Inspiring Minds: Jayshri Lokhande’s Vision for Transformative Education

Introduction:

Jayshri Raghunath Lokhande is born at Bhusawal, dist. Jalgaon in Maharashtra on 20th July 1975 in a middle-class family. Then brought up in Ahmedabad and continued her education up to SSC through Marathi medium at MSM High School, Bhadra, Ahmedabad. Then enrolled in a primary teaching course and achieved a distinction grade at Sarkari Buniyadi Stri Adhyapan Mandir, Soorsagar, Vadodara. Then on 25th July 1996 recruited by the Municipal School Board at Surat, and continued graduation and post-graduation through distance learning from Gujarat University. Then passed the Head Teacher Aptitude Test and was appointed as a principal in Shri. Vishnu Ganesh Pingle Pri. School No 261, Aaspasnagar, Limbayat

Jayshri thinks that her attitude of dedication to work developed in her secondary education institute. There, teachers were influenced by RSS activities and naturally, most of the students were well-constructed with it. “Our work should be for the welfare of the community and it is everyone’s responsibility”, this attitude developed in childhood. As a teacher, she enjoyed her job with being a student by taking part in different activities like science fairs, project work under N.C.S.C.(NATIONAL CHILDREN SCIENCE CONGRESS), innovation work held in IIM Ahmedabad, and local educational authorities. She enjoyed her task with students together and her observation and research attitude developed.

Challenges and Achievements:

Jayshri has passed through 4 severe medical crises Tuberculosis, first heart attack, corona, and second heart attack. Survival is still going on, something is inspiring from nature to work.

As a teacher in school Shri. Vishnu Ganesh Pingle Primary School no. 261, aaspasnagar, Surat students of 6th class were not attentive in teaching, they could not answer the asked questions and could not take interest. This problem may have many reasons like not availability of speaking and listening practice, lack of proper guidance, method, or implementation of effective teaching-learning material. After deep thinking, decided to prepare a remedial task under order-‘easy to hard’. The twelve steps are prepared including listening-speaking practices with the pronunciation of sight words. For speaking practice with proper pronunciation, prepared different conversations and presented them in class as an ideal listening and speaking practice. For this task randomly selected 20 students from one class. At the start of the educational year, started this remedial task and completed it within 30 days. In routine school time, after assembly during the first 2 periods, for about one hour this remedial task should be presented with proper gestures and with the help of different kinds of TLM. First 2 days for pre-test then each step presented for 2 days. Thus 12 steps require 24 days. After the presentation of the project, a post-test was held. Then over four days compared data, analyzed it, and decided limitations, problems, and advantages.     

For her work in education, Jayshri won several awards and recognition:

1. 'National Education Brilliance Awards’ -2023 For Innovative Principal Of The Year-By Hypedge Media Ltd
2. Inter National Brilliance Award-2024 By Hypedge Media Ltd
3. India’s Top 24 Women Leaders In Education  By She-Inspire, Magazine 
4. Asian Education Leadership  Award -2024 For Top 10 Highly Effective Principals of The Year 
5. India’s Unsung Heroes Awards 2024  For Transformative  Teaching  By  Doosra  Dastak And Saday 
6. Global Women  Inspiration  Award And Conclave 2024 For Top 100 Inspirational Women Of 2024 

Personal Insights:

Jayshri completes her all tasks in her institute, but sometimes she has to spend more time on school. She makes a row-plan at home and does written tasks at school with the clerk. She found that easy by meeting with teachers for directions. Jayshri's plan improves after discussions.

Jayshri’s core value is to keep a positive attitude that guides her to run her institute. She is punctual and does work on time, she is dedicated to work, sees beyond vision, keeps a system approach, keeps formal relations with staff members, distributes responsibilities or tasks among them with liberal values, to modifies their thinking according to work for results with human-values. She also believes that any task done with dedication by heart gets success. She trusts herself as a leader and the feeling of teamwork helps her and her team to work.

Impact and Vision:

Talking about the future of education she sees that different technologies take the position of teacher. The teacher is not a plant-supervisor and only supervision is required. It has to be with students having variable grasping abilities, to provide them different convenience to learn. After using ICT- TLM discussion is required in the teaching process, then sorting out weak learning outcomes, then planning for remedial tasks, evaluations, analysis, Implications, limitations, problems, and advantages.

Her vision includes, students who are very near to dropping out, and need a touch of trust, Jayshri wants to make all her teachers to touched this way. She added, “It is a miracle that only one inspiring touch may lead the student constructively”.

Jayshri believes in the success in education field, “I think if you are choosing something to change, you keep thinking about its design, work hard for the whole time unless you feel satisfaction. The system approach is very useful for solutions. For achievement as a leader he has to keep some expectations, sometimes he has to be humble or rigid too. In the most of tasks, we should keep our vision beyond the scene. We have to evaluate results or developments after severe durations, it directs us to success. We should keep calm and patient, it makes it convenient for creative thinking.”

Conclusion:

Jayshri advises young women in education to know their students closely and be their friends, every student is a unique one. “A teacher should be a good actor”.  Jayshri focuses on every student and throughout her career of 28 years she has become an inspiration to many.