Mera Gaon Meri Dunia

  MGMD, time and again, emphasizes on building connect with every child in the classroom. After weeks of rigorous work with teachers in a government school of Vrindavan on using the technique of ‘positive narration’ in the classroom, it was remarkable to witness that teachers are using innovative ways to engage the seemingly ‘notorious’ (the often-used label) students of the class. Our very own Priti ma’am, while teaching the topics of noun and pronoun in Hindi, found that there had been a couple of students who were not being attentive at the moment. She used the name of one of those students to describe the whole topic while keeping her narration extremely positive. She confidently said, “Abhinav is a good boy. Abhinav has started bringing his pencil and notebook to the school daily. Abhinav has started to behave in a better way in the class.” (Name of the student has been changed) Abhinav was then found engaged in the class for the rest of the period. Inclusive an...

The relationship of government schools with teaching the language English is a common narrative. Children in our partner schools find the language a source of discomfort and non-identification. In a dialogue with the Principal, he shares, “I would honestly say that we are not able to give necessary importance to students learning English. We, also, do not expect them to. But, now, we believe that our children have no limits and can learn anything they wish to.”  We find this as a good time to partner teachers and children to make the surroundings a TLM. Children can be seen having fun labelling the tree, doors, chairs and other things around them in both languages (English and Hindi). Most of the older children, being at a concrete operational stage of cognitive development, are more likely to grasp from concrete knowledge-building experiences from their immediate environment. Most children from class 3rd to 5th remember the names of things around them in English.

We are living in the age of technology and can take it for granted that appropriate use of technology can truly transform the education system of India. However, it’s often only a private school which one can easily imagine to be technologically updated with a techno-savvy staff. Most of the government schools across the country only work through piles of registers that safeguard unending records of not only the children but the community. Years of education interventions need a lot more to transform a conventional classroom where blackboard and the textbook remain the maximum used TLMs. Not anymore now. Our partner Government school has received a CSR aid in forms of resources like a laptop, projector, screen and speakers. The challenge arose when none of the teachers found themselves equipped to manage technology in the classroom. A resource person from MGMD spends two days to empower the teachers and the school leader ineffective use of the resources. The new-learnt capaci...