A lesson for India

“This week the class had to write spellings of numbers from 60 to 80. There was another task — circling the smallest number in a line. Ahmed was the first to do it,” says Shalini Datta (33) who teaches class IV students.

For Shalini,a chemical engineer-turned-teacher at Teach for India,it was one of the proudest moments of her one-year teaching career. “Ahmed could hardly write an alphabet,leave alone stringing sentences,but now he is the first to raise his hand to give any answer.”

Shalini had quit her job at a leading software company. “After nine years in software companies,where issues and solutions about the real world were limited to cubicles and coffee time discussions,I wanted to get out and do something which would show practical results.”

Teach for India (TFI) selects young graduates and professionals who are ready to teach for two years in under-resourced municipal and private schools. At present,there are 159 such fellows (teachers) working at various such schools in Mumbai.

Though he sat for many placement interviews at his alma mater at IIT-Chennai last year,Y Krishna Karthik (24) was sure that he will not opt for any of those jobs. “I did not want to get into the rat race. After staying in a college campus for many years,I wanted to get out and see what the real world looks like. Teach for India gave me such an opportunity. It helps us get out of our comfort zone and give back to the society. In my second year at the TFI,I realised that we give so much importance to learning. I was surprised that children had memorised answers flawlessly but they did not know what the answer meant,” says Krishna who teaches class IV students at a school in Govandi.

“When I joined,there were children who could not identify alphabets; today they write answers in English. I realised that many of them do not get any special attention and they continue to attend school without understanding anything. The student-teacher ratio in Indian schools is much skewed.”

For Karen D Souza (21),this friendship day celebrations was very special. Besides over 70 children fighting to tie her a friendship band,her class wrote a page-long friendship day letter in English — her biggest gift.

“We try to make lessons more interesting so that the children feel involved. Last week we taught the children multiplication and division by making them play with marbles and explaining them the concepts.To teach them about living organisms and the growth of plants,children were asked to bring sprouts to school,” says Karen,even as her voice gets drowned amongst the phonetics exercise of 70-odd students.

Karen,who graduated from a city-based college,has put her plan to pursue development studies on hold.

The hard work does pay off but there are difficult times too. “I used to get frustrated and dejected at times,and would go home crying. There would be days when these students would shout,fight and misbehave and I could see everything falling apart. But then there are days when small gestures from them make your day,” says Shalini.

Amit Damani who teaches at a BMC school in Dharavi transit camp had gone to meet the parents of one of his students — Altaf Sheikh,10.

“Altaf had implemented a ‘stars system’ at home. He would award himself and his parents ‘stars’ on good behaviour and take away them for bad behaviour. I was overjoyed to know that these children want to change the difficult conditions at home and learn from school,” Amit says. He had opted for the job after graduation from Chicago University a year ago.