'First hand experience' by Prabhakar Viswanath

Hi

Iam going to share with you the experiences I had with the Velachery
School which was assigned to me as a part of the Teach India
initiative organized by the Times of India group. I joined as a
volunteer and timings were in the weekends. This story is same as all
other old stories but it will be slight different from others.

It all started a few months ago when I got a call from Aid India Group
which comes under CIOSA, stating that you have been allotted the
Velachery Government School, Rajalakshmi Nagar, 100Ft Road, Velachery.
I was asked to go and meet the Principal of the school, Mr David
Masilamani. The school is a very big school with classes right from
LKG to XII. The school is a co-ed school and the students studying are
from the near by areas particularly residing in the slum areas. I met
the Principal; I told him my name, and the purpose I came. The
question which he asked me was really shocking for me. He asked me
whether you are being paid for the service you provide to the
students. I told him gently and politely that Iam not being paid by
any individual or any voluntary organization, or corporate. He asked
me to teach English Grammar for class X students, weekend's wholeday.
I asked the principal what is the class strength. He told 140
students. Iam the first volunteer for this school and no backup
provide, and hope you will guys will understand the position and the
difficulty which I would have faced during that time. He told me to
take two classes combined, one in the morning and the other in the
evening. The morning session starts from 9:30 am to 12 noon and the
other session from 1 pm to 4 pm. I told him that is highly difficult
for me and I will be interested only in taking the morning shift that
too a single class. The following next week the school had quarterly
exams and I did not go to school. During such time I informed Aid
India about this and I asked them to get in touch with CIOSA to
provide me a backup for the school. Aid India provided a guy called
Subbu, who works in a web designing company in Navalur and resides at
Velachery was asked to provide me comfort. But this guy did not stay
too long. He currently went to Bangalore on his official work and will
not return for the next 4 months.

After all the exams over, I again went to Velachery School and taught
the students about English grammar. I got mingled with students and
tried to understand in what areas they are struggling. The response I
received was they were struggling was in the usage of sentences
especially in tenses, simple, compound, complex and in usage of
voices. Apart from this the students had the fear on how to prepare
for public exams and also in how to shape their carrier. After trying
to understand their problems I tried to bring in Personality
development in between English grammar sessions, which helped the
students feel free and come with more requests. In one of the sessions
which I was handling the students told that they are interested in
taking tuitions from me, rather than from school.

The school is putting a lot of pressure on students, which makes the
students little bit uncomfortable. In these scenarios happening
suddenly a backup replacement was made in the name of Vimala a
designer from Kilkattalai to take care of the students. She was
interested in taking 2 hour sessions daily from Monday to Saturday
which made me little bit comfortable. When we both approached the
principal and told him the plans, he raised a lot of questions.

Are you both being paid for your service?
You need to get approval from Education officer, for taking weekday
sessions in school. If you don't get permissions then I (Principal)
will be caught red handed.
The other thing which is telling that, I gave Prabhakar a chance just
because he is coming in the weekend sessions and if sometime suddenly
the Education officer comes he should also come and get the approval.

In the scenarios, I called up Aid India and told them that the
principal is asking these questions and that we are not interested in
taking up classes anymore for this school. Aid India what it says that
the volunteer duty is to bridge the gap between the teacher and
students in case of teacher's absence and it does not require any
approval from the education officer. It is purely a service minded and
nothing else.

My only intention is I want to help the students and make them feel
comfortable. Keeping these things in mind I have fixed up for an
appointment with one of the secretaries in Aid India this Saturday at
11am to get the issues solved at the earliest. I hope the issues will
be solved with the help of God's grace.

Any suggestions are always welcome. Please do help me.

Thanks and Regards
Prabhakar

We came, We saw, He (Ananth) ate

(Karthik Narayan - a roundup of the IIT Madras Teach India meeting on Aug 10, 2008)

The Story so far:

The story so far with this Teach India campaign has been more on the lines of a Just For Laughs Gag. For those who didn't get that part, the NGOs have had orientation programs but there were few respondents to these meetings. And today all of us volunteers assembled at one place and the NGO guys forgot all about the meeting!!

Today's meeting:

As planned the meeting at IIT Madras went on (Yes, I was late, as usual!!). There were 8 of us - Karthik Narayan, Lakshmi, Hantan, Ananth, Priyanka, Subhashree, Prabhakar and Vinodh.

Ananth, Hantan and I frantically tried reaching the NGO guys but we were at the receiving end of the gag. What ensued thereon was getting new friends into our little black books and some conversation over coffee (and yes, Ananth's eating took centerstage, a pity we couldn't get more pics of that). In my own words, He was eating, we were watching.

What next - we had a chat with the NGO - Sophia and Raghunathan. Deal is - there would be a better organized meeting next saturday (Venue and Time - will be announced soon).

Request all those interested in joining this meeting to respond through email to me/ call Ananth at 9444036449 with your contact details.

Thanks and bye for now,

KN




From R to L: Lakshmi, KN, Prabhakar, Vinodh, Subhashree, Priyanka (hidden partly), Ananth and Hantan

Meeting on 10th Aug 2008 at IIT Madras at 4PM

Dear all,

Let's dispel the cloud of doubt and work together towards making
this noble cause work miracles for our country.

Here's the plan:

First, let me introduce the Indian Quizzing League: we are a bunch
of like minded guys who meet regularly to share our knowledge and
challenge ourselves.

Out team comprises of people from various walks of life - college
students, people working in MNC's and businessmen. We currently have
around 120 members across the country, out of which 20 are regulars
at the meetings.

It gives us great pleasure to be part of a great initiative by the
Times of India.

From our side, we would be hosting a quiz each month - covering
various topics such as hindu mythology, english, mathematics,
science, history etc so that the knowledge transfer is fast and
immediate.

This would make it more interactive and also spread the facts across
faster than a classroom session.

The agenda for our meeting at IIT Madras shall be:

1. To decide upon a regular place of meeting - at least twice a
month to begin with and maybe once a month as we move on.
2. Topics of interest for teaching - TBD (To Be Decided)
3. Let us break down the whole thing into small portions - called
Projects.
4. Each Project would be headed by a small team.

Who - What - How - When: the 4 basic questions of the whole thing
need to be answered through a brainstorming session.

Let us do this formally and professionally to ensure things work in
a smooth and organized manner rather than haphazardously.

A reminder to everyone who wanted to make it to our first meeting on
Aug 10 - Sunday at 4 PM at IIT Madras Cafe Coffee Day. If we do not
find enough space inside, we can always accomodate ourselves just
outside the CCD.

Directions: Upon entering the IIT - kindly ask for Central Lecture
Theater or CLT.

In this regard, those interested kindly get in touch with the Co-
ordinator for this meeting - Ananth 9444036449 and confirm your
availability.

Thanks and regards,

Karthik Narayan
The Indian Quizzing League
http://iquiz.wordpress.com