maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

Monthly Report
January 2013
Project: Improvement in quality of education through social science subjects and language in two Elementary Schools in Tadoba buffer zone villages Overview: January 4th 8th-9th 10th 11th Objectives: 1. To design and conduct training programs with teachers for improving education methodology 2. To work with students and teachers to find and document the history and geography of the villages in their own area and link it to the mainstream, known history-geography taught in schools 3. To work with students, teachers and parents (including community) to study linguistic patterns in the area and increase parents participation in learning teaching process 4. To study biodiversity of the area and design the ways of conservation of forest and wild life 5. To document the history and cultural patterns of the area, which can contribute to the preservation of Adivasi culture Nagpur preparatory visit to Raman Science Centre and Ajayab Ghar Working with students in Villoda and Katwal schools Film Screening and meeting with teachers of Villoda and Katwal schools Demonstration of teaching methodology and discussion with teachers of Anand Niketan School, Wardha about its improvisation

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

PREPARATION FOR PROPOSED EDUCATIONAL TRIP 4th January 2013, Friday Nagpur

As per the teachers suggestion, we visited Raman Science Centre and Ajayab Ghar (Museum) of Nagpur, to ascertain administrative and logistical details for proposed childrens excursion there. Raman Science Centre has a planetarium and lots of science games which would be of great interest to the children. Ajayab Ghar also has many artefacts and sculptures specifically from the Vidarbha region and it would be a great boost to childrens confidence when they realise that all this cultural and artistic wealth is from their own area and their heritage. We feel that this excursion would be a very special learning experience for the children. THIS MONTHS SCHOOL VISITS This visit was with the specific aim of meeting with the teachers, update them about the possible outcomes of our year-long intervention in schools and together formulate a plan for the future. This was in response to a demand from the teachers themselves. But when we reached Villoda school on 8th January, some of the teachers were not present. The next day, 9th January was not suitable for the teachers, since they had just come to know that it was their salary day. So, they would be busy with bank work and schools would also only run for half the day. We were struck by the bureaucratic issues that teachers face, just to get their salaries. The villages do not have a bank branch, so they have to go to the nearest town (Bhadravati) for this. Since the school timings clash with the banks, there is no way other than giving the children a half-day or taking personal leave to complete their bank work. This is very inconvenient; a loss of time for teachers as well as students. A better system needs to be arrived at, because for some insincere teachers, this is just another chance to get exempted from doing their jobs. In the light of all these unforeseen developments, we decided to continue our work with the children on 8th and 9th January. The teachers from both schools suggested to have the meeting in Villoda on 10th January. SCHOOL VISITS 8th and 9th January, Tuesday and Wednesday Villoda and Katwal schools VILLODA The main subjects we handled this time were History, Mathematics and English. We asked the children (Class V, VI and VII) themselves what they would like to learn and they opted for History. So, we went over all the different periods of History that they are learning each year. We also revised what we had taught in our previous sessions. We showed them photographs of our visits to Markanda and of some historical artefacts like stone and metal tools collected by the Chandrapur historian, Mr. Ashok Singh Thakur. These helped the

children remember what we had taught them in previous sessions and of course gave them a visual account of what was written in their textbooks. Explaining the historical periods they are learning in history led us to the timeline and addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers. Then the children sang Marathi and Hindi poems from their syllabus. In the next session, they wished to learn English.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

The children always love seeing audio-visuals of any kind. We showed the children 2 short animation films- Do Flowers fly- about the education system and its defects, and Golu a film about a healthy diet. Next we showed them some videos from Mr. Arvind Guptas Toys from Trash series. Some of the students told us that they had also tried to create such toys at home, on their own.

