Empowering teachers of Rural Orissa through low cost teaching modules— Zeenat Tinwala
(Ever since I heard about her story, I have been desperately trying to reach out to her, to know her perspectives. Her phone was always not reachable. After several weeks of incessant calling and finally when the line got connected, it was accompanied by a sense of relief; It was the longest I had ever taken to reach a person. We live in this era where it is much easier to reroute and solve train delays by tweeting to Suresh Prabhu than to reach out to these fellows from tribal belts with connection issues.
To give a little bit of a background, Zeenat Tinwala is an SBI Youth for India Fellow working with Gram Vikas in Orissa. She has developed low cost/no cost TLMs to aid the teachers in clearing the fundamentals of basic subjects such as Math and English. I’ve noticed how she has been quite vocal about defending the rights of others, in terms of gender and educational equality. I found it very fascinating to delve into her psyche and understand in deep what she thinks of education and what makes her do what she does.)
How did the tryst with the developmental sector start? What prompted you to work with the grassroot communities after doing specialisation in journalism?
I’ve always wanted to work with the developmental sector. After having done my Media Communication with specialisation in Journalism from Symbiosis Pune, I was looking for opportunities to bridge both these through the medium of my work.
After landing with an offer from Indian Express, that's what I ended up doing. Whenever there is an issue worth putting to notice, technically we go on field and report about it.
However, I’d just begun to feel how we as journalists didn’t completely grasp the situation in rural areas. I needed change. And that’s when I took up this fellowship.
Now after having worked with these communities for a year, I am able to better understand why certain things work and why certain things don’t. Now I can conceive why that certain subsidy didn’t work out on ground level. It gives me an opportunity to fathom the psychology of social issues, to cover both sides of the same story.
First and foremost, how did you start with the topic of mental health. How did you narrow down on this vertical and what were your observations?
After our initial orientation with Gram Vikas, I began to observe the conditions of the children studying in residential schools of our area. Their daily routine is quite simple, they leave home come to school, in a cyclical manner. In the residential schools, the kids are primarily living in the school campus and go home only 2–3 times a year. As they are not exposed to anything outside, their role models are especially the teachers.
Now imagine 180 students jammed into five classes, with five teachers trying to divide their attention and time amidst the cacophony and chaos that comprises of dealing with these kids.
And amidst all these, when a child encounters a problem, it becomes difficult to put it across. You really can’t be open or share anything/tell anything about it to the teachers. The children need attention. I was trying to imagine a system that could provide this.
I presume mental health is a sensitive topic to be dealt with, especially there is this negative connotation associated with the word. How did you approach this topic?
It was not easy at first. At my location when I spoke to my teachers, I made the mistake of openly saying ‘mental health’. Little did I realize that the word is still looked at as taboo. The teachers were not able to understand what I was trying to say. As kids, we are all highly impressionable. Nobody likes to be called mental, and that word certainly doesn’t trigger the right kind of reactions at first. I then started terming it as emotional well being as it’s much better to rephrase and readjust.
Especially in urban schools and colleges, you could generally see counseling to be an integral part. Although I didn’t have any professional background in psychology, I tried my best to integrate certain practices into these schools. Practises that could, in a way give importance to the mental health of the individuals. Wanted to drill it into their minds that besides the exercises that go along with physical education, emotional well being is also equally important and that’s not something that has been given enough attention to.
This being an extremely sensitive topic, There was also this apprehension and fear of getting into wrong practices by mistake and so I decided to focus more on addressing the problems faced by the primary school teachers.
So that’s when you started working with the teachers working with lower primary age groups? How well were the third/ fourth graders faring in English and Maths?
Having worked previously with Teach for India, I realized that one of the main reasons why upper primary age groups are constantly underperforming is because their basics are not clear. So when I started inspecting, I noticed some patterns. The kids were not able to read their own textbooks. Even in their notebooks, you could find random images and random texts making no sense whatsoever. The struggle is constant, and by the time they reach tenth grade, they don’t know most of the stuff.
The root cause of this problem still comes back to them not getting their basics in English and Maths right. And that’s something which I have devoted my attention to.
I couldn’t agree further. If the child is facing difficulty even in recognizing numbers and letters, what would he/she understand if given arithmetic, or make sentences for that matter. You had mentioned that you had involved in the capacity building of the schoolteachers? What was the intention behind this? How were you trying to solve the problems they faced in explaining the basics?
The teachers were facing major problems while taking the classes. Firstly, there was no active participation in the class; the students didn’t raise their hands for asking questions. This was primarily because they didn’t want to sound dumb by asking basic questions. They didn’t know their abcd well. And that was the reality.
Secondly, the government gives a meager amount of 500/- per year to the schoolteachers for preparing Teaching/Learning Materials (TLMs) in the class that could aid the children in understanding their basic concepts better. Thirdly, the kids don’t come everyday. They don’t realize the importance of education yet; they come for two days and take a break for the remaining five days.
I empathize heavily with the teachers on this front. They not only have to deal with the heavily skewed teacher/student ratio, but also with the admin work which the government shoves it across their tables. They were heavily overburdened and I realized that I could work with them in making low cost/no cost TLMs. As of now the teachers were just using blackboard and chalk to teach concepts, and these TLMs could go a long way.
How did you go about making TLMs for these schools? Did you get inspiration from elsewhere? Where there any Foundations working on this front? There might have been problems related to making it a bit contextual, as most of the rural kids might not be able to easily relate with words and objects which they are unaware of?
First of all, TLMs are not that difficult to implement, you phrase it like it’s some Einstein thing which it is not. To get started, I got in touch with a couple of organizations. There was this teacher from New Zealand working with Chirag, an NGO based out of Uttarakhand who gave me the initial direction. I had also got some volunteering and support from Akanksha Foundation, incorporating some of their TLMs. To make it contextual, Tess had made these videos depicting the rural teachers presenting the TLMs themselves to their classrooms. In this case there was no hesitance from our teachers to introduce similar TLMs, as they were able to relate well because of the availability of the videos in the local vernacular, Oriya.
Once the videos were shown, I used to sit down with the teachers to make it a bit more of a local-fit. In this way, most of the TLMs I introduced was a mix-match of so many ideas taken from here and there. It was also delightful to see the kids who were taking no interest in studies coming forward on their own and volunteering in making the TLMs. I told the teachers that even if they might not be getting any sort of pat-in-the-back from the upper management, the expression of the children’s faces is one of the best rewards that they could imