Seva Sadan Teachers D’Ed College Training

On the 18^th of October, English E.teach conducted a long awaited training for the students of the Seva Sadan D’Ed College at Gamdevi.

D’ed is a ‘Diploma in Education’ degree which equips teachers to teach children up to the 8^th grade. It is a very intensive course with subjects like ICT (Info-Communication Technology) and Psychology. However, the numbers at this D’Ed college have been steadily plummeting. Just 4 years back, Seva Sadan had a D’Ed class size of 240 students! And as of this year, the students total is barely 29!

You may wonder about the cause of this fast decline?

The reason is simple-It is a Marathi medium college.

At EET, we are familiar with this horror story- Parents aren’t sending their kids to vernacular medium schools, the school has to shut down & the teachers lose their jobs. BUT the other effect that nobody talks about is this-

The child is put into an English medium school where he is confused and lost due to the challenge of learning science, math, history etc in English; he/she gets demotivated, the parents get frustrated, they are spending money they don’t have on his/her schooling and eventually the child drops out.

Q1. How can these problem be solved?

Ans1. Vernacular schools need to teach better English.

Q2. How can that happen?

Ans2. The teachers in Vernacular schools need to be better equipped to teach English.

Q3. How can the teachers be helped?

Ans. English E.teach provides them with the English teaching tool FREE and trains them in it’s use. We then follow up with the teacher on a weekly basis to check on the children and her progress with the English DVDs.

And that’s exactly what we did here!

The Training session went on for 3 hours. It started off with a discussion of the problems these future teachers anticipate once they enter the Marathi Medium School system in Mumbai. After that they were introduced to our DVDs. During the demo, the teachers quickly started picking up the pronunciations, sentence structure and comprehension of English they will need to teach their students.

But the best way to learn something is to do it. So the class was broken up into groups where all the teachers had to teach a short English lesson using our DVDs.

It took them only 10 minutes to prepare the lesson, as the DVDs are so easy to use; They almost act as a teacher’s guide. Once they all had presented their lessons, we had a feedback round. Everyone chimed in and gave their opinions, feedback and shared their hopes of being able to use these DVDs and teach English to kids as effortlessly as they had today. Their professors were so impressed that they requested for a set of our DVDs to use for training on a regular basis in their college. Obviously, we happily obliged. Obviously, Free of cost.

-Piroja Shroff

For information on our DVDs or to fix up a FREE training at your school/College, contact us at: eteach.bcpt@gmail.com

Tête-à-tête with our Facilitator - Madhuri Chadrakant Holam:

What are the components of your job? What do you do when you say you are a ‘Facilitator’?

In the English E - teach project, I work as a facilitator with vernacular schools who are interested in running our project. We give free trainings to the teachers (which is related to the use of the DVDs that we have specially created) & also help the teachers during E. teach classes in the schools. Once the teacher’s training is complete and the school becomes independent, they can run the program without us. Our aim is to empower the schools.

Do you enjoy your job?

Yes, I really enjoy my job not only for the objective of the project but also for the challenges that it offers to me on a personal level.

What do you love the most about it?

I love to have conversations with the children and to be a part of trainings. It gives me great pleasure to interact with the kids & help them learn English.

Do you think it has it personally benefitted you as well? How?

I have been working with English E.teach for the past three years and in these three years, I have seen many positive changes in me. I had completed my education from a Marathi medium school. But after starting this job, I also began to talk in English better. My English vocabulary has increased. Even my stage fright has reduced & my confidence is increasing on daily basis.  Also, I have learned how to build a rapport with new people.

Any closing thoughts? 

या project वर काम  करताना  मला  नेहमी  असा  फील  होता  की जर  हा  प्रोजेक्ट  मी  स्कूल मध्ये  शिकत  असताना  स्टार्ट  झाला  असता  तर  माझा  English आजच्यापेक्षाही  खूप  चांगला  असता . म्हणूनच मी म्हणेन कि  आताच्या  स्कूल्स  खूप  lucky आहेत  कि  त्यांना  या  प्रोजेक्टचा  फायदा  होतोय, तरी  त्यांनी  याचा  आपल्या  स्टुडन्टन  जास्तीत  जास्त  फायदा  करून  द्यावा.

---

Introducing Mumbai Facilitators' Team in our Team Appreciation Month

In the span of these five years, ever since we started our English E.Teach project, we have got associated with over a thousand schools across Maharashtra where our DVDs are being effectively used to teach English. A lot of their Principals and teachers have come ahead and appreciated our efforts and the contents of the DVDs. They are surprised by how it has helped them in making teaching English interesting. But all this would not have been possible without our team that facilitated this movement. And that’s why we call them our ‘Facilitators’.

Our Mumbai Facilitators are a young and dedicated team of ladies who on daily basis interact with the various schools and keep them and us updated about what is happening. From introducing our program to new schools, to training the teachers to use the DVDs, to ensuring that the DVDs are being rightly used–is all taken care of by them with the utmost dedication. We are so proud to have on board this group who believes in the program as much as we do and don’t just treat it as a job, but their purpose in life.

Some of these ladies themselves have had Marathi medium educations and have faced the problems that we are talking about. They often tell us how for them it is like redemption - By doing this for the children today, they are making up for their own loss as kids in school who didn’t have the opportunity to learn good English. And this is what keeps them going more than anything else. Along with the students and the schools, they are also evolving – becoming more and more confident about the language and their communication skills.  They learn using the DVDs as well and are an excellent example of the DVDs efficacy.

This month – we would like to applaud our team. We are a small family, and we would like to thank these pillars of ours for giving us their selfless service and keeping us going.