Nashik project aims to improve English speaking skills of teachers

These and many other stories of change have been collected in a book, Tejas — stories of change, which was released by School Education Minister Ashish Shelar on Tuesday. Deode, Shinde and Gaikwad are part of teacher activity groups (TAG), which are being implemented by the British Council for Tejas, a state government project run in association with Tata Trusts, in which teachers are being trained in English language skills for the past three years.
Deode, an English teacher at Jijamata Primary School, Lasalgaon (Nashik district), has been in the limelight since the project began in 2016.

He says this happened after he started using innovative techniques like showing videos on the school projector and using flash cards. Recently, when he used the app to educate students about the solar system, the media came to the classroom to see how it worked.

He runs a YouTube channel on innovative teaching practices and has published a book on spoken English, for which he received an appreciation letter by then school education minister Vinod Tawde.

Gaikwad, who teaches in Mankhed, Surgana in Nashik, sums it up: “I stopped teaching English as a subject and started teaching it as a language.” She shares that including playful components such as language games made her classroom active. She also appointed some students as “School English Language Ambassadors”, whose job would be to conduct activities based on the English language during free periods.

The initiative began to improve spoken English by enabling teachers to discuss classroom teaching under the guidance of a trained peer. When the project began in 2016, it covered just nine districts of the state. Now it covers all 36 districts. Over 51,000 state government school teachers across 31 districts are being trained in English language skills as part of the tripartite teacher training project, the British Council said in a statement.