The children wanted to keep watching more and more films. Since we had planned to stay over in the village, we showed some more films later at night. The children were so eager that they went home and came back much before the decided time. We showed them a documentary on Tigers and a fiction film, Pistulya which is about a boy from a criminalised nomadic tribe who deeply desires to go to school. An interesting thing was that many people from the community too came to watch; men and women, young boys and girls and lots of children of all ages. KATWAL The Katwal school was a completely different experience. As mentioned earlier, school was only half day because of teachers Salary day. It didnt look like they were in a mood to teach that day, because even though we reached the school around 9 am, we saw no classes going on. The children were playing about on the ground and the teachers were in the office, already getting ready to leave. We said our hellos and started our usual session with Class VI and VII. Here the children chose to learn Science. So we taught a lesson from the textbook (Work and Energy). Children from other classes were peeping into our class and later standing at the door of our classroom, indicating that their teachers were not taking their class and also that they were interested in what we were teaching Class VI and VII students. In this session, we have documented how much children enjoy learning, if taught through interactive, live examples relevant to their lives. After sometime, we noticed that the children were getting restless. We had to ask them a number of times, and then they told us that it was lunch time. We immediately sent them to eat. After sometime, when we went to join the teachers in the office, we saw that they had already finished eating (without bothering to offer us any food) and some of them had already left. (It was 10:45 am, 15 minutes before school officially ended for the day. ) When we were talking to the teachers, 2 students started calling us excitedly. We were happy at their enthusiasm and went with them to to continue our class. On reaching the class, we saw that none of the others had turned up for the post-lunch session, much to the merriment of these 2 students. We appreciated their joke and seeing that they both wanted to learn, we decided to take the session just for the 2 of them. They wanted to learn English, so we told them to go get their English text book. They came back with the textbook and a few more boys. Some of them were even from the high school.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

The English class began. We started with a lesson from the text book on Body parts and the 5 Senses. It was evident that they had hardly been taught anything. Though a couple of the boys knew some words, none of them could form even simple sentences. But they still enjoyed the session, which we conducted in a participatory and jovial manner. OBSERVATIONS Villoda It was evident that the higher classes did not remember or know anything studied in previous years and the children told us that they had not been taught any of the lessons. However, it was noticeable that the students specifically remembered the things which we had taught them in previous classes using audio visual medium or in a narrative story form. When we came to the topic of the historical timeline (which we had already repeated a couple of times in our earlier sessions), we found that children were not clear about basic mathematical concepts like positive and negative integers on the number line. In the limited time we had, we tried to teach the children addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers, but making them thoroughly understand these concepts would need longer and more consistent effort. Both the films Do flowers fly and Golu were very ironic in the context of these children, who have access neither to quality education nor nutrition. There were a couple of teachers present at the beginning of the film show, but one of them stepped out of the class when the film started and the other did not pay any attention to the film at all, but continued doing his own work.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

This apathy of some teachers is ever present. One of the teachers literally sat in the sun for the entire day and we did not see him teach any class in the whole day. Actually we have not seen much of the teaching happening in schools. Some teachers teach very promptly but most of the times the students just sit in a classroom and do nothing. Thats why our classes are welcome by both the students and the teachers where students get to learn and teachers are officially free from their duty. At 4:45 pm some teachers get on their bikes and leave. As opposed to this, there are some teachers in Villoda who genuinely want to do a good job. They need a lot of encouragement and support.

Katwal We asked the HM if we could see examination answer papers of Class VI and VII. He and the other teachers were completely flustered by this. They had no idea where they were kept and made all kinds of excuses. Finally they said the answer papers were in a locked cupboard and one of the teachers had taken the keys home with her. This makes us question whether the examination had been conducted at all. The students had told us that they had not been taught anything from Geography. So we talked to the History and Geography teacher. He seemed to have no clue of the syllabus he had covered. When we asked him which lesson he was teaching at the moment, he said, which was the 3rd lesson in the book. It was January. He couldnt possibly be on Lesson 3. Next we asked the HM about some of the additional activities which are part of the extra-curricular activities to be conducted with children. When we asked him what was he made a wild guess and said, it is about the advertisements painted on the walls of the village (!!) He muttered other such irrelevant answers about the other activities. It is horrifying to think of the progress of a school with such a Head Master. We have seen other teachers openly ridicule him. According to the board in the office, his education is upto Class XII, compared to some other teachers who are M.A etc. During further discussions, one of the teachers admitted that the earlier system of failing children in examinations was qualitatively better. In the current system, children automatically got promoted to the next class and there is no proper assessment of how much they have really learnt. He said that children who had not understood concepts could not be tracked because of the current system. But the main question is, instead of giving excuses and shameless comments that students are too unintelligent to learn anything, why dont teachers do their main job of teaching ?

