A learner and educator, heading a primary school that has embedded climate literacy and leading on climate change as Executive Leader for a global education provider
I am a learner and educator with 33 years experience of educating students in India and the Middle East. Currently based in Dubai, I head a school with over 5,000 pupils that is growing from a Primary to a K-12 school. I am also leading Climate Change as the Executive Leader for GEMS education, a K-12 global education provider with a very strong presence in the Middle East.
Our school has embedded climate literacy and was the first in the world to have all its teachers certified as climate change teachers by the UN’s educational initiative on climate change, eduCCate Global. The unprecedented floods in my home state of Kerala in India made me understand that climate change is a reality. In all my 60 years I had never heard or experienced such devastation. We don’t have to live through a lifetime before we act, we can learn from the stories of others and that made me decide to integrate climate literacy at our school.
In 2019, I was invited to attend COP 25, the global climate change conference in Madrid, by UNITAR, The United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and eduCCate Global.
I am on a mission now to embed climate literacy in schools around the world and have engaged with several schools worldwide on a twinning program to address this and other Sustainable Development Goals. Our passion for embedding climate literacy made Melanie Harwood, the founder of eduCCate Global, bring with her a team of educators from the Hammersmith and Fulham Borough in the United Kingdom to take our template back to the UK. We organized a climate conference to highlight the need for climate literacy to be embedded in schools at a climate conference hosted at the school. The entire journey was covered by Richard Sprenger of The Guardian.
I also had the opportunity to attend COP 25 in Madrid, Spain, at the invitation of Angus Mackay at UNITAR and Melanie Harwood of eduCCate Global. This gave me the opportunity to address world leaders at several Press Conferences.
Our story of change and the direction of travel reached several educators and I was interviewed for the Third Millennium Podcast by Zenna Hopson, the erstwhile Chairperson of Ofsted who currently leads a consultancy ZA Partners.
Our school also has an articulated curriculum of Tolerance and Generosity and has been recognized by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai for our contribution to Dubai Cares. Our children have raised funds through Carnivals to build schools for the underprivileged in Malawi and Palestine and support war-torn Yemen and Syria as well.
I have a Master of Science in Educational Leadership from The Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Masters degrees in Education as well as English from the Bangalore University in India.
I write for pleasure as and when the bug bites at my blog The Evolving Mind. I draw and paint pictures, am a keen equestrian, enjoy travel and learning new things every day.