Shaleeka Jayalath

Welcome readers! Despite the little time it had taken to reach out again, we have not for a second forgotten you! With all the challenges that are brought forth to us every day, it is also a moment to be grateful for what we have, a chance to assure our strengths, and an opportunity to simply learn. Speaking of learning, today I have with me an individual who appreciates the essence of true learning. She is an educator working every day to shape the learning experience among children. As the Founder and Principal of Colombo School of Arts and Sciences, she aspires to redefine and optimize the ideal leaning experience, especially with conventional limitations that traditional education imposes. I warmly welcome Shaleeka Jayalath to my column today.

Shaleeka, you are an all-rounder who possesses educational exposure and professional experience in an array of fields. What led you to take up a career in education?

I initially completed my degree in the United Kingdom after which I came back to Sri Lanka in 1996. It was quite by accident that I was roped into teaching at a leading international school at the time, so I had my reservations. However, it truly paved a unique path for me. I felt my journey in teaching was strengthened, equipping me with the skills necessary for managing and taking care of a class, which were two important elements that came to my attention as I started off. Although, I had specialized in strategic planning and resource optimization, working as a Management Consultant both in Sri Lanka and abroad, I eventually connected to the life of an educator.

I’d like to hear on how CSA came to life.

The concept for CSA was actually an outcome of a challenge that was thrown to me by a couple of my own students; an outcome of a case study to design and craft the ultimate school with an ideal learning experience. I initially laughed it off, but it stuck with me. I sat down one day over a weekend and planned out the concept for the case study. It certainly didn’t end up as a case study as I was contacted by a tertiary institute several months later, inviting me to set up a secondary school.

What are the important attributes of CSA that you think are unique and valuable to the institution?

Our objective was to create a school that would place value on the Arts and Humanities, especially in a very conventional learning culture where we discriminate the capacities of children based on the subject streams they pick. For instance, there is a notion that smart kids by default should choose the Sciences and the weaker students therefore end up in the Arts stream. In such a context, children are directly or indirectly pressured to pick a certain stream to validate their capacity and satisfy familial or societal expectations. We wanted to break this paradigm; CSA offers an array of subjects in the fields of Arts, Business and Humanities, along with the Sciences.

We also want to encourage children to be free from compartmentalizing subjects and encourage them to explore subjects that pique their interests, inspire growth, and help carve out their career paths. We also nurture children to be independent learners, to manage time and resources, and to have a holistic approach in learning which will ultimately prepare them for the long-term journey in universities and working environments. With a one to ten teacher-student ratio, CSA ensures deserved attention to each student. This includes providing a tailor-made education to those with special needs.

In your opinion, what areas do you see in the current education system that need attention?

The national curriculum can help children be more grounded and open them to a traditional value system that is important. However, as we progress to higher grades, the system is designed more for memorizing facts that are eventually reproduced in testing rather than to comprehendd what is taught. Learning for mastery and learning for performance are two different pathways. Students who learn for mastery and understanding are known to do better than those who simply program themselves to perform better, whether they have a genuine interest to learn the subject matter or not. If the education system does not value mastery goals, children who are passionate will question why one should deeply learn something when you are simply appraised for performance and be compelled to switch from passionately learning for mastery to a quick fix learning that simply gives higher grades. This switch in learning will catch up and create challenges when learning in universities, collaborating for research, and incorporating soft skills at a workplace.

Universities and employers require out of the box thinking, which is not encouraged by the current education system. Apart from that, a constructivist approach to teaching is truly needed through which the teacher becomes a facilitator while making the student a key role player in the classroom. These areas can be looked into by both national and international schools.

We see the dawn of digitalized learning especially due to circumstances related to the pandemic. In what ways can we create an effective learning experience online?

Going online doesn’t mean that you would simply take what you traditionally do in class and put it on Zoom. We need to adapt the teaching to suit a digital platform. We need to limit the time spent online, especially for younger kids. Too much screen time will cause brain fatigue; something to consider when designing classes.

At CSA, we limit the amount of time that students need to spend online while ensuring that the syllabi is completed as scheduled along with extra-curricular activities. The process of online education has been varied according to the ages of our students and maintains the one to ten teacher-student ratio which allows our students to easily engage in the classroom even on an online platform. We schedule in regular one-on-one sessions with students and parents alike to discuss and clear any ensuing concerns while providing any additional support for students as and when required. Any physical requirements such as lab experiments and exams are carried out in line with CAIE, Ministry of Health and Government requirements. This entire process is carried out inclusive of career guidance, internships, and life coaching.

I also feel that children should explore learning possibilities at home that go beyond digital devices. There is a lot to see and learn, from nature and from one’s surroundings. We simply see things around us, but do we observe them? Do we empathize with the experiences faced by other entities? Can we connect our observations to draw a possible inference? While the times carry their challenges, we can flip the conversation and consider how we could use these times to do what we could not normally have done. We can make use of this time and use it to appreciate what we have and others do not.