Excellent education for 2500+ students in Chennai

My journey with Teach For India started when I first imagined stepping out of my otherwise comfortable lifestyle to do something that gave me a purpose – making education accessible. My time at the Institute unlocked many opportunities and experiences, allowing me to explore and further refine my vision. It helped me get in touch with reality and see for myself what are the challenges that the community faces.

My classroom has 43 students. Most of the students’ parents work as domestic helpers or as helpers in the market. This means that in most households, students are left on their own to attend classes, practice, and take up responsibilities. In a few other households, at least one parent is a homemaker but often cannot assist students with their school work. Keeping this in mind, I want my students to have self-belief and a sense of hope to change their reality.

The goal for the next two years is to engage, involve and challenge my students on multiple fronts to help them understand their role in society, consequently making them realize their potential.  One of the first steps to achieve this is empowering and making them capable of reading and writing. 

A blended learning format was implemented due to the pandemic. One in-person session is conducted in a week, and classes are taken synchronously through Zoom on the remaining days. These sessions are coupled with community visits. I have visited 70% of the students who attend classes and are reachable. The students also receive asynchronous packets every day, containing around two hours of independent work and activities.

The framework for blended learning that best suited my class context was decided upon after multiple meetings with stakeholders and going through the existing literature on blended learning strategies. The thought process was strongly facilitated and mentored in various learning circles. The suggestions and strategies were then tested after consulting the stakeholders, including parents, headmistresses, and students. After a few weeks of trials, everyone was able to adapt and was comfortable with the format.

The second step was to align instruction with the Leadership In Teaching (LIT) framework to enable maximum learning and outcome. It was essential to connect with my students’ context and communities to make informed choices and decide on a future path. 

While every student is unique and gifted, it is important to be aware of each student’s receptiveness towards the learning. I introduced the concept of ‘feeling cards’, a set of four cards depicting basic emotions -  happy, sad, angry, and scared. Before the start of every class, the students show each other one or two of the cards depending on how they are feeling at that point in time. While initially, all the students only showed happy cards, I have started noticing a shift wherein students volunteer to show ‘sad’ or ‘angry’ cards and explain the reason behind their emotions. 

The pandemic has ushered in many changes in the educational system, making it critical to get the parents invested in the idea of blended learning. The first round of conversations with parents made them aware of the benefits of online learning in the current scenario. I also interact with them weekly or bi-weekly, depending on their attitude towards online learning. This enabled me to streamline conversations and build trust. This exercise started paying off when the parents voluntarily started calling up to inform absence or inability to submit asynchronous work. They also became aware of the feedback mechanism and started sharing valuable insights into how classes can be more effective.

Being a Fellow has strengthened my resolve for the need for change brought through education. It has fueled my purpose to ensure positive change in a community pioneered by students with a strong sense of civic responsibility and personal ambition.

Swetha Raghu

Cohort 2021

Grade 3 at CPS Virungambakkam, Chennai

My First Year of the Fellowship in Teach For India would take forever to talk about since it’s been a vital part of my journey as a first-time teacher! It has been a rollercoaster ride as I've been juggling a million little jobs to be the right teacher and leader, considering the pandemic has given me the ultimatum in pushing me to be more creative, kind, and transparent.

The last year has influenced me in such a way that the vision for my class states, "Students will be able to help each other grow with guidance, respect, and compassion while making the learning experience enjoyable. Students will be able to understand their responsibilities towards the community and society and commit to exploring every possible opportunity to learn, improve and share." My classroom goals include a growth in the Reading Comprehension Level to a 1.5 and growth in Mathematics by 15 percentage. I have learned how an online classroom functions in the past year, and I think this has helped me create a very efficient and creative long-term plan for the Year 2 of the Fellowship. This would not have been plausible without my Program Manager and coFellows support throughout my work towards my classroom's growth. Also availing essential opportunities from the Staff for Planning, Execution, Teaching as Leadership techniques and Student Vision Scale modelling for better classroom culture and student growth.

The most important aspect I focused on this year would be Socioemotional Learning for the children. It's important for my children to be happy, kind, and giving during the pandemic. Their wellbeing mattered the most to me, given that it was getting difficult for them as 8-year-olds to stay put and consistent with what and how they are feeling towards this monotonous routine of theirs. And thus, I used the Random Acts of Kindness curriculum to improve and understand the children and their state of being. We participated in the Feelings Circle thrice a week to understand how we were feeling while walking into the synchronous space every day. This helped me gauge where the children were and adapt to the backup plan for that day's class. Together, my children and I practised showing compassion, collaboration, respect, love, and gratitude inside and outside the classroom. This helped the children to build trust, honesty, and transparency amongst each other.

I started working from the ground in December 2020, distributed devices to the children who did not have access to one until December, did community visits once a week, went to children's communities to understand why a child wasn't attending a synchronous space regularly. This also helped me invest in other stakeholders such as the parents, the schoolteachers, and the Headmistress. Our school team members, including Alumni, began fundraising, and we also provided ration and other essentials to the families of our students. In February and March, I also took in-person classes for students who were not reachable previously and prioritized Foundational Literacy and Mathematics. This helped the children recollect 45% of Grade 2 portions. However, it's saddening that the learning gaps were increasing faster after the pandemic worsened, so I decided to be mindful about the same. I have procured a few devices for these children so that they come to online classes regularly this year.

My understanding of an excellent education would be every child in the educational community learning and excelling in their passion, comprehending English and communicating the language for the right purposes, improving their knowledge with a true motive, and encourage a comfortable environment around them for harmony. This leads to how we source gradual growth for the country. My vision for the country stands simple and poignant on all platforms. We will stand together to fight all odds the new way. Our weapons will be knowledge, kindness and most importantly, the persistence towards change and the power to love everyone endlessly. This also involves the 2 most important stakeholders- Young minds and their caregivers. So, as a school team, we are focusing on parental investment along with every child's education in our classroom, considering the caregivers are primarily the teachers for the children during the pandemic. Hoping this will help parents understand, nurture and support their daughters and sons holistically.