03 tadoba schools report _ nov 2012

7/30/2019 03 Tadoba Schools Report _ Nov 2012

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1maoKalaa T/sT, pauNao

November 2012

Finding who we are...searching for our own history...


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Improvement in quality of education through social science subjects andlanguage in two Elementary Schools in Tadoba buffer zone villages

Overview:

November 24th 25th Work in Villoda and Katwal schools

27th Visit to Anand Niketan School, Wardha the school is based onGandhijis Nai Taleem concept

28th Visit to Markanda Dev- very important historical monument fordocumentation

Objectives:

1. To design and conduct training programs with teachers for improving educationmethodology

2. To work with students and teachers to find and document the history and geography ofthe 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 linguisticpatterns 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 wildlife

5. To document the history and cultural patterns of the area that can contribute topreservation of the Adivasi culture.


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SCHOOL VISITS24th and 25th November, Saturday & Sunday Villoda and Katwal schools

After our last visit, we decided to focus on 2 schools of Villoda and Katwal from now onwards.This time, we purposefully scheduled our time in the villages on Saturday and Sunday, so that

we could interact with the children during the entire day and also extend out interaction to theentire community.

HANDS-ON APPROACH TO DOCUMENTING HISTORYWe focussed on this objective:

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.

The eminent science populariser Mr. Arvind Gupta from Pune has given us a film called YoungHistorians. It is about a group of students from rural Karnataka, who, guided by their teacher,explore and discover the history of their own area. We showed relevant excerpts from the filmto the children in both Villoda and Katwal. We wanted our children to become Young Historianstoo!

The film shows that history is not only stories of kings and conquerors, but also theexperiences and way of life of everyday people of the time. Our aim was that, just like thestudents in the film, out students would also identify historical spaces and sources in their ownsurroundings and learn from them by asking questions mainly to elderly people. They wouldthus gain authentic information about the past of their own village and also be introduced to a

new methodologies of gaining knowledge.

PROCESS :VILLODA

We reached there on Saturday when their school was almost ending. But students werevery enthusiastic to take part in this process. They went home kept their bags, changedand quickly came back to watch the Young Historians film.

Some students did not come back. Some of the girls came late. We guess that this wasbecause they had household chores or other work at home. One of the childrensmothers even came to call him/ her home in the middle of our session. Another womancame and left one a younger sibling in class, for the sister to mind.

These issues of family responsibilities, especially for girls are distractions to their schoolwork, but are also an inevitable part of their lives. They need to be considered whileplanning any activity, or else these children miss out. But it was touching to see thatsome children took turns minding the small baby in the class! This also indicated acommunity feeling among the children.

It was great that since this was after school hours, many younger children also joined in.In fact a few Std. V students ended up being at the foreground of the entire processwith their intelligent, sharp grasping of the concept and assigned tasks.


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KATWAL

We went to Katwal on a Sunday, so it took quite some time to assemble children. Thetotal number of children who participated was a bit less than expected.

But the interesting part was that many who spontaneously joined in the process wereStd. VIII and IX students, who did not even study in Katwals school (which is only tillStd. VII.) Unfortunately, inspite of being from higher classes, their knowledge level wasnot exceptionally higher than the rest of the group.

This group was quite distracted compared to the Villoda group and hence comparativelydid not have enough time or focus to grasp the film. But nevertheless, many of themparticipated with zest.

It was quite a poignant moment when the students confidently entered the GramPanchayat of the village and posed their questions to the official there too. If only ourpeople ask questions to the government in the same positively demanding spirit in thefuture!

In the outdoor work, they were so enthusiastic that it seemed almost ruthless whenthey were asking their questions to all kinds of old people, irrespective of their age orhealth. But influenced by the tick mark methodology mostly adopted in our educationsystem, most of the children seemed to be focussing on getting some answer or theother to all the questions on their list as fast as possible. They would have to be slowerand ask relevant counter questions in order to gain real information.


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THE FOLLOWING PROCESS WAS FOLLOWED IN BOTH SCHOOLS:

Process Objectives and Expected Learning

1- Guided watching of excerpts from thefilm Young Historians

Understanding the process of finding outhistory as shown in the film

2- Two parts to finding history wereidentified: Family History and VillageHistory

The concept that each of them, theirfamilies and their village are all part ofhistory and history is not restricted towhat they learn in their textbooks aboutkings and conquerors

3- Children were explained the concept ofFamily tree and were given theassignment of preparing their ownfamily tree, with the help of their

parents, grandparents and familymembers

The concept that our own family can be asource of information and so inculcatinga sense of pride about their own personalhistories

Including the family in education processof children

4- Children were asked to draw a map oftheir village and mark all importantlandmarks in the village like well,temple, shop, river, roads etc.

Introduction of new technique: Socialmap

Understanding the geography anddifferent sections of the village better

5- Making a list of historical spaces in thevillage: E.g.: old buildings, wells, placesof worship, old trees etc.

