Reflection
Deconstructing the system Geetika Arora and Prerna Kalra
At SEF, our vision is to ensure that children across government schools thrive. And we believe that a key enabler in this journey is the teacher. A teacher who is highly skilled, loving and intuitive can transform a student’s learning experience. We are working with government institutions like the State Council of Educational Research & Training (SCERT) and the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) across three (3) states (Punjab, Delhi and Uttarakhand) to build capacity within their teams and their more than two (2) lakh current teachers.
To move toward this ambitious vision, we consider it important to ground ourselves in the realities of our teacher support system. We do this by understanding context and taking learnings from our eight (8) partner schools. We test solutions in these schools before we launch them at scale. Challenges of scale However, as we scale, the challenges we face change, requiring constant adaptation and brainstorming. When we first entered the system, we faced resistance from the stakeholders. Questions on our experience and understanding like, “How many days have you spent on the ground?,” “We are already doing our best, don’t share more resources, we will not use them,” were common. One hour into our first-ever training with teacher educators, the core facilitator stopped us and said, “This won’t be useful for teachers. Why should we take this ahead? You have not been on the ground much. So how do you know what training will be valuable to teachers? We will not take this training ahead.”
Simple Education Foundation
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et’s begin by taking a pause. Imagine you are inside a school. You see children playing hopscotch in an open space, their laughter echoing inside the walls of the schools. Some children sitting in the corner are helping each other make a “4” with their fingers, and a few others are listening intently to the colorful stories of wedding celebrations in the village, enjoying their day in the bright shining sunlight. This imagery leaves you with a smile, does it not? For this safety, openness and care to become a reality in all the schools in India, we need teachers equipped and supported to lead this change.
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