Date: July 16, 2005. Agenda: Understand the project better Attendees: Maneesh (project holder in India), Murali (project lead - Vibha, ASHA Austin), Sriraman (ASHA), Sanjeev (ASHA), Santhosh (ASHA), Badri (Vibha), Vineet (ASHA) The long term goal of GSK is to have quality education in the district. It is to be achieved not only by running a few quality schools of our own, but also to create awareness and demand for the same. The organization is in the initial phase of development and also needs support. Our motivation is not just to end up running 2-3 schools. But, to eventually improve the government schools themselves. Q: Apart from the school what are your other activities? A: We have been interacting with the government and the community. There are a lot of children coming to school and we want to improve the government school. We have been speaking to the collector and also to the school teachers at the local level. The govt has opened a large number of schools and are looking at the panchayats to maintain them. We are pushing for community schools. The work with teachers would be only towards teaching techniques. We have not yet had the bandwidth to work actively on any area except the school and talk to the government officials. Q: What is the role of the outreach coordinator? A: The coordinator will develop the stratergy to work with the government schools and with the community. We have some ideas, but this person will have to make it a reality. The primary ideas are: 1) Community awareness and demand for good quality schools 2) Pedegogy support for teachers and teaching techniques. 3) Work on better teacher student ratio in government schools. Q: What are the teaching methods that you use? A: Bodh and Digantar guidance is available. These are well established models for decades. They need to be refined over time to make them specific to the area. Presently alternative curriculum available is for primary education up to grade V. This is fine for basic literacy, but does not enough to make a human being a contributing member of the society. We also need to extend the curriculum up to grade X. The alternative syllabus presently is for a couple of yrs and follows standard school textbooks after that. This will require research. In all we have the textbooks/curriculum from Bodh, Digantar, Eklavya, NCERT. Some of these are guidelines for teachers. Personality development gets left out and needs to be filled in. Q: Will you be able to develop your own curriculum? A: We have been documenting our work. We will need support from many people and it will take time. We will be working with the guidance of many different people and organizations to do this over time. Q: What does the academic coordinator do? A: He is the principle guide of how schools are run. He is the guide for the techers to frame the syllabus for the children over time. Q: Could you provide a concrete example of the curriculum specific to a place? A: We have only been around for 1 yr and have not developed a curriculum of our own. However, the local community is agricultural and animal breeders. For the primary and initial stages we would like to develop the skills of classification and observation. E.g. we ask the child to document what are the different actions the cow does when it is being milked. The child would go with it's mother and observe the different head movements, tail movements, etc and write about it. Most of the activities are based on their lives. The school has 5 acres of land and a small area is given to each of the children to develop and learn innovative ideas for growing stuff. Q: What are your resources for these activities? A: There are many progressive farmers in the area and there is also the agricultural institute. We also know a few people in the ITI in Jaipur and are talking to them to create a outreach branch at the school. The ITI teach electronics,motor engineering, etc. This would primarily help in awareness of their options and get the children interested in these things. Q: What is the status of rural economy and jobs opportunities? A: Rural economy is not so isolated as it once was. However, as correctly pointed out most children who do get educated want to move out of the village and get a job in the city. However, due to intense competition and small number of jobs availabe in the cities there are no jobs available to them there. At this time the lack of life skills makes them incapable of fitting in the economy here. This makes them helpless and good for nothing. An education should be aimed at developing basic life skills and give them the choice of either a desk job or a farm. In present education system manual labor is looked down upon, but it needs to be respected too. Q: How do you incorporate the importance of manual labor? A: This has to be part of what children do at school. One day in the week on Sat all of us work (children and teachers) work for the school and the community. On the school land we have planted trees. When the school thatch collapsed in the storm we rebuilt it together. Together we cleaned up the canal which was clogged after the rain, etc. Q: What is the present staff? A: There are 2 teachers and 1 part time helper. Q: What is the present children strength? A: Till today 100. We will limit it here. Q: When are the remaining teachers joining? A: 1 tomorrow and 2 more by 20th. Overall we will have 5 teachers. Q: What are you looking for in the teachers? A: We would prefer postgraduates with 3 yrs of experience. Q: Do you require a post graduation to teach primary children? A: It is very important to have well educated teachers especially in the earlier years when the child is unable to communicate completely. The teacher has to know how to take care of younger children. Q: If you are unable to train the helper who is not qualified enough, but interested in teaching, how will you work with government teachers? A: The government teachers do have the qualifications required. However, they stop growing as soon as they get a job. This is indeed a difficult problem. In the 3 yrs that I worked with 600 teachers, perhaps 15 teachers truly changed their style of working. We got together with a small group of teachers every 15 days and planned with bodh on how to continue and keep helping them. But, in essence the intention of the techers is not to work and community preassure is important. Q: What about the issue of teacher retention at the schools? A: People leave due to poor salary and poor job conditions. It is important to keep the teachers satisfied economically and the organization be open and given responsibility to execute how they want to teach. Local people we get are committed and contribute towards long term goals. We get outside talent and expect that they would stay around 3 yrs, but the other teachers will learn a lot from them. From outside we are getting teachers we have worked with in the past and are interested in being part of this effort. Among the three teachers joining is one from Bodh who also has a masters in social service and is a science graduate, another is also an artist and musician. We have worked with both these people third is a local person who has an MA in english. -- part II --- Q.Vision: Change perspective of education in district; impart high quality education in schools. Objective is not to run school alone - it is to attain the objective Q. Distinguish between organization and school expenses A: Not a firm distinction. Expenses include office expenses - rent, stationary, accountant staff support, travel expenses The organization costs are factored into first school project - require planning, require budget, staff, team, discuss The overhead is fixed and only initial but is necessary for the organization to kick off the ground. Q. VIBHA - Do you have a plan showing that overhead expense is fixed, but the project expense potentially grows with significant impact too - That is needed to justify to the board. A: Expense is Rs 11000 for 100 students at first school so 11 Lakhs total. 3 year child total is projected at 350, and cost total is Rs 20 lakhs - 6000/child. With 900 kids, 5000/child. Co-ordinator/Acct support needed is one per 5 schools. Variable costs - program activity costs vary with number of children. Other costs are fixed. Q. Distinguish between community outreach co-ordinator and curriculum co-ordinator A: 2 equivalent academic co-ordinators - equal leadership Outreach co-ord responsible for interacting with community, govt administration, to plan, to implement project vision. Should understand academic/ education side to convince govt teachers. Also gathers community presssure to get govt to change: for example, 1000 families currently favor existing school. The co-ord gathers support, govt teacher, training The curriculum/academic co-ord provides philosophical guidance - pedagogy, school systems, teacher support, academic issues, manager of the schools, and the project. Q. Why is this a full-time position? Shouldn't panchayat meeting once a month suffice? Nature of work that co-ordinator does? A: 3 people needed for organization leadership (total), Expect outreach co-ord as one of those. So that person will handle govt teachers, organizational leadership,etc. Q.Why should the co-ord be full time with high salary? A: Salary discrepancy will cause lack of respect with govt teachers. Further full-time involvement earns trust of community. For example, Manish has been with project for a year and has taken that long to earn support of 1000 families - who now support this school and want that system of education.