A Nurturing Place

Context: Children are quite vulnerable to mental and emotional stress. The school must enable children to be resilient and adaptable to overcome the stress in uncertain times.

Need to reorganize our school spaces to meet present demands:

• Inclusive school spaces: Each pupil should feel equally included irrespective of gender, socio-economic class, ethnicity, disability, etc. 
• Collaborative learning and exploration: are to be encouraged and the idea of mutually exclusive competition must be actively discarded.

• Our schools, and parents too, must work towards achieving a fine balance between self-reliance and interdependence for the children.

• Exposing to aesthetic experiences: listening to music and appreciating other art forms. They should be helped to develop an affinity with nature.
• Reading habit: It enables children to traverse multiple worlds and gain access to a variety of human experiences along with nurturing imagination and creativity. 
• Yoga and Sports: Yoga plays a role in spiritual rejuvenation, the unleashing of latent energies, and their positive channelisation. 

• While sports enables perseverance, resilience, equanimity of mind, quick decision-making, team spirit, ability to accept failures.

• Counseling: It is essential to discern signs of depression and isolation at an early stage.

• Counseling for adolescent issues and careers is also undertaken.

• Use of technology in education: have become handy during lockdown to keep the teaching-learning process on. 

• However:

• It has curtailed some essential features of a wholesome pedagogy.
• Contributed to the stress among children.

• Need to shift to a blended mode of learning: in which actual classroom and technology will work in tandem that is organically adaptive to our educational philosophy of collaborative and child-centred learning.

Conclusion: the holistic development of our children can be ensured by psycho-emotionally nurturing them to show resilience and adaptability to the uncertainties of the future.

A truly sustainable and cohesive society can be achieved only if our children can grow into fraternal communities of happy individuals.