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Dear all,<br>
<br>
Yesterday Anusha, Girja and I had a 1 hour interaction ("Chintan
Manthan") session with teachers of a Hombe Godwa Aided Boys High
School. This was the second such interaction. In the first
interaction (20.09 mail below), teachers shared their
experiences/views relating to the pandemic and read aloud the
research brief, which they found useful. <br>
<ol>
<li>Yesterday, we discussed their experiences in teaching last 1.5
months after schools opened. Teachers also responded to the "<b>short
survey - are students at grade level?" </b>questions.</li>
<li>With respect to their class 8 students, teachers felt that
20% or lesser students were at grade level. Maths and Hindi
teachers felt only 5% were at grade level. </li>
<li>Teachers also mentioned that students were not able to pay
attention/listen to what was being said and remember what was
spoken to them. </li>
<li>Teachers agreed that focus on language skills and number
systems was most crucial now as the learning in other subjects
depended on language competencies</li>
<li>In this school, 40% students speak Kannada, 40% Urdu, and
remaining Telugu and Tamil. The school offers Kannada and
English medium instruction and this presents complex challenges.</li>
<li>Teachers were happy to hear that we were discussing
possibilities with SCERT about 'open learning' for this year and
relieving teachers of data entry (they have to enter daily
attendance in the SATS system and assessment results also). They
felt the 'No Board Exam' suggestion would be most useful (though
they agreed this was an uphill ask)<br>
</li>
<li><b>Teachers felt that syllabus completion was explicitly and
implicitly expected of them. FA timetable had been given to
them by department</b><br>
</li>
<li>Few teachers felt that around 10-20% students would not be
able to catch up at all and nothing could be done.</li>
<li>Teachers were positive to engaging students through 'open
learning' activities including library activities, games,
films/videos. peer and group activities. They were keen to ask
for resources/sources. But it is clear they will need hand
holding to take on these pedagogical approaches.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<p><br>
</p>
<ol>
<li>
In St Euphrasias Government Aided Girls High School, too,
teachers agreed that grade level textbook teaching was not
useful/meaningful. </li>
<li>
The Sister of the school felt that teachers were keen to
proceed with syllabus/ examinations due to fear of department
expectations. She strongly advocated for 'bringing children into
learning' processes rather than textbook teaching, and
encouraged us to have teacher sessions. Here too we are planning
to have 3-4 one hour interaction sessions to understand their
thoughts/views.</li>
<li>In this school 60% speak Tamil, 20% Urdu and 20% Kannada.
English is medium of instruction. Students English skills is
quite poor and textbooks will be incomprehensible to most.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<br>
In both schools IT for Change had conducted 2 day '<b>back to school</b>'
camps, where we included games, library activities, puzzles, craft
and art activities (<b>photos in the slides attached</b>). Students
responses were quite positive (obviously). Yet we could also observe
that there was learning regression. Students struggled and gave up
much more easily even on simpler fun activities like Tangrams and
needed encouragement and support. (Every school we approach to
conduct such camps, is keen to take it up, they do see the value of
these approaches but do not know how they can initiate it and how
the syllabus completion expectation would be met in such a case)<br>
<br>
regards,<br>
Guru<br>
<br>
<br>
On 20/09/21 6:45 pm, Guru wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:df4599cd-87ae-d7df-c333-22e2e6c5129c@ITforChange.net">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Just as an update
We had a small workshop with a government aided high school we have been
working with, for last 4 year. We discussed teachers feelings and
thoughts on COVID, school opening and student contexts.
We also shared and had a reading of the research brief. The teachers
found the session and the research brief useful!!
thanks to research team for preparing the research brief and Brinda for
the Kannada translation. We also plan to meet Karnataka education
department officials on Saturday to discuss LPS opening and will share
the research brief with them as well.
regards
Guru
</pre>
</blockquote>
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