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

FILM: & TEACHERS MEETING 10th January, Thurday - Villoda

As decided some of the Katwal and Villoda teachers came for the film show and meeting to the Villoda school. We showed them the film - , a wonderful film about a government school teacher and his problems while teaching in a remote school in an Adivasi area. We felt that the teachers would definitely relate to the realistic situations depicted in the film and would be inspired to work towards imparting better education. The teachers, though restless in the beginning, really warmed up to the film. They told us that they were very moved by the film and really identified with the teacherss journey in the film. Some even shared that the film made them cry. It is quite something when men admit they cried. Also it is nice to know that teachers feel so emotional about their profession. We held a meeting with the teachers after the film screening where we told them that the time had come for all of us to start working towards real solutions to improve the education in schools. We had intentionally not explicitly asked the teachers to be present during our sessions because we wanted them to come as a proactive suggestion from their side. Otherwise it would have just been a compulsion. Only a direct demand from them would reflect a real need and lead to something feasible. We also told them that we were well aware of all the problems in the system, but instead of complaining about the same, they should come up with suggestions and solutions to solve the issues. For much of the meeting, they only brought out all the problems they face as teachers. Some of them were as follows: 1. Some of the students just cannot grasp what they are taught. Whatever the teachers tell them is forgotten the next day. Students also do not do homework. 2. Teachers are overloaded with governmental work, like Census, Surveys, Afforestation, Elections, Gram Panchayat related work etc. So they are unable to complete the syllabus and their required number of classes. The ZP also makes other sudden demands on teachers, thus wasting many school days. 3. Poor teachers trainings: Teachers themselves are made to keep quiet if they ask any questions in trainings. They are called for trainings without prior notice, so whoever is free from amongst them, attends the trainings, regardless of the subject of training or skill set of the teachers. Some teachers also disappear on year-long trainings. They arrange things so that they can be away from their teaching duties almost all the year round. E.g.: Class III in Villoda school had no teacher, because he was always away on training. Some teachers totally understand the importance of experiential learning and other effective teaching methodologies while some teachers could not see how these experiments would help in passing the examination, which according to them was the main thing in education. It is just too farfetched to talk about pedagogy of education etc. with these teachers. It has come to this that one is grateful to come across a teacher who is present in the class and teaches! They asked us what shortcomings we saw in the schools and we mentioned some things like syllabus not being covered, inability among children to solve basic arithmetic at Class VII level or form even simple sentences in English. Teachers were quite dismissive initially about what we pointed out but later expressed a desire to observe our session next time.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

Our feedback to the teachers in the meeting was a heartfelt appeal to them to look for solutions rather than focus on the problems in the system. We also agreed to help them design a session based on our model the next time we come. But we warned them that we would not spoon feed them and they would have to design and demonstrate it in class in the next session. On this day, while the teachers were watching the film, we took an English language session with students Class V, VI and VII of Villoda. Here again, they had difficulty forming sentences, but what was remarkable was that many of the girls were better than the boys. For the first time we had to make the girls stay quiet, while the boys tried to come up with answers. The children were divided into groups given team work which they did enthusiastically. DEMONSTRATION AND DISCUSSION OF TEACHING METHODOLOGY 11th January, Friday Anand Niketan School, Wardha Our session with Class V, VI and VII students of Anand Niketan School, Wardha was a dramatically different experience from our Chandrapur schools. Here, all children were very enthusiastic and eager to ask questions as well as give answers and participate in class. They had very good knowledge of the syllabus and in fact many of them knew much more than what was contained in the text books. Their questions were wide ranging and intelligent. Some were even deeply philosophical.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

