When the life-altering COVID-19 first struck, teachers and students alike had to re-organise themselves; teachers in their pedagogical methodologies, students in their learning capabilities. Overnight, everyone went digital – smartphones, computers and TV screens became the printed page and everyone learned as they went along. 

This issue of the Learning Curve is devoted to the questions everyone had to face during the period of school closures: what can we do to mitigate the difficulties of adjustment that primary school children will undoubtedly face on their return to school? The most heartening aspect of the articles in the issue is the tremendous resilience and innovativeness displayed by everyone concerned in adapting to school closures.

COVID-19 made it clearer than ever that the school does not and cannot be looked at in isolation from society. In this issue, there are articles that show not only teachers supporting children’s learning during the closure, but also how parents overwhelmingly supported teachers to continue their work; how, when all other ways of distance learning failed, the unanimous decision of parents was that the education of their children should go on.

In this issue, we have a wide range of articles from writers who have looked at children with disabilities in a variety of ways- but through the same lens: inclusion. There are articles tracing the history of different organizations which have worked for several years to create opportunities for the education of children with disabilities, language acquisition, travel, opportunities for independence and respectful acceptance, among others.

Teaching Learning Materials (TLMs) and Aids, which form the focus of this issue of Learning Curve, an indispensable part of a teacher’s bag of tricks, is a generic term that describes any material that supports and buttresses teachers’ efforts in getting a class of diverse capabilities to understand the basics of any learning. They have to fulfil some basic requirements: simplify concepts, provide the chance of practice, increase interest and motivation, help to explain complexities, concretise abstractions, enrich the course — though, of course, a single TLM may not meet all the above criteria. Thus, they are various kinds of TLMs, starting with the humble, but ever-present, blackboard (which has come in for much adverse criticism) and going all the way up to ​‘smart classrooms’, with all the advanced technology they entail. TLMs have the added value of aiding the memory — when children see how a concept/​rule of language/​experiment works, it is more likely to stay in the active memory than just learning the same thing by heart. This issue presents a wide variety of opinions and experiences with TLMs and Aids.

What happens within the classroom has the power to change lives — for the better or for the worse. We ourselves know from our own school experiences of transactions which empowered or disabled or left us unmoved, according to the atmosphere in the classroom. This is not quite the same as the relationship between teacher and student, vital as that is. In this issue, we have a number of articles which explore the boundaries of the classroom and its importance as an investment for the future.

The dictionary defines the word ​“enable” as, to make able, to give power, means or ability; to make competent, authorise, to make possible or easy. The word ​“enabling” when used as an indicator in school education can be defined as a comprehensive, multi-faceted series of empowering activities required to address the needs of youngsters facing barriers in the acquisition of both academic and life skills. In this Issue, we have tried to bring together articles recounting the experiences of practicing teachers, educators and students across India even one from a school at an altitude of 12,000 feet from distant Leh! — who have all been part of this process. We have articles that enlarge on the theme of empowerment through responsible citizenry by involving the community in the process, of methods used to facilitate collaborative learning by getting students and teachers to jointly examine their problems and concerns, of attitudinal changes enabled through dialogue.

This issue of Learning Curve focuses on ​‘sports in education’ which explores topics ranging from the interpersonal and collaborative influences that sports have on children to the skills it develops, from the harsh realities about why people don’t take up sporting careers to the challenges parents face while bringing up sporting kids, from questioning notions of competition in sports to detailing the power of a sporting mind, from examining the contribution of the RTE to revealing the NCF’s take on sports education.