Capturing My Growth - Reflections

I think my growth as a leader required a lot of embodying the sense of possibility. With every breakdown, every opportunity and every class i took on, i had to think in terms of "how can i turn this around into something better?". This allowed me to create spaces where students express rage through clay modelling, where students come together to decide how they want to educate others, and spaces where the least confident student creates something wonderful. 

I also think that leadership requires A LOT of showing up, regardless of the situation. This is a huge part of my journey and i owe this to my co-fellow Riya Parekh. At the beginning of the fellowship, when anything out-of-the-blue happens, my first response was to dis-engage and not show up. But my co-fellow constantly pushed me to step out of my comfort zone. She told me that theres no point in running away from what you fear, instead show up and face it, and you'll feel accomplished by the end of the day. Initially, it was hard to follow this, but as the months went by, i got better at it, so much so that even when things were really bad at school (with respect to student outcomes and stakeholder relations), not showing up was never an option. The breakdowns were always met with, "lets come back tomorrow and pick up where we left off". This has totally changed my approach towards problem solving. 

THE FUNDRAISER : 

I think my journey as a leader also took a turn when i realised that we are lacking several tangible inputs and outputs, which if we bring to the classroom, can benefit everyone immensely. One thing we wanted to execute was the use of visual learning in history. To create illustrated manuals of each chapter that will help the students visualise the story. Another was a projector for our classroom that if installed, can help us show videos about science concepts that will clarify a lot of doubts in an engaging manner. We also saw the need for a kannada speaking therapist who can engage with children to work through anger and violence. For all this to come to life, we needed funds. Being proactive is another skill that evolved for me during this time, because Riya and I set up a fundraiser for 2,00,000 rupees. We actively campaigned to raise funds, and through the help of instagram and linkedin, raised the entire amount within two weeks.

THE COMMUNITY CENTER: 

The artefacts i have put up have significantly grown from the institute. I think that this is because i now KNOW all my students well. I see what they are capable of, and can bring appropriate opportunities to the classroom. We also realised that given the grades we are handling, there is little to no space in the class hours to execute certain activities and opportunities that we feel can benefit the students. This is why we actively started working towards our community center in September. With the money we raised, we paid the deposit of a place we found closeby, and started our first session on co-creating the vision of this center. In the first session itself, we could see students raising their voices for the things they believe in, expressing needs and standing for each other. We believe that this space can be home to bigger and greater acts of student voice and agency. 

I think that C2 (I create safe spaces to listen to my people and immerse myself in their context) and E3 (I develop an understanding of the kind of leader i am called to be) are the two LIT strands that helped me achieve all these goals that are presented in this portfolio. Although i do feel that i need to heavily work on X3 (I facilitate actions that enable stakeholders to meet their outcomes) and R2 (I analyze multiple data points to diagnose key levers impacting outcomes). The goal for the next unit is to work on these two strands.