Veteran actor Mohan Agashe delivers an orientation session ‘Bringing Theatre into Classroom’ to the alpha teachers at Chitkara University

Chitkara College of Education welcomed its new batch of prospective Alpha teachers by organising powerful, interactive, and engaging sessions by Padma Shri Dr. Mohan Agashe, Film and Theatre Artist, and Ms. Simi Srivastava, Master Storyteller and founder of Kathashala, on using ‘Theatre’ and ‘Storytelling’ as a pedagogical tool to restructure and enhance the classroom learning experience.

Dr. Agashe enriched the prospective teachers through a session on “Bringing Theatre into Classroom”. With much intensity in his words, he said, “Theatre is a powerful tool. Theatre and Performing Arts not only engage with the creative side of the brain, they also provide an ideal balance in students’ patterns of study,” Subjects that offer practical learning are essential to rejuvenate and re-engage students, he added, stressing the importance of being in sync with the industry and the present generation.

In the second half of the session, Ms. Simi Srivastava, spoke about the importance of making classroom teaching interesting and interactive. She gave the prospective teachers a crash course on “teaching through storytelling” while enacting different roles, modifying voice, making expressive gestures to make subjects like Mathematics, Physics, History, Biology, English, etc., interesting for students.

The Innovative and revolutionary teacher education program offered by Chitkara University ensures a future teacher who is more digital, informed, aware, employable, global, hands-on, researcher and student-friendly in approach. Hence, this future teacher has been given the name “alpha teacher” who is capable enough to teach and groom the millennial.