Topic: "The Challenges of an Educator Today and Ways to Overcome Them"
Sandhya has been journeying the teacher education space for over three decades. She holds a Bachelor’s in Education and a Masters’ in Social Work, and true to her belief in lifelong learning, she pursues several courses to strengthen her understanding of education and life. She holds the IB Certificate in Planning, Teaching and Assessment. She is a Certified Programme Leader for the Cambridge International Diploma in Teaching and Learning and Educational Leadership (Cambridge, U.K).
She has designed and taught international teacher education programmes for several years. She holds a Globally Standardized Certificate in Master Training and Facilitation from a reputed training institute in India. She is a CAER certified trainer for Assessments, Differentiated Instruction and CBSE’s Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). She holds the Master Trainer Certificate for the Intel Teach to the Future Programme. and the Coordinators’ Training Certificate from the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network, MIT, Boston, U.S.A.
Having started her career as a teacher of Social Sciences and English, at primary and high school, now for the past fifteen years, she has been actively involved in Teacher Education (International Courses), designing and facilitating modules in creative classroom practices, across India. Besides these, she has written articles for several magazines, including ACER (Australia) and Teacher Plus. She has also co-authored a book on Teaching English Speaking Skills, published by the Cambridge University Press. Trained in the Whole School Quality Circle Time Model (U.K.), she headed an experimental, research-based project that looked at transforming the transactional and didactic culture of interaction in Indian schools.
Earlier, as Coordinator of Programmes at an NGO, she designed educational projects incorporating emerging technology and the creative facets of art, music and theatre for school children and teachers. She is a resource person and content developer for Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Pearson. Currently, she heads of International Professional Development Qualifications at a reputed educational company in Bangalore. In partnership with IPE Global, she leads a large-scale project involving training of government school heads and teachers Meghalaya. Besides these, she is on the advisory boards of several schools in Bangalore. A deep reader and Zen practitioner, Sandhya lives unconventionally, loves challenging status quo, and designs all her training programmes with the aim of generating transformative interaction among participating educators. It is with this completely unconventional outlook and approach, that she founded the unique initiative ‘Teacher Ink’ with the sole purpose of empowering teachers to take charge of their own professional and personal growth, and to challenge them to think like reflective academicians and researchers.