Darvesh Karim
Assistant Instructor
Professional Development Center, North
University Road, Konodass, Gilgit.
Ph. No: (+92) 05811-454132-4 Ext: 3017
Fax No: (+92) 05811-454135
Cell No: (+92) 03465419307
Email (Official): darveshkarim@pdcn.edu.pk
When a person is briefed how to walk in night, or guide him/her how to swim, may be s/he will feel confident initially, that s/he has understood the whole process of walking or swimming and it will be now easier to practically use that learning on the actual ground. Of-course s/he will not realize its actual taste, the difficulties and hindrances until or unless s/he involves physically walking in night or swimming in a river. When it comes to the real ground, all the understandings and misperceptions become amalgamated and s/he forgets everything accept striving for survival.
This was the situation with us when we visited the school on the first day to work on School Development Plan. We were confident and assuming that we have understood the whole story and now it needs to be shared with the school and will easily make the school development plan. But, it was midnight, total darkness or the water was much deeper. We were experiencing the actual field, the challenges, the realities, expectations, our questions and answers. It was a situation to survive from the darkness or from the deepwater. So, we had to work very hard keeping in mind that collegial environment with a sense of sink or swim together will help us to survive. So, during the planning, we worked in collaboration which Harris cited in Rhodes and Beneicke (2003) argues that teacher collaboration is necessary in professional learning and assigned individual roles to each member in order to ensure the contribution and ownership of each member.
Because of this strategy, gradually, the darkness started to fadeout like the early morning light and we were able to see things a bit clear. The early morning light gave us some view for our understanding but only three days visit remained as it was still time to come the full day light, but of-course it is a starting point towards our professional development.
What were the challenges faced? To what extent did you anticipate them and how did you respond to the challenges?
Firstly, it was a new experience for all of us as we were never exposed to such opportunity to develop a school development plan. So, new experiences use to be opportunities as well as challenges.
Secondly, working in a group is not an easy task because different people use to have different ideas and perceptions. Sometime, it becomes difficult to make mutual decisions and agreements with each others’ ideas. So, to tackle this problem we unanimously distributed different stages among the group members and gave the decision power to the individual and the rest were bound to accept in the specific stage of SDP. However, we all were also contributing according to our understanding.
Moreover, in the school some time we faced difficulty to motivate the SDP team members for an active involvement. Initially they showed very much concern and interest, but as the activities and brain storming carried on, they become exhaustive as they were also never been through such activity, exhausted. have an easy access with our strategic planning team because they had reluctant to provide us time from their daily routine schedules. However, the principal and teachers were very cooperative. Therefore, we managed to complete our task in the given time.
Although the proceedings of the plan proved to be positive for me yet, I can not rule out some of the challenges which I encountered during planning activities. I was engaged in such a practical planning activity for the first time. As a novice teacher it became challenging for me in applying a learned theory in a real context. However, I tried my level best to accomplish the pieces of tasks which were assigned to me by my group members bringing my classroom learning to the process as well as with the frequent consultation of the group members.
I felt no huge challenges in putting the theory into practice. The only challenge which I, personally, felt with this school is that, this school is owned by an individual who is the managing director of the school and she is not in favor of evolving community members in school management. SDP planning tool suggests involving board of directors and some community members in School Development Planning. We kept convincing the managing director and persuaded her to involve community members in school affairs to ensure better learning.
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