Children get a new perspective that theycan learn from things they see in theirsurroundings everyday

Systematic approach to finding history6- Coming up with a list of potential

questions related to these historicalpoints, to ask people in the village,mainly elderly people

Spirit of enquiry encouraged amongchildren

Children identify new sources ofinformationE.g.: Food habits, clothing styles etc. canalso be sources of historical information

7- Writing down the questions and givingsome guidelines about how to ask

questions to people

Introduction of new technique: Interview Stress on importance of proper

documentation8- Going out of the school and walking

through the whole village asking allpossible people the prepared questionsand writing down answers

Actual process of discovering the historyof their village

9- Coming back to class, discussingfindings from this exercise and writinga small report about informationgained about the history of the village

Consolidating differing answers, makingsense of all information received

Rewriting information from aquestionnaire format to a report format

* With the understanding that all the above outcomes are not possible without consistent, long termefforts, we are aware that these children would not have gained all these skills from ourintroductory session with them. Only the potential learning is indicated in the table, for the modulewe intend to develop at the end of this work.


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Students asking questions abouthistory of their own village tothe elderly and Panchayatofficials in the village.


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OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS:

FOR BOTH SCHOOLS:

The film was dubbed in Hindi and almost all children followed it quite well. The children thoroughly enjoyed the process of going into the village and collecting

information from the people. They almost pounced on every old person they saw andbombarded them with question after question.

Some even came up with new questions on the spot. As always, we were much moved by the childrens thirst for knowledge and intelligence.

More such hands-on activities would demonstrate that children learn and participatemuch better if they get to Do more than just read and reproduce from books.

The people were also intrigued and were amused to answer the questions in thesurvey. Many of the old people, especially women kept saying that they did not knowanything since they were illiterate. But we prompted the children to ask themsomething from their particular spheres- food, agriculture, clothing etc.

We hope that this process would make children look at their own communitydifferently, in addition to learning new techniques of sourcing information. We feel thatthis knowledge would really contribute in building their self-image and confidence.

Involvement is the word...


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VISIT TO ANAND NIKETAN SCHOOL, WARDHA27th November, Tuesday

Anand Niketan School in Wardha has a veryimportant legacy. It is based on Gandhijis

principle of Nai Taleem. Their entirecurriculum is work based, where childrenlearn all subjects from activities that link thehead, hand and the heart.We visited the school to see its methodologyof teaching in detail. The school is fromKindergarten upto the 7th standard. Rightfrom the Prayer to observing classesconducted to seeing different ways in whichstudents learn through work, it was anenriching experience.

In addition to learning the standard curriculum from textbooks, children learn to operate thecharkha and spin khadi yarn, cultivate crops in small patches and also have art and pottery.Through this they form connections to and between all subjects.

Ms. Sushma Sharma, the principal, gave a lot of her valuable time to answering all ourquestions and sharing her views and vision of the school.

We were especially impressed by the organic, self-discipline we observed in the students. Theywere fun-loving and active like children everywhere, but when needed, they were quiet and

self-contained and did not need to be reprimanded or punished harshly. The atmosphere wasvery positive, loving and conducive to absorbingknowledge.

The Anand Niketan model is an excellent step towardseducation being the means of gaining real, relevantknowledge and character building. This is indeed a modelthat needs to be emulated (though with proper studyand customisation according to specific needs) in allschools throughout the country.


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VISIT TO HISTORICAL SITE MARKANDA DEV, CHANDRAPUR28th November, Wednesday

Markanda is one of the less damaged sites in this area. It also seems to be quite popular withthe people, because even on a Wednesday afternoon, it was quite crowded with devotees as

well as families on a picnic. As part of tracing the history of the area, we felt that this visit wasvery important. This is a big temple complex situated picturesquely on the banks of the riverPraanhita.

The temple sculpture from around the 11th-12th century shows the splendour of the rulers of theera. The sculpture has a lot of stylistic resemblance with that in temples in Madhya Pradeshsuggesting some cultural continuity. Some restoration work was also going on here.

As in most historical sites in India, neglect and lack of cleanliness was quite sad. But MarkandaDev was not as bad as other sites we have seen in the area. We have taken detailedphotographs of the site and will be showing them to students in our next visit. This visit wasalso planned with the intension of seeing the possibility of trip for the students in comingmonths.


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FUTURE PLANS

Something very important happened in Villoda. We were approached by the teachersthemselves and requested to have to meeting with them. They have asked us to arrangetraining program for the teachers where we could discuss how they should plan their

teaching. They are even ready to stay after school hours for this discussion. This is indeed apositive step.

So, in our next visit, we look forward to having a detailed meeting with the Villoda teachersand share our views. We hope to come up with a plan of action for future trainings ofteachers. They seem ready to participate in the process now and we are happy that this hascome from them, on their own.

Villoda teachers have also proposed a Parisar bhet (excursion to surrounding area), with thechildren, which we will try to do on our next visit. We plan to introduce concepts of

documenting biodiversity and environmental issues through this excursion.

In Katwal, some students approached us and told us that they would like us to teach Sciencein class. Though our focus is on social sciences, since our aim is to connect all subjects, we willnow take up Science topics too.

Students also said that they would like to learn Computers and it is supposedly part of theirsyllabus. But there being no computer in the school, we do not know if anything can be donein this regard. Students showed us a Computer workbook, which is part of the prescribedsyllabus. So it is alarming that this whole subject is just not being taught at all. If the school is

entitled to a computer it must be procured as early as possible.

03 tadoba schools report _ nov 2012

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