Reniscience Education

We are truly appreciative of the staff at and for hosting us and the faculty from at their schools yesterday. It was a massive learning experience for all of us and we applaud all the good work you are doing for Mumbai’s children !

Students from are exploring the world of animals in EVS! Reading about animal characteristics outside the textbook, observing toy animals for special features, did Google searches on ipads and explored the animal kingdom in a variety of ways.

In another unit, students read about foods eaten in a variety of states across India and analysed them for main ingredients!

Science in the early years has many layers!

Looking forward to working with some familiar and some new facilitators over the next few weeks!
Cheers to this team of power women!
.sangita

It was refreshing to become a participant again at !

Saare bacche .sangita ko hi kyun milte hain?


But seriously, we LOVE running into ex students !!!!

We spend the last 2 days in Jharkhand understanding and celebrating the absolutely essential and truly incredible work being done by over the last 10 years with adolescent girls in 260 KGBVs in the state.

We are left feeling emotional, hopeful and re-energised after my interactions with their fellows, visiting a KGBV and meeting the warden and teachers there, meeting family members of one of their program leaders in their own home and listening to more than a dozen stories of their lives.

Whether it is as powerful as having the confidence to approach the village mukhya to fight for her and her sisters' land rights, or to find a different kind of courage to be able to speak to her parents about why her mum should always eat last, fight generational myths about menstruation, support her sister to speak up against her in-laws..... Ugam is helping young women in Jharkhand find their voices and use them.

And these voices are being heard by their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and most importantly, by other girls in their communities.

Congratulations Lopa Gandhi. We are privileged to know you and work with you.

Our co-founder had the privilege of sharing her educational and professional journey with these young girls from ! So many questions!!!

Wishing all of them the very best in their lives after school!

Happy to be working with all new and returning science teachers at The this year! Good luck to them all!

When you taught them as students in KG and now teach them as teachers! Our hearts are full !!! ♥️

Someone today told me

The child is not the problem.
The problem is the problem.

That struck my somewhere deep.

We take our responsibility and our vote seriously!
Get out and vote India!

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of posts on my SM, specifically from the US, telling teachers that they are not responsible for their students' behaviour.

I simply cannot understand this. So, WHO exactly IS responsible for the child's behaviour in class?

The immediate response is that parents should be teaching their kids to behave responsibly at home and that behaviour will or should or must carry to the school.

As an educator and a parent of a child who struggles to "behave" himself, let me tell you how hurtful this statement is. We work very closely with our school to help Z learn how to be. Neither we nor his teachers just throw our hands in the air and say, "its only your responsibility to handle this." When he is at home, there is nothing his teachers can do and when he is at school, there is nothing we can do. So, in class, the teacher is responsible for setting rules, conveying expectations, holding him accountable, handing out consequences..basically helping him manage his behaviour... just as we are at home.

Now, let's say a teacher is working with a neurodiverse child, or a teen with trauma, or a student from a difficult background, or a middle schooler whose parents do not model or teach the right behaviour. That student is in my class and her behaviour is rude or distracting. What do I do? Give up? Ask the school to expel or suspend the child till she learns how to behave? Complain that it's not my responsibility to teach the child how to manage?

All of it just sounds wrong. Maybe I am old school, or feel too deeply about my profession, or just naive.. but I refuse to believe most teachers feel this way.

Rather, it feels more like a call for help from overburdened teachers for the lack of support from school leadership and management...to provide counselors and social workers, to facilitate constructive dialogue and find solutions with the parents.

Yes, if a child is harming others or himself, he may need to be removed for a period of time to work with a counselor or therapist untill he can be reintegrated because teachers may not have the skills to do that themselves.

But we do this BECAUSE we care for our students and believe that we ARE responsible for them, not because "its not my problem."

Super proud of Z for persisting and learning his first 100 sight words with me!

Last Sunday, we spent the afternoon working with 36 enthusiastic high schoolers who are part of Project Rise at .

We explored how scientists think. We analysed newspaper headlines and discussed how science is often misreported or sensationalized.

All in all, a productive weekend!

Read about the power of ProjectBasedLearning in bringing greater equity in science education

PBL, Science and Social Justice Let me ask you a few questions: Who is a researcher? Or a scientist? Where do you find scientists and researchers? What do they look like? What do they do? Last week, I had the long-overdue pleasure of reconnecting with my PhD advisor, Angela Calabrese Barton. The 45 minute conversation with her rem

This year, we did something different. We tutored four amazing 8th graders in science - something I recommend all education consultants do from time to time.

It was difficult to juggle this with all of our other ongoing projects, but oh so fulfilling. It's almost the end of the AY and we recieved these messages from the parents 😀🥰

Do you know how to design a graphic novel?

CaL participants working on story projects become illustrators as they add finishing touches to their final books!

Check out our website to see past graphic novels and picture books designed by our students !

Cityaslabindia.org

We are excited to continue our engagement with for the second year, supporting their math and science teachers in improving their planning and teaching across all grades.

What is math?

We asked math teachers what the subject means to them and here is what they had to say.

"Don't forget that someone is learning to be a good person just by watching you"

Today, we received this photo from one of our participants with the following note.

"Happy morning Ma'am. Could you plz share this pic with Rashmi Ma'am? I was quite impressed by her attitude towards this little girl who was just trying to remind us that we are doing this workshop for her. She would constantly ask for the mic and also tried to figit with her laptop. But ma'am handled the situation very gracefully. We have learned much more than what she was trying to convey.
Thank you ma'am. Happy weekend 💐"

Being a good facilitator goes far beyond having good facilitation skills.

we are lucky to have you with us!

"Teacher work" from our language, preprimary, science and SS workshops.

Dedicated to all.pre primary teachers everywhere.daniel

Woo-hoo!!!!

Our super enthu PD team is in Burhanpur!

So, SO excited to have these experienced and committed facilitators with us!

‘Go Wild’ with your camera lens! 📸🎥🖼😁✍️👥🕵️‍♀️👩‍🏫

City as Lab invites students to take up a photography project as part of Project-Based Learning.
In a 1.4 billion population, we are witnessing a growing conflict between the indispensable goals of economic development and environmental protection. Under the ‘Go Wild’ theme, students capture photos that show this conflict in a variety of ways.
During the project, students will go through the process of identifying what they would like to photograph, make a shoot schedule, plan their photoshoot, learn about photo framing, angles, exposure and understand tools to edit these photos and finally submit them along with a write-up as per the guidelines.

To register or know about the other 5 types of projects visit the link below - https://cityaslabindia.org/type-of-projects/

“Yesterday I was visiting my son's school.

I see a bright colored bench in the yard. I asked if this was the only place to sit.

- And he said to me, ′′ No, that's the bench of friends. When someone is lonely or can't find a play partner, they'll sit there and others invite them to play with them."

- I tell him I thought this was great, and I asked him if he used it himself?

- He says: ′′ Yes at the beginning of the year when I was new here.

I sat there and another student came to invite me to play with him. This made me happy. And now when I see someone sitting there, I also invite them to play."

What a great idea to have a Buddy Bench on all playgrounds!