{"id":8761,"date":"2016-05-11T12:47:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T07:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dorjegurung.com\/blog\/?p=8761"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:14:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:14:34","slug":"little-changes-could-be-big-victories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/little-changes-could-be-big-victories\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Changes…Could be Big Victories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Jana<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been doing a number of other things in addition to working as the Education Program Director for COMMITTED<\/a>. (Click here<\/a> for links to blogs posts about my work with Nepal UWC National Committee and here<\/a> for links to blog posts about some of my work on Nepalese migrant labor issues.) One of them is working with my mate Pete Pattisson<\/a> on migrant labor issues<\/a> and education<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having played a small part in Pete picking Jana Uddhar School for his Collaborative School project<\/a>, not long after my return from my long North-American travel<\/a>, I visited the school. It had changed (see image at the top) since my February 2015 visit (see image below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jana<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The school lost the big yellow building to the earthquake of April 25<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Pete and the team took over the management of the school, it has made remarkable improvements, such as in their test results<\/a>. The funds he and Sakar raised<\/a> last November, has also helped greatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being in the US<\/a> most of the last thirteen months, I wasn’t able to help out much in any of that, but now that I am back, Pete and I are looking at improving student-learning outcomes as well as the teaching experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science learning and teaching, for example, can be immensely fun, in addition to being a learning experience for both the teacher and the students.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my previous incarnation as a science teacher<\/a>, one of the most exciting and, I confess, geeky activities was planning exciting and fun lessons for my students. I often used discrepant events<\/a> — usually of a dramatic nature — or I would have them tackle open-ended problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, many of the international schools I taught at had amazing resources<\/a> and, every year, had huge science budgets. I had pretty much free rein to requisition resources<\/a> that I needed\/wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resources and support at government (public) school in Nepal<\/a>, of course, is no comparison, as is teaching and working there. For instance, lesson-planning is a rarity, for a number of reasons. If I had to guess, I would say about 0.1% of all teachers actually make lesson plans!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there is no reason we can’t bring some of my love of science into a government school in the country. Good, fun, exciting and rewarding science does not necessarily require fancy and expensive gadgets and unlimited resources<\/a>. Pete and I believe that even small changes in pedagogy will have profound improvements in the students’ learning outcomes as well as the teaching experience.<\/p>\n\n\n

[bctt tweet=”Small changes in pedagogy will have profound improvements in the learning outcomes of the students” username=”Dorje_sDooing”]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To that end, Pete and I will be working together with Jana Uddhar science teachers to develop low-tech science activities to bring the subject alive for both them and the students. Had I not enjoyed teaching<\/a> as much as I did, I probably would not have stuck out with the profession for as long as I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope to rub some of that love of the subject and teaching<\/a> to both the students and teachers at Jana Uddhar School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the road to changing science teaching and learning…at Jana Uddhar School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Little Changes...Could be Big Victories","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,340],"tags":[143,313,255,251,211],"class_list":["post-8761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nepal-education-parenting","category-teacher-education","tag-government-school-education","tag-jana-uddhar-school","tag-pete-pattisson","tag-science","tag-science-teaching"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Jana-Uddhar-morning-assembly-733-feat-image.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Jbro-2hj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30035,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions\/30035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}