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How to gain an insight as a pedagogical leader

Asnaha Farheen, PYP Coordinator, SRV International School, India

This article showcases the cognition process of a Primary Years Programme (PYP) coordinator. The author shares how to interact with fellow schools in a local network to experience a platform of fraternity and connectedness.

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

This quote symbolizes my thoughts after being appointed as a PYP coordinator. I eagerly awaited the PYP network meeting to know more about fellow coordinators, their ideas, challenges and how they overcome their difficulties.

As we are a candidate school in Tamilnadu, India, we are part of the South Indian and Srilankan PYP Network. I was the only candidate who crossed 318 km to meet the other pedagogical leaders who were from same city in India. My excitement level was high and by just seeing the venue and participants all the tiredness of long journey faded away.

The meeting started with a Skype session with a member of the IB Asia-Pacific regional team. She greeted us with her inspiring ideas and gave us a golden rule—building trust to make this network more successful and constructive.

Next, we co-constructed essential agreements for network meetings. We agreed upon the following agreements: collaborative approach, accessibility, sharing of resources, and transparency of thought and ideas.

In order to bring our essential agreements to action, we created a WhatsApp group to include all of the network members. The purpose of this WhatsApp group was for easy accessibility and collaboration. We would share articles related to pedagogical leadership and resources to promote PYP practices.

During the day, we shared our ups and downs as coordinators, and discussed our expectations from the coming programme enhancements. We feel that the role of coordinator enables us to be a community for creative exploration, out-of-the-box thinking and problem solving. We experience individualism and self-discovery, the respect of all cultures, and the betterment of the school and local community.

We zeroed in on one thing while discussing our challenges: supporting teachers new to our schools. We also discussed ideas to create better induction programs throughout the year to support a new PYP coordinator. One coordinator suggested creating a buddy system in which an experienced IB coordinator would help a new coordinator to grasp IB philosophy and inquiry-based differentiated approaches for learning and teaching.

The most important thing I learned from my fellow coordinators is time management as most teachers find it difficult to balance their time when it comes to documentation, and their learning and teaching plans go astray. We brainstormed solutions like having a teacher folder with a weekly/monthly task sheet, an IB planner that can be converted into weeks, and having a resource pool to share among the PYP community.

The network meeting was a new learning experience for me and my take away was how to promote good planning strategies among my PYP teaching teams. Back at my school, I supported my teachers with suggestions for better planning and collaboration. Because of this quote: “Failing to plan is planning to fail” (Alan Lakein) we developed essential agreements for these two areas.

Being new to the position of a PYP coordinator, I would like to polish my team building skills to make my school a community of proactive collaborators with a strong sense of shared responsibility.

Asnaha Farheen is a former PYP grade 5 homeroom teacher and currently a PYP coordinator at SRV International School (an IB PYP candidate school) in India. Asnaha has 8 years of IB experience. She enjoys working with PYP facilitators to improve student learning through effective instructional support. You can read her previous blog article here.

 

 

 

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6 Responses to How to gain an insight as a pedagogical leader

  1. Macy Lane 28 August 2018 at 5:14 pm #

    Welcome to the new role! I am a new coordinator also. I loved the idea of having a planner that could be converted into weeks. The integration of weekly lesson plans and the overarching PYP Planner seems to be a difficult obstacle for the teachers to overcome. We are working towards building a collaborative community within our school and I look forward to all of our growth during this process.

  2. Dr Kehkashan Yaqub 28 August 2018 at 8:06 pm #

    An insightful and reflective article..
    The solutions for the issue of time management are worth implementing..
    Keep up the good work…

  3. Caroline 28 August 2018 at 10:26 pm #

    Good luck in your role. Teaching through the PYP has enriched my understandings and skills sets about teaching and learning. I am grateful for the knowledge that my PYP coordinator has, she is a great mentor to all teachers at my school.

  4. Saima Naved 29 August 2018 at 5:37 am #

    Very nice article.I know your zeal to learn and move ahead, since the day I met you.Keep growing in the same way. And shine like a star forever. Keep up your good work and spirit to learn and move ahead..you are a good learner and you have all the attributes of the learner profile..

  5. Naghma Rehman 4 September 2018 at 7:12 am #

    Good going Asnah! You deserve more….
    Bring out the children learning through practice is a proper way of using the pedagogical skills, I appreciate you for that not only children learn but they enjoy their work and develops their curiosity to make them life long learner on which IB stands for.
    Keep rocking . Wish you all the best!!

  6. Saba Khan 30 September 2018 at 7:47 pm #

    Traveling is a must for a leaders. Plus they should help motivate the other stake holders like students and teachers to travel . Meeting new people, developing on thoughts and ideas already existing or the new sparks are much faster when a person travels.

    Your going to attend the session is a very good example for the same.

    Keep it up and motivate your team to do as well.

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