This is my journey, after I was selected into the fellowship I had to undergo a one month training in the city of Pune, India. The training was hard and rigorous. Me and many other committed fellows would wake up at four am, get ready in our kurtas armed with charts and lesson plans to go and teach in a school. Our training institute was quite far from the city so we had to leave at six am to reach the school by seven am. We all were first time teachers and were very nervous. After a hard day at school where we tried our best to handle a class of 60 children, we went back to our training institute where we learned skills and techniques on how to teach effectively till eight pm. After dinner we would work on making lesson plans and charts so that we could execute our lessons well and the children would truly learn. Making these plans was not as easy as I had thought it would be. I have shed many tears in this process.
After my training at the institute I was placed in a school in Mumbai. This was the beginning of a wonderful journey of two year with my Co-fellow. We were and still are the Didi’s to a class of eager to learn and enthusiastic 42 children. The school our children go to is right in the middle of a Mumbai slum called Malvani. All our children live in and around the school. While their parents are invested in their education and try to give them the best they can afford, it is not a guarantee for good education. The fathers are mostly auto drivers or working in small workshops. The mothers work as help in various homes or work from home making either match boxes or adding embellishments to clothes, trying to earn that little extra money.
Malvani is a city in itself and can be a difficult place to grow up in. Low hygiene levels, small houses, gangs and violence are just a few problems of this mini city. In all this chaos the parents are trying their best to give their children an excellent education. We are here to provide them with just that. In the two years we have seen the children grow with us. They are now soon going to grade 5.
Malvani is a city in itself and can be a difficult place to grow up in. Low hygiene levels, small houses, gangs and violence are just a few problems of this mini city. In all this chaos the parents are trying their best to give their children an excellent education. We are here to provide them with just that. In the two years we have seen the children grow with us. They are now soon going to grade 5.
Our students believe that the classroom is a space for holistic and independent learning, growth and fun. The students are excited about creating an environment of continuous learning. The students have always been extremely excited, eager and open to learning. Over the last year the students have worked hard and the class has shown a growth of 1.7 years in Reading Comprehension. Around 40% of the class has made a 2 year growth. They have grown from not being able to write sentences to giving their opinions.
Our students find purpose and reason in what they are learning, they are able to make connections to their own lives or the world around them. While reading about Zeine a fictional story of a new girl in school who belongs to the north east of India to understanding what is ethnicity and how people look different from one another being a part of the same country was eye opening to them. They were able to make connections to their own communities where people sometimes prefer the faired skin and to bullying that takes place among peers.
Over the two years our focus has always been on holistic education and independent learning. We have always believed that education is not only academics but has a lot to do with exposure to several co-curriculars and bringing in real world concepts and applications within the classroom. Since, both of us will be leaving the fellowship at the same time we have always felt the need to make our children independent learners as the fellows may keep changing but the class will remain together till the 10th grade. Following are a few ways in which we have tried to bring this alive in the classroom.
