Values for Change

OVERVIEW

3.2.1 Schools was a lab school where they would contextualise best teaching and learning practices for urban slum children. Because of the extreme and difficult conditions at home the students came with an emotional baggage that resulted in behaviour problems in classrooms. My role was to use human centered design to empowering children to manage their emotions by teaching them values and skills.

ROLE

Instructional Designer

Curriculum Designer, Facilitation, Communication Design, User Experience, Game Design

May 2014 - April 2017

The Problem

The children I teach are between the ages of 5 and 11. They come from diverse linguistic, religious and caste backgrounds and belong to families of blue collared workers, roadside beggars and hawkers. They live in stressful conditions that include cramped spaces, poor hygienic conditions and often feel the brunt of violence and sexual abuse. They have to spend large amounts of time at home unsupervised by adults, as their parents work long hours and don’t always have time nurture values in them. These kids, like any, are products of their environment, which without supervision might expose them to undesirable elements.

Values for Change Program

In my quest to provide these students with a positive environment at school in order to help them manage their emotions and actions better, I decided to expose them to ‘values’. By integrating publicly available resources on values with the design thinking framework, I created a ‘values’ curriculum for the school. I conceputalized the following framework to teach values to students:

Outcome

MASTERY & SHOWCASE

Students demonstrated any value, that they learnt from their role models, through an activity of their choice at the school’s end of year showcase. 60% of the students were able to independently reflect and share some of the values they showed at the end of year assessment

AWARENESS AMONG PARENTS

School assigned a time during every Parent Teacher Meeting in which teachers would perform skits based on values and spread awareness among parents on how to encourage kids demonstrate values.

RESOURCE BANK

A resource bank was created for teachers that included a sequence of lesson plans, activities, reflection question, etc. This made it possible for teachers to recreate what I did in their own classrooms.

KIDS SHARING ABOUT VALUES

60%