In the previous post, we presented the details of Jeevanahalli, BEL schools. Here is the plan chalked out for the upcoming activities in these schools.
• Set of 2 volunteers will visit the Jeevanahalli school twice a month, on alternate weekends. The activities planned will mainly involve teaching and extra curricular will be conducted on regular basis. This has been decided on the basis of 2 factors: firstly, because we are using their scheduled school periods and not any extra hours. And secondly because we can really add value to what those kids are learning utilizing our knowledge and exposure.
• Keeping in mind the continuation and comfort levels of the kids, same set of volunteers will visit both the times in a month and finish the planned syllabus. The next month next set of volunteers will visit. Keeping in view of any kind of continuation that might be necessary over the month, the volunteers who visited will handover all the details (relating to syllabus and kids) to the next set of volunteers.
• Students from this school participate regularly in inter school competitions conducted between all these Govt Telugu Schools. We plan to prepare them for these kind of competitions as well.
As of now, we don't plan to do regular activities in BEL school mainly due to the large strength. But we are planning to do some research as to whether we can help them in some other way. Activities can be planned on the eve of special occasions like Independence Day, Children’s Day etc.
With regard to Ananya, Science workshop plan has been put on the back burner. We felt this way because of the unique teaching methodology and syllabus followed at Ananya. So, we will go ahead with our own extra-curricular activities.
We spoke to the Management of Anatha Shishu Sevashrama regarding our teaching activities with their kids. The Management informed us that the children were free on Saturday afternoons. You will be updated with more details in the next post.
So guys, time to get active and do something as members of Sugathi. As our association with Govt schools is at an early stage, please come up with suggestions and ideas to make it stronger and successful.
We request all of you to let us know how many of you can involve in which of the activities (involvement in all activities is most welcome :), it just can't get better!!!)
We are going to meet the Jeevanhalli school and Anatha Shishu Sevashrama managements on 20th Sep'08 and 21st Sep'08 respectively to present our plans. Interested people, please mail us.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Information on Jeevanahalli and BEL schools
On 30th Aug’08 , Sugathi members visited 2 Govt. Telugu Schools. These are located in Jeevanahalli & BEL.
The details about the school located at Jeevanahalli are:
• It is a linguistic minority upper primary school (1st Class to 7th Class) run by Govt. of Karnataka. In Banagalore, there are many such schools (both Telugu and Tamil).
• Most of the children are the kids of daily labourers, construction site workers, servants and watchmen migrated to B'lore from A.P. If their parents go back to A.P, the kids will also naturally leave the school. Right now, there are 50 children in the school.
• There are 4 teachers + 1 Head Mistress.
• The school is located in a place which was a park erstwhile. It is a pucca building at one corner of the park (3 rooms - 2 being used as classrooms with partitions within them, 1 used as staff room & classroom and a small room used for storing purpose) and the remaining area in the park is being used as a play ground.
• The languages taught are Telugu, Kannada, English, Maths, Science & Social Studies. We have gone through their books, and most of the syllabus is covered as activities i.e. their text books are more like workbooks.
• We spoke to the Head Mistress and another male teacher there. They assured that they are very happy to be associated with us and are more than willing to let us help them in any way, be it teaching, conducting activities, sports or even financial help.
• Regarding when we can meet the kids, the school works till 3 PM on weekdays and till 1 PM on Saturdays. The school will remain closed on Sundays. We can use few hours of their Saturday but within their school timings.
The details about the BEL school are:
• BEL School, run by Bharat Electronics Limited., has classes from 1st to 7th Class. It was started by BEL to cater the schooling needs of the children of the employees. But unfortunately, only 12% of the employees’ children study at this school.
• The school has three media of instruction: Telugu, Kannada and English. We have visited the Telugu medium school last week, as part of our plan to do activities.
• The number of children in Telugu school is 202. 90% of the children come from the families of construction workers, daily labourers migrated from Andhra.
• Mr. Srinivas, a teacher at the school explained us that he had to visit the houses of most of the children, convince their parents to send them to school.
• This school also has got considerable % of drop outs. The reason is the same as the one mentioned in the case of Jeevanahalli school. Children will go back to their hometowns, in Andhra, along with their parents.
• A few of them do come back after some time. The school management said that it was a bit challenging to deal with the children who “return” to school. As they lag in the academics, they can not sit with their old buddies but have to go to lower class kid. The kids feel very uncomfortable to do so. The teachers will put them in higher class itself and take them additional classes in the evenings.
• The school starts at 8.30 AM and ends by 2.30 PM. It has got a library where as computer lab and science labs are being set up.
• A nominal fee of Rs.500/- pa is collected from the children and for very poor children it is totally waived off.
• A charitable trust run by Bangalore MP H.J.Anantha Kumar provides the lunch for the children. Some other donors helped the children by distributing school uniforms, bags and books.
• We spoke the HM and a few teachers over there. They are very happy to allow Sugathi to plan any activity that helps the children.
Our visits to these schools did help us in understanding the expectation of school managements and the teachers. Of course, we do not yet know what the children expect because the time we spent with them was very less.
