as a Teaching Tool

All students these days know how to use a computer and the internet, and most of them are using social media networks to share their thoughts and to support each other. Educators these days know how to harness the power of the internet and social media to get in touch with their students and hear their thoughts.

2.How the Condition of Educational Facilities Affect Performance

It is simple. The better the building’s condition, the better the students and their teachers perform. There was a survey done with different schools in the US as subjects and they sought to find out just how much of an impact a school building’s condition and facilities has on the students and teachers. Some results point out that better facilities led to less truancy, smoking, and substance abuse in the students. It was also determined that with better school buildings test scores rose up significantly. And even the behavior of the teachers and how well they instruct their students seem to increase along with improvements in the school.

3.Students Teaching Teachers

Students perform better when they have the opportunity to tell their teachers what things in the classroom needs improvement. Contrary to the old belief that students are too young to know what they need, K-12 education systems now give the students the opportunity to give pointers to their teachers on how they can deliver their lessons so that the students can understand better.

It was also found that giving the students a chance to contribute and even revising the classroom rules actually make the students abide to them; it gives them the feeling that they have a say in what goes in the classroom. Students tend to follow the class rules now since they had a role in making the rules and regulations.

4.Paying Close Attention to Each Students’ Needs

Educators are not looking at their class as a collective; they see them as different individuals with different needs, which is why some students lag behind the others when it comes to the lectures. Educators can help these students keep up by giving them personalized attention.

Shrinking budgets in school districts and universities are conflicting with increasing expectations for learning outcomes, prompting many schools and teachers to turn to technology to achieve better results. K-12 and higher education institutions have started implementing technology in their schools and curricula. An entire “ed tech” industry has burgeoned to support them, producing online courses, mobile apps, and more. Here, we examine some trends in educational technology and how it’s changing traditional methods of both teaching and learning.

Trends examined include:

• Technology is “blending” and “flipping” classrooms with positive results.
• Technology in the classroom: virtual classrooms.
• BYOD (Bring your own device) is bringing personal technology into the classroom.
• The educational value of social media and Web 2.0 tools is growing.
• Technology increases engagement with gamification.
• These are just some of the recent trends in the K-12 education system. These are promising signs that show the educational system in the country is improving and no longer stagnant.

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