Para Teacher in Govt school for Child Education

Dear well-wishers,

Regards from Gram Vikas Trust, Bharuch.

Santosh (Name Changed), one of our Para Teachers, who have really done an amazing work to teach the children of his school. Due to pandemic situation schools are not open yet, and government has started online education for all the students from class 1 to 12. The online education is given through television, smart phones, virtual classes, and some hard materials for the children who are staying in the interior villages where the people don’t have smart phones or television.

As we all are aware about the situation that the Indian rural people are still facing difficulty to purchase the smart phones, and/or television, or we can say that the people are not aware about the proper use or operate if they have the resources. Many families have smart phones but due to network issues they don’t able to join in virtual classes or not able to download some lengthy videos. The main fear in this situation is the children will not able to concentrate or engage in studying if this situation last for longer time.

These issues are common in Indian villages, and we are aware that at local level many efforts have been made by different volunteers to overcome these situation. In Bharuch district Santosh has done something innovatively to engage the children of his school. Due to lack of resources students were not able to engage in studying, and parents were started taking children to the farms or engaged them in other activities. Santosh and the government teachers started taking different initiatives to engage the students. The teachers were not able to stay all the day in the village, so Santosh has prepared faliya (street) wise youth, who are having smart phones. The class teachers prepares notes, lessons, videos and day wise homework and shares with the youth daily on the whatsapp on the earlier day. The next day the youth volunteers sit with the faliya children for one hour in a day and teach them.

This small initiative has change the village situation, where before three months children were not engaging in studies and parents have also started engaging the children in other activities. Teachers had used different strategies to engage the students but the faliya wise strategy was the best. Santosh has worked as a mediator in the whole process, in selecting the youth, train them and engage them in. The whole village is appreciating this efforts, parents are also now happy as every day the children are getting some homework.

The main idea was to engage the children in studies, because this long vacation due to pandemic will lose the interest of rural Indian parents and children from studies.