Special News from The school (Krishnamurti Foundation India) Chennai - Rezamusic

2007 -- by G. Gautama (published on www.rezamusic.com with permission)

UPDATE: new blog setup for The School KFI Outreach program http://theschoolkfi.blogspot.com/

Special News from The school (Krishnamurti Foundation India)

Two significant things have happened in school during the past 3 months - one you may have already heard about, the work of the school being stretched to 10,000 schools! A little more detail below:

1. MIDDLE SCHOOL - ACTIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGIES fro SSA

During our conversation with the SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - Education for all) wing of the TamilNadu Edn dept we discovered that they were keen to follow up on the ACTIVITY BASED LEARNING in Primary schools with a similar program in the Upper Primary classes (grades 6 to 8). SSA were eager for us to conduct the workshops for their TEACHER TRAINERS at the earliest since they wanted to change the methodologies in the current academic year.

We crafted a program called MIDDLE SCHOOL - ACTIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGIES, based on the pedagogic movements at at school. Our teachers, under Sumitra's coordination, ran a 11 day program for 60 SSA teacher trainers during the period May 16 to May 26th during our summer vacation. A draft manual was prepared at the end of these workshops.

The term ACTIVE LEARNING METHODLOLOGIES has been coined by us. From May - Aug 2007, the Outreach wing of The School has been involved in devising workshops and a framework for the SSA - Education for all - wing of the Education Department. The framework of interactions for the workshops was evolved and coordinated by Sumitra, our coordinator for Outreach, and the content and details of the workshops were conceptualized, collated and conducted by Suchitra, Padmavathy, Girija, Ramakumar, Akhila and Sumitra, assisted by several more teachers (Arun, Sampath, Kala) and also teachers from Olcott School (Poornima, Indira). All the people involved chose to volunteer their time, and did not accepted any remuneration Govt.

This work is a sequel to the workshops Padmavathy and Sumitra had done in 2003 - 2005 for teachers of the Corporation schools of Chennai. This was followed by a year-long research on life-skills by Suchitra. The materials generated by these efforts have provided the basis for the present work.

These workshops were very well received by the trainers and SSA wished to try out if the learning was replicable and effective. A pilot program was scheduled in 12 districts, 10 schools in each district. This was so well received that the Government indicated that they now wished to go further in an accelerated manner across the state. Last week the news was out in the papers that the Govt is going ahead with the programme across the state in 10,000 schools.

It may be pertinent to say here that this extraordinary movement from one set of workshops to a state-wide educational transformation for the upper primary children was beyond our wildest expectations. We set out to share our pedagogic leanings, which we have found good and are still under development. The stories we hear from the villages and the work we see from the students is most rewarding and we feel fortunate to be able to contribute to the larger context.

Now, we are told the Govt is formally going to inaugurate the program shortly. We will keep members informed. Further we have helped SSA in finalising the Manual for teachers. Once completed, we have been told this will be in the hands of 200,000 teachers and form the basis of the pedagogy in the current year.

It is also wonderful that we can offer the Middle Schools of Tamilnadu the best of what we ourselves have evolved over the past 9 years for our school, in the area of self-study and active learning methods.

We are now working rapidly to consolidate this work in English as well - all the work for the `govt has been in Tamil. Once an English Manual is ready we propose to publish it so teachers in English speaking schools may also have access to this approach. The problems and the pedagogy are not that different in English medium schools from the Govt schools.

The links below give you some news articles...

aug 7

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007080774140100.htm&date=2007/08/07/&prd=th&

aug 13

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2007081352420700.htm&date=2007/08/13/&prd=th&

aug 18

http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/18/stories/2007081858290300.htm .

2. Kanji at Kilapakkam school - almost as wonderful in quality and scope...

We had written a proposal to offer Kanji (a nutritious porridge) to primary school children in Govt school In Kilapakkam (210 children, many of whom were suffering from malnutrition). This is the village where the school's old farm is situated. Our proposal met with many obstacles as no one was willing to take responsibility in the school for this move. As you know the govt offers a noon meal scheme and Sumitra and Sampath visited one Education department official after another. Finally the Govt relented and issued a letter indicating that the project can go ahead if the headmistress is willing to personally supervise the preparation and distribution of the kanji.

The Headmistress-of the Kilapakkam village school agreed to the kanji project. From July 210 children have been getting a nutritional supplement, a kanji of millets and grain. The vessels, tumblers and all the ingredients have been donated by us. The running cost of about Rs 5000 per month takes care of the ingredients and the cooking charges. We have donations for the next 3 months to run this scheme. This effort was also spearheaded by Sumitra.

The response from the village had been extremely positive. We hear that daily some children would faint from hunger. This has completely stopped. The teachers feel happy to see the children active. We have been requested 'never to stop this work'.

This effort creates a model. This is probably the first example of a Govt school receiving / accepting an input such as this. The approach shows the possibilities for many children in many such schools receiving nutritional supplement. This shows a way for private initiative to contribute directly to children's well being through Govt. Schools.