[Educationsupport] Education Support Group - Action Plan and Volunteering for sub-groups/ tasks

[Sriranjani Ranganathan]

Dear friends,

Thank you to all those of you who have taken the time and effort to
contribute to this group!

Over the last few weeks, we have had the benefit of listening to several of
these interventions – ranging from alternative, community-based schools
which functioned as learning centres, community learning activities,
schoolteachers combining forces to deliver online lessons (especially in
rural and remote areas), small groups of children supported in their
learning through tab/mobile based lessons, resources enlisting parents and
so on.  The unifying theme from several of these “alternative”
interventions seems to be an underlying desire to connect with the
children.  Many methods have been tried – evolving mostly organically, in
response to the needs of the contexts they were working and very crucially,
based on the resources and capabilities available within the intervention.
While the formal school system has been disrupted across these
interventions, a common thread that emerges is of community stepping in to
fill that learning need.  Children’s lived experiences, embedded within the
community, have both become the learning and the means for the learning.

These experiences possibly could provide the impetus for a transformatory
shift in the way school education is designed and delivered.  It is also
clear that for this shift to happen, it is important to advocate this with
the education system – influencing, demonstrating, and persuading at
multiple levels.

We have therefore proposed in our last meeting to focus on the following
key areas for focusing our resources and efforts in the following
directions – creating a resource repository, institutionalizing the
interventions and advocacy amongst practitioners, with government and the
larger public.  The detailed activities below under two broad areas and
advocacy to be originated within each of these areas of work.
Curating a resource repository and dissemination

1.    Documenting the different interventions on the ground – as they have
happened, with strategies and learnings (as reported)

2.    Curating the resources – by age, by learning area, and adding notes
for facilitators and structuring this in the form of mixed-level learning
packages

3.    Identifying resources for caregivers,parents and facilitators for
children at the pre-primary age group

4.    Developing meaningful assessment modules – that are flexible and
amenable for contextualization

5.    Translating resources into multiple languages

6.    Supporting the teachers through mentored/ online training programs
and introducing them to the resource packages developed, to be used as
supportive materials; and disseminated through formal and informal teacher
networking spaces Adding meta data and publishing these on a resource
portal (this is envisaged as a mediawiki platform)

7.    Dissemination of resources regularly – productionizing the
communication and sharing regularly

8.    Advocating and reaching out about the different models of education –
both in formal educational spaces as well with the general public;
attempted at shifting the discourse towards an inclusive and empathetic
school system
Institutionalizing the models with the education system

1.    Working with select DIET(s) to introduce the curated models within
the formal education system.

2.    Creating and/or strengthening a network of community-based learning
centres and linking with the formal education system, as after-school
support centres (This will be driven through volunteer driven networks and
in collaboration with community-based organizations)

3.    Working with student teachers and students from teacher education
institutions to help form, foster and strengthen decentralized learning
communities

4.   Critiquing the various models of online and e-learning, for an
informed adoption within the education system

5.    Creating policy briefs and toolkits for the functionaries and
participants at different levels of the education system

6.    Advocating for changes in the school processes – addressing
dimensions of curriculum, assessments, use of digital resources and
debunking myths – for the public at large

We hope you would join one/ both of these groups and pick up specific
action items to take this forward.  We would like to have an initial
compilation published on a resource portal by September 20, 2021.

Please do indicate which of these groups you would like to join through the
attached Google Form.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1voXqLINbyjJw713abiPTfZ21w8bK0LnXhlhiL_KrU08/edit

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards

Mythili, Ramanujam and Ranjani
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