Education Stalwarts 2022 | Mr. Pramod Srinivas, Director of NPS J P Nagar | Leaders in Education
National Public School, JP Nagar is a sister company of a well-known chain of National Public Schools in Bangalore that is known for providing world class quality of education for over 60 years.
Founded by Dr. K. P. Gopalkrishna in 1959, the school aims to prepare young impressionable minds to be globally minded citizens. With a plethora of learning opportunities and teaching practices, the schools are creating a community of empowered learners and leaders with multi-dimensional skills, advanced IT, Science, Robotics and state-of-the-art facilities for co-scholastic activities, athletics and sports.
Having completed my MBA from Liverpool John Moores University and from the experiences garnered through the course of my journey, I believe education is not mere accumulation of facts; it is preparation of life itself. Education is knowledge imbued with wisdom and ethics. It develops the personality of the students, moulds their character and develops mental skills to help them cope with problems and challenges of the complex world of today.
NPS offers the very best of teaching and learning, catering to each child’s specific needs. Quality faculty, excellent infrastructure and comprehensive educational programming deliver the best for every child at our school.
Our key focus areas continue to remain – creating opportunities, challenging minds, encouraging innovation and sustaining excitement. A holistic approach to education with expert tutelage, creative freedom and inspiring innovation is the key to moulding our students from core to advanced knowledge, thereby adhering to our school motto – ‘Reach Out, Reach High, Reach Beyond’.
Education is a three-way dynamic that involves the students, their families and the school working in unison.
At NPS, we firmly believe in working as a team. Be it with regard to the day-to-day functioning of the school, hosting events for the students and staff, making important decisions or facing challenges – we always work together as a team and have proven to emerge successfully each time.
Being a leader, I ensure to be approachable at all times. My staff is free to reach out to me for any issues they face or any ideas they have towards our shared vision, i.e. the growth of the school.
I believe in leading by example. I groom my staff to be leaders, rather than mere followers of my ideologies and methods. At our school, we constantly work towards upgrading our staff to the next level so as to render them capable to serve as leaders to the future staff of the institute. We believe in promoting our existing staff to emerge as leaders in their own path by motivating them to work towards the best of their abilities.
My entire team looks up to me as a leader, primarily because they see how passionate I am towards the progress of the school, along with ensuring that I support my staff members at all times and remain open to their ideas and inputs towards the betterment of the school. I am there to support them emotionally and offer them the required moral support, and they are all well-aware of the fact that they can always approach me with any grievances they may face.
Every organization and leader faces innumerable challenges throughout their journey. A major challenge common to all educational institutes has, needless to say, been the Covid-19 pandemic and the school closures enforced by it. We began our first academic session during the peak of the pandemic– in June 2020. It thus required a lot of effort on our part to train the teachers to impart online learning to our students, from the very beginning which was indeed a huge challenge given that there was no prior rapport establishment done between the students and the staff in a physical setting. Getting our staff to be tech-savy was a task but our teachers seamlessly sailed through with the implementation of effective rapport establishment strategies, which was what made us successful in ensuring that the teaching-learning process continued amidst the pandemic.
We initially started off with less number of screen time hours for the students, and as we progressed, we introduced simple activities to cater to their interests. By the second wave of the pandemic in April 2021, we had successfully incorporated physical fitness classes into the time-table in the online mode. A number of co-scholastic activities were carried out as we believe they are as important as academics while moulding the personality of the child and rendering them future-ready. However, our greatest strength during this time was undoubtedly the rapport building initiatives executed by our teachers.
The face of a brand is certainly made by the entire team rather than just the leader because it is the team that is working on ground. The team members are the ones who come in contact with the parents and students, and it is those interactions that make or break the name of the brand.
It thus becomes imperative for the leader to keep the teaching and non-teaching staff motivated at all times. The staff must feel happy about working in the school, only then will they be able to create a positive impression of the school. Teachers should be motivated by encouraging them to upgrade themselves by pursuing various professional courses. It is important to talk to them when they feel low or unproductive on certain days. Fostering a positive environment is of paramount importance so as to keep the staff happy, which leads to job satisfaction and in turn, productivity on the job. My message to the upcoming professionals in the field of education is that you need to realize how noble the profession of an educator is. You have been given the amazing opportunity of shaping the personalities of our future leaders which is what will lead to the progress of our nation. Keep this in mind at all times, and understand that being an effective leader requires an open mind with a growth outlook in order to lead by example and achieve success for your organisation.
39,745 total views
