By Neeraja Joshi | Secretary
1 EDUCATION
These past 6 months our Mathematics Remedial coordinator and our education volunteer have been helping us to collate, tabulate and analyze an assessment of our Half-Yearly examination data for our school. The data has been collated from the past three academic years.
Our overall goal for carrying this out was to:
In classes 6-8 in the current academic year, 56%, 47%, and 44% of students achieved at least ‘Meets Expectations’ in Hindi, Maths, and English respectively. We would like to set a target where at least 70% of all children at ABS are able to meet expectations. As is apparent from the results, we have our work cut out for us.
In classes 3-5 the percentage of students meeting expectations or above is 51% in English, 42% in Maths, and 53% in Hindi. Our key focus is on Classes 3, 4, and 5. Students at this age are at a critical stage of development in learning styles, study habits, and memory formation. These students can also be tracked over a longer period of time, allowing teachers, school staff, and Aarohi management to better determine the efficacy of changes to test design and teaching methodology.
We also realized that there are a number of challenges and limitations we encountered in carrying out this assessment. Some of these areas are:
In order to improve learning outcomes in the three core subjects we are providing our remedial teaching to the weaker students before their final exams in March 2016.
1.2Extra- Curricular Activities
Our students hadthe opportunity to learn local dances, play musical instruments and participate in competitions. On 2nd October we organized a House-wise speech competition on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti (Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary). Later the same month we organized Poetry recitations for Classes 3-8 on the occasion of Hindi Diwas. Our students participated in a school-wide “Aepan” (local Kumaoni traditional hand painted art form) competition on 14th November as part of our Children’s Day celebrations.
Year-end School Event: Exposure trip for our Class 8 students
Our children got an opportunity to perform at the Dastkar Winter Carnival in Delhi on the 19th of November. They performedtheir local folk dances, set to popular Kumaoni melodies to an enraptured Delhi audience. The next day, the group left for Vrindavan where theywere hosted by Mr. Om Prakash Malik and Mrs. Santosh Malik, who left no stone unturned in ensuring a warm hospitality for all our students. A visit to Agra was on Day 4. They spent time atFatehpurSikhri and learnt the historical significance of the monument, followed by a trip to the magnificent TajMahal! The Blind School, New Delhi, hosted their stay and it was a humbling & sensitizing experience for both our children and our faculty to see them go about their daily chores with such ease and comfort. All in all this was a very eventful trip!
1.3 Bal Sansar Scholarship
The Bal Sansar Scholarship Program was started in 2008-09 with just ten students. We now have 58 students whose costs of education at Aarohi Bal Sansar are completely supported under this program. We have a total of 16 children out of 58 who are presently undergoing remedial tuition classes to improve their studies. Earlier this month, we met with their parents and advised them that their continuation of the scholarship is based on a yearly review of children’s academic progress and Aarohi’s availability of funds. We shared with them that should the children not improve in their performance (score above 50% overall), their scholarship would be discontinued.
1.4 Volunteers
Anne Hammond
Anne joined us as a volunteer in October of this year. She has graduated from the University of Miami in May 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics. Prior to coming here, Anne has been tutoring children and college students for over 3 years. In college, she worked with student athletes on study and organization skills, tutored them one-on-one in algebra, statistics, calculus, and higher level math courses, and worked with her supervisors to develop group study sessions for extra help. She has worked with children aged 6-17 on both math and reading. Anne has worked both one-on-one (with older students) and in groups of 5-10 teaching lessons and providing extra practice with concepts they learned in school. Anne will be with us till May 2016.
Madhuri Vijaykumar
Madhuri is a volunteer from Mumbai, she was with us for 3 months, starting in August last year. Madhuri has 8 years of work experience in the development sector. She was previously working with HSBC as Associate Vice President, Corporate Sustainability, and was responsible for running HSBC’s global education programme for street children and orphans. Madhuri has worked with not-for-profit organizations in London and Bangalore. She has a Master’s degree in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
While at the school, Madhuri was coaching our English teachers - helping build their confidence levels in speaking the language and improving their grammar. She also read English to Class 3 students. With guidance from Aarohi, Madhuri made a short five-minute documentary film on one of our ABS teachers. The film is titled “Kamla: A Change-maker at AarohiBalSansar”, the link is shared below.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSwYQwkhZPA)
1.5 New Joiners
Ravi Shankar Yadav
A civil engineer by profession, Ravi graduated in 2011 andworked for 4 years in his hometown Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, before joining Aarohi.Ravi was taken on to work with us as a technical assistant on our home-stay projects, but in his heart he is a teacher and wanted to get involved in the school. Since November 1, Ravi has been taking remedial classes inMaths for classes 5-7, and helping the teachers in Maths for classes 3-5, as per need. He will also be liaising closely with our Maths mentor to improve teaching-learning of the subject in our school. Ravi is responsible for maintaining and managing the database of the school’s overall performance in the examinations.
NehaThapa
Neha joined ABS on December 1, 2015. She is presently taking English remedial classes for 3 and 4, and teaching English to classes 7 and 8. Over time she will be taking on teaching Health and Nutrition to our students. Neha has completed her Bachelor’s in English from Modern College, Pune and she has a Master’s degree in Psychology from Kumaon University, Almora. Prior to joining us, she was teaching English and Psychology in Kumaon Public School, Dwarahat, near Ranikhet- Almora district.
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