Just like many of us in the country, making education a profession was not my first priority. I wanted to make people happy, and I wanted to earn money doing it. Home make over TV shows were popular back when I was in school, and they were my favorite. Ideas coming to life on these shows aligned with what I got upto in my free time, DlYing and crafting.
After finishing my design education I started working in the field with some renowned names of my city, learning the hows and whys of the industry, this was the year 2005 when AutoCAD had just started becoming commonplace in design and architect offices. In 2010, when I moved back to India after living 2 years in Australia, the industry was not as forth coming to take me back into the fold. A friend suggested I teach a semester at my alma mater till the time I found a job in the industry. That semester was an eye-opener for me. These girls brimming with ideas, excited about the world and all it's possibilities, but at the same time just as confused as I was at their age. Talking to them, answering their questions guiding them felt like second nature to me.
And with that education became my thing, finding new ways to teach boring subjects like history and sustainable design were suddenly more important than any desk job. I had discovered my calling, I still was making people happy, but doing something much more important in the process. I brought myself a full circle when I did my career counselling Certification. Now I could guide them from the beginning to the end of their career decision cycle.
Even after 7 years of doing this, the best thing is being able to be a part of their self discovery, nudging them in the right direction. Experiencing that sparkle in their eyes when they realise something in themselves that I knew all along.
Workshops are a great way to start a dialog, to create involvement and bring to fore subjects that don't fall under the purview of the defined syllabus.
I created one such workshops for my design students and lay people alike. The idea behind the workshop was simple, when we can use the design process to solve the world's problem, then why not bring it to a micro level and apply it to oneself and use it to solve personal problems in a structured manner. I designed a worksheet to go with this workshop. The workshop was conducted in collaboration with GirlzFTW. An international mentorship program for women. It was a part of their Girlz Run The World Summit in December 2020.
The Design Thinking Skills for a Dream Life workshop achieved these goals
- Teaching the design process to lay people
- Using the design process to solve problems on a personal level
- Starting a conversation of how design impacts each and every aspect of our lives.
The second workshop I got to do in collaboration with UNICEF for Rajasthan govt. was on Careers in Art and Design. With main focus being on how Art and Design are different, how art is misunderstood as design and vice visa. An initiative to try to explain that these points so picking careers in each of these becomes easier and takes away a lot of hassles that happen later. Design might be very close at heart to art but essentially it is very different so talking about it from the point of view of picking careers was something that needed to be addressed.
Using Design Thinking and simplifying it for others has become one of my life's mission. This mindset has such huge potential that it is hard to ignore. A little open mindedness and it can open a world of possibilities. My webinar on design thinking did just that, made aware of all the possibilities it has to offer.
A quick overview of other workshops conducted by me.
Imparting education can be a really tough task or a very simple one. It can be either a race to complete the syllabus and read out what is written on the screen or it can be made fun by involving the students in the process of discovering and learning.
During my initial years I was given the responsibility to teach history to students who wanted nothing to do with the past and were willing to make a time jump to the future so they didn't have to study. Holding their attention with audio- visual presentations became increasingly hard. To make it interesting I used imagery, most of it that was taken on my travels around the country and started explaining to them via my stories and the emotions I experienced while visiting these places. Although history is a story that happened a long time ago, bringing it into a more contemporary setting helped create more interest. For the places I had not been to, the relevant stories came via movies.
I would give them assignments to watch movies so we could discuss what they saw and learnt. Movies not only made teaching history easy, they also helped address a few other aspects of design teaching.
-Movies helped broaden their horizons.
-They were a good way to teach observation skills.
-It was easy to communicate an idea to them or to explain certain difficult aspects because they could now visualize what I was trying to explain.
Another teaching aide was Social media especially Instagram. It helped me bring them out of the rote learning they were used to in school. It also increased their exposure to things that actually mattered for their future profession. Some of them had never even heard of Pinterest before my mention of it.
For all the subjects that I have taught over the years, History, Lighting Design, Inspiration and Concept, Retail Design and my personal favorite subject Sustainable Design, one of the main strategies I have used is storytelling. I find that storytelling increases their interest in the topic, invokes empathy and helps them connect and learn better.
The latest professional Certification that I have acquired in the past year (2020) has been that of career counseling. Getting this certification was my way of coming a full circle. An effort to prevent problems faced by young Students in finding their path to Career Satisfaction. No one should go through the frustration and disappointment of being stuck in a job or profession that they have no liking for.
The inspiration that I look at counseling as an additional Skill came from my students, and I am glad that I took it up. The ability to extend help to students when they most need it is the most satisfying feeling. It also enables me to connect to students on a very different level.
Counseling has helped me gain fresh perspectives on the human psyche and parenting.
It has also helped unlearn a lot of negatives that I had unknowingly adopted from the society.
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