Another crucial difference was that teachers of all classes really wanted to attend our session. They observed us keenly and even took notes. Their drive to learn new things is passed on to the children too. We had a good initial discussion with the teachers about the methodology in our model; some of it was already being applied in some ways at the school. In an effort to improve their command on English, a 9 day immersive English workshop was going to be conducted for the teachers and students in the school. This indicated the spirit of learning in the school. We also got to witness their parent-teacher meeting, wherein the teachers and the parents (mostly mothers) efficiently planned for the residential English workshop. It was touching to see the willingness among the parents to contribute towards their childrens learning, in whatever way they could; donating cash, groceries, vegetables, assistance in cooking, cleaning etc. and the cohesion between teachers and parents. Some of the children were also present in this meeting and they would have also definitely gained lessons in cooperation and generosity from here. There is indeed a lot to learn from this school. Only if the community is involved in the functioning of the school can real integrated learning happen. OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: 1. As always, the children were very excited that we were there. In fact, on our way to the Villoda school, when we passed the Katwal school, some of the students saw our car and a wave of excitement passed through the school ground. It was a very touching moment for us when the children literally started jumping up and down, waving out at us and calling out our names, Shilpatai! Radhikatai! They are here! They are here! they shouted out with joy. To be able to generate such positive feelings in students made us feel happy and humbled at the same time. This indicated that they looked forward to our visits and we had perhaps made some mark with them. We wondered if they ever welcomed any of their teachers in the same manner. Our experiences from our past visits tell us that children need teachers to talk to them in an open, interesting way. Then they will love, respect and learn from them. The attitude of drudgery with which most teachers treat their work gets reflected in the atmosphere of the school as well as the attitude of children towards teachers, which is most often marked by fear, boredom, mockery or indifference. 2. It is obvious that poor teaching leads to poor retention among children. The blame for children not knowing or understanding concepts has to be laid fair and square on the teachers. Children themselves told us that they have not been taught even the basic syllabus from the textbooks. In the light of this, all other additional activities or better teaching methodologies are a distant dream.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

3. About English language: The most important thing while learning any language is to be able to speak out and not be afraid to make mistakes. Also, hearing the language being spoken teaches us about its distinct style and grammar. That is how we all learn even our mother tongues. Then, how can we expect children from rural areas to grasp English when absolutely no one in their surroundings speaks the language at all? The childrens feeling of inferiority is very much tied to not knowing English. Neglect of their mother tongue and fear of English leaves them weak in both languages, and thereby weak in expression of ideas. In fact, English must to be taught like a foreign language. The fundamental problem is that their teachers themselves do not know English. So, how can they teach children? 4. In a remarkable show of discipline, the Villoda children conducted their own assembly on 10th January, since the teachers were busy in the film. It was wonderful to see them dutifully and meticulously saying all the prayers, led by a few boys and girls from Class VII. This shows us that children are not unruly by default. In many instances, we have been able to effectively control more than 60-80 children of varied ages without having to shout at them or punish them. We tried to give the teachers some solutions to the problems they posed: 1. We clearly told the teachers that children who were often first generation learners could not be blamed for their poor grasping abilities. The extra effort would have to be put in by teachers. 2. With regard to their governmental duties and poor trainings, we felt that they should come together as a group and put pressure on appropriate authorities to change the situation. They were first and foremost teachers, and if anything was interfering with their teaching, they should complain about it. 3. If any teacher was absent / away on training, it was totally possible to combine 2-3 classes and teach them together like we always do. In any case, concepts of children from higher classes were unclear. In this way, they could be revised. 4. We felt that more than just formally completing the compulsory number of classes, the teachers should concentrate on enabling children at the very least with reading, writing and basic arithmetic to be able to function in the future. It was shameful that even this was being neglected and children stepped out of school as uneducated as they stepped into it. We strongly feel that teaching being their primary responsibility there is absolutely no excuse for the majority of them to shirk their duties towards our children. There are however some teachers who are enthusiastic and dedicated to their work. They need to be highlighted to Education authorities and efforts taken to promote them to decisive roles, so they can make a real change. Established, well known organisations working in the field of education like IIE, Pune should take up this task. We can provide the data.

maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

10

Our children are not beggars. Just giving them the mid-day meal every day and no real education is a farce and an insult to every self-respecting Indian. Serious efforts need to be taken on all fronts better teachers trainings and teaching methodologies, effective supervision and monitoring of teachers, more conducive bureaucratic and administrative regulations, and many more.
FUTURE PLANS

We have a last couple of visits left in this project. The school year ends in March and we would very much like to take the students on the planned excursion to Chandrapur / Nagpur. We look forward to demonstrating our teaching methodology to the teachers in our next visit and also seeing them conduct parts of the session. We plan to bring print out charts of our teaching model and help teachers design their future classes, integrating and linking all subjects to each other. Brainstorming discussions of our teachers with Anand Niketan teachers will enhance this educational model. We hope to be able to arrange a visit of these teachers to Anand Niketan School, Wardha before the project period is over. With more inputs from all teachers, we plan to make this teaching model more comprehensive and applicable on a larger scale.