I was invited to facilitate a Workshop for the High School
teachers of South
City International
School
The school building is impressive and its
infrastructure and facilities state-of-the-art with central air-conditioning.
The school is only 4 years old and has had a very impressive growth. Starting
with about 100 students in the first year, today the school has more than 1000
students and about 70 teachers. The high school section has 35 teachers, many
of them with prior experience in other schools.
On the first day, the Workshop was organised around the theme “Enhancing Institutional Excellence.” I
used structured exercises, videos and latest insights from organisational
psychology to present the crucial ingredients that contribute to institutional
excellence and helped the teachers to assess the dynamics at South City International
that contribute to and stand in the way of institutional excellence.
The explorations on the second day centred around
the person and functions of the teacher and focused on the theme of “The
Emotionally Sensitive Teacher.” Starting with Howard Gardner’s theory of
Multiple Intelligence, the Workshop used the concepts of basic emotional needs
from Self Determination Theory, and of Mirroring and Idealising from Self
Psychology to help the teachers look at the level of their emotional
sensitivity and provided tools and approaches to enhance it.
The teachers were extremely satisfied with
the Workshop. A number of them said this was “the best of all the workshops”
they ever had. It had helped them to
“enhance cohesion” among themselves, “open up communication channels” and
create “greater connectedness and trust” and “be more aware of and sensitive to
of the emotional needs” of students and colleagues.
“The workshop has touched us not only
professionally but also personally. Its effect goes much beyond our life in the
school.” This was another common sentiment expressed by the teachers as they
reflected on their experience of the workshop.
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