SEE Learning India – a collaborative effort between Max India Foundation and Emory University – is committed to bringing to fruition His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s vision of integrating the importance of social, emotional and ethical skills into mainstream formal education.
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of the need to cultivate not only social and emotional well-being but also the awareness to discern the choices we make as we begin to understand our place as members of a wider interconnected community.
SEE Learning India offers training and capacity building workshops for educators to train them in the SEE Learning framework, curriculum and pedagogy. In recent times both educators and students have faced several challenges which have impacted their psychological and emotional health.
The SEE Learning® program and its practices have helped them adapt to these changing circumstances better by inculcating values of compassion, kindness to self, and building resilience. It has allowed educators and students to focus on their emotional well-being, which in turn, has facilitated continued learning in the absence of in-person school.
Facilitating training for educators
Until now, SEE Learning India has impacted more than 30,000 children with its various initiatives while bringing on board close to 3,000 educators within the ambit of the curriculum. More than 650 educators have engaged with SEE Learning through a deeper immersion into the curriculum, framework and pedagogical models.
Further, SEE Learning India conducts CBCT® (Cognitively Based Compassion Training) workshops for educators. The essence of these workshops developed at the Centre for Contemplative Sciences and Compassion-based Ethics, Emory University, is to cultivate our innate capacity for compassion implemented through analytical practices.
These workshops focus on attentional stability and increase emotional awareness through focused analytical reflections, thus aiding the participants to gain a better awareness of themselves and engaging with others and the community at large.
With practice, informed compassion can become a spontaneous response that permeates one’s life. This program has been widely successful in addressing Empathetic Fatigue witnessed in many professions, including those in healthcare and teaching.
L1 Facilitator Certification Course
After successfully certifying the first cohort of Level 1 (L1) facilitators from India and Southeast Asia, SEE Learning India launched the second cohort of the course with 82 participants. The seven-month online course involves a thorough exploration of the SEE Learning foundational concepts, framework and curricular content.
Once certified as L1 Facilitators, the participants are prepared to offer SEE Learning® workshops. The idea is to equip them with the skills needed to implement SEE Learning® in their schools, organizations and communities. Given that SEE Learning® follows the episteme of constructivism in its approach, we see that many educators – after undergoing certification – transfigure into more skilled teachers in facilitating classroom learning.
India Compassion Study
SEE Learning India has embarked on the India Compassion Study – a three-year research study – in collaboration with Akanksha Foundation and Emory University. This research will focus on the implementation of SEE Learning® in Mumbai and Pune. It is a first-of-its-kind study to build a case for the need for ‘Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning’ in the Indian subcontinent.
Emotions & Expressions with Anganwadi Workers
While the pandemic has created hardship for many, it has been particularly tough on the frontline workers. The Department of Women and Child Development invited Indus Action (a policy implementation organization) along with SEE Learning India and Kshamtalaya Foundation (an NGO working towards eradicating inequality in education among school children) as implementation partners to introduce ‘Emotions & Expressions’ as a pilot project for 175 Anganwadi workers across two districts of New Delhi in 2021.
As part of this project, the Anganwadi workers were trained in SEE Learning® Resiliency and Body Awareness practices. Appreciative of learning the skills and practices related to building resilience through regulating and navigating emotions, these workers participated in bi-monthly, virtual training sessions over three months with great enthusiasm. Their feedback testimonials attest to the fact that this pilot project came at an opportune time to equip them with the tools and skills needed to deal with the repercussions of the pandemic.
A society progresses only when all the stakeholders embark on a journey to evolution and growth, and SEE Learning India and Max India Foundation are committed to catalyzing that progress.
