Celebrating 365 days of action!
How did it all start?
We launched Innerkern as the answer to two burning questions. First, why is it that, despite our best intentions, student achievement is abysmally low across India? Second, even though we know a lot about how children learn, why is it so hard for adults in the Indian K12 system to implement that knowledge? Innerkern's mission and mandate are our answers to these two questions.
What is Innerkern's mission?
Our mission is to inspire hope about learning in everyone we engage.
Who do we engage?
We engage school leaders, teachers, and parents.
What is Innerkern's mandate?
We are an applied education research and learning solutions company.
When did it all start?
On 19 October 2020, Sojo Varughese interviewed Rosama Francis for Teachers Unmuted, a desi podcast on schooling and parenting across the subcontinent. Yet, the idea that inspired the two to found Innerkern, an applied education research and learning solutions company, would emerge seven months later, in May 2021. When Rosama and Sojo finally decided to bring their collective experience as teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, and school improvement consultants to the table and launch Innerkern on 8 November 2021, the Innerkern Dialogue was their first project. They designed the Innerkern Dialogue as an exploratory interview, like the one between Sojo and Rosama on 19 October 2020. As Innerkern celebrates 365 days in action, we thought you would like to look at the first-ever Innerkern Dialogue.
We said more NOs than YESses!
When we launched Innerkern, we were clear about one thing. When it is about changing school leader/teacher/parent practice, workshops and seminars do not help. We had to say NO to everyone who wanted us to do one or two days of workshops for the school leaders, teachers, or parents in their school. We did a two-day session for more than 90 school leaders in Assam to show that we could design captivating workshops if we wanted to and get raving reviews. Otherwise, we said no to all school leaders who reached out to us for workshops. For the records, please read the following article to know what happened in Assam.
What inspired us to design Teacher Learning Meets & Leader Learning Meets? How did both turn out?
How did saying NO turn out?
We focused on finding early-adopter schools that believed in our idea that you could improve classroom practice without sacrificing valuable staff time for workshops and seminars. A few school leaders went the extra mile to discard the traditional notions about teacher training and collaborated with us to introduce Classroom Shapeshift in their schools. You must read the following article to understand why Classroom Shapeshift is more effective than traditional teacher training.
What did we share last year?
Here are a few posts that were popular on Twitter. We thank everyone who reshared it and made it reach as many educators as possible. Check out these tweets and do not forget to follow Innerkern, if you have not yet.
In the past two weeks, all of us at Innerkern spent time reflecting on our actions last year and contemplating what we can accomplish in the future. We have many exciting things lined up for educators and parents. We look forward to spreading Innerkern's Hope Mission with your support.
Forward this newsletter to your colleagues and back our cause.
Thank you for your time.
Warm regards