The details about the school located at Jeevanahalli are:
• It is a linguistic minority upper primary school (1st Class to 7th Class) run by Govt. of Karnataka. In Banagalore, there are many such schools (both Telugu and Tamil).
• Most of the children are the kids of daily labourers, construction site workers, servants and watchmen migrated to B'lore from A.P. If their parents go back to A.P, the kids will also naturally leave the school. Right now, there are 50 children in the school.
• There are 4 teachers + 1 Head Mistress.
• The school is located in a place which was a park erstwhile. It is a pucca building at one corner of the park (3 rooms - 2 being used as classrooms with partitions within them, 1 used as staff room & classroom and a small room used for storing purpose) and the remaining area in the park is being used as a play ground.
• The languages taught are Telugu, Kannada, English, Maths, Science & Social Studies. We have gone through their books, and most of the syllabus is covered as activities i.e. their text books are more like workbooks.
• We spoke to the Head Mistress and another male teacher there. They assured that they are very happy to be associated with us and are more than willing to let us help them in any way, be it teaching, conducting activities, sports or even financial help.
• Regarding when we can meet the kids, the school works till 3 PM on weekdays and till 1 PM on Saturdays. The school will remain closed on Sundays. We can use few hours of their Saturday but within their school timings.
The details about the BEL school are:
• BEL School, run by Bharat Electronics Limited., has classes from 1st to 7th Class. It was started by BEL to cater the schooling needs of the children of the employees. But unfortunately, only 12% of the employees’ children study at this school.
• The school has three media of instruction: Telugu, Kannada and English. We have visited the Telugu medium school last week, as part of our plan to do activities.
• The number of children in Telugu school is 202. 90% of the children come from the families of construction workers, daily labourers migrated from Andhra.
• Mr. Srinivas, a teacher at the school explained us that he had to visit the houses of most of the children, convince their parents to send them to school.
• This school also has got considerable % of drop outs. The reason is the same as the one mentioned in the case of Jeevanahalli school. Children will go back to their hometowns, in Andhra, along with their parents.
• A few of them do come back after some time. The school management said that it was a bit challenging to deal with the children who “return” to school. As they lag in the academics, they can not sit with their old buddies but have to go to lower class kid. The kids feel very uncomfortable to do so. The teachers will put them in higher class itself and take them additional classes in the evenings.
• The school starts at 8.30 AM and ends by 2.30 PM. It has got a library where as computer lab and science labs are being set up.
• A nominal fee of Rs.500/- pa is collected from the children and for very poor children it is totally waived off.
• A charitable trust run by Bangalore MP H.J.Anantha Kumar provides the lunch for the children. Some other donors helped the children by distributing school uniforms, bags and books.
• We spoke the HM and a few teachers over there. They are very happy to allow Sugathi to plan any activity that helps the children.
Our visits to these schools did help us in understanding the expectation of school managements and the teachers. Of course, we do not yet know what the children expect because the time we spent with them was very less.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Sugathi to start activities in Government schools
Sugathi is 1 year old. In this one year, our concentration was primarily on the kids from NGO schools and orphanages. Our activities did certainly benefit them by enhancing their knowledge in many an area. At the same time, our knowledge and understanding about the children also improved. It is high time we turn our attention towards the government schools.
Language seems to be the problem for conducting activities in Govt schools in Bangalore. Teaching academic stuff in Kannada is no small job. It demands very good proficiency. At present, many of our volunteers are not so much familiar in Kannada that they can "teach" children. But this problem should not stop us from going ahead with our plans for Govt schools.
To start with, we identified a few Govt Telugu Minority schools. Only reason behind identifying Telugu schools for Sugathi activities is that many of the active volunteers available are Andhraites. So things turn out easy in the beginning and our activities will start taking place. By showing the progress made in this direction, we should expand our volunteer base in such a way that we should have volunteers who can conduct activities in any language. It's going to be our collective responsibility to bring more volunteers (speaking different languages) into Sugathi. Actually, the ultimate solution for this language problem is that all of us should get familiar with Kannada (language used in Textbook not the one used on the roadside). But keeping various factors in mind, this is not achievable overnight!!!
Language seems to be the problem for conducting activities in Govt schools in Bangalore. Teaching academic stuff in Kannada is no small job. It demands very good proficiency. At present, many of our volunteers are not so much familiar in Kannada that they can "teach" children. But this problem should not stop us from going ahead with our plans for Govt schools.
To start with, we identified a few Govt Telugu Minority schools. Only reason behind identifying Telugu schools for Sugathi activities is that many of the active volunteers available are Andhraites. So things turn out easy in the beginning and our activities will start taking place. By showing the progress made in this direction, we should expand our volunteer base in such a way that we should have volunteers who can conduct activities in any language. It's going to be our collective responsibility to bring more volunteers (speaking different languages) into Sugathi. Actually, the ultimate solution for this language problem is that all of us should get familiar with Kannada (language used in Textbook not the one used on the roadside). But keeping various factors in mind, this is not achievable overnight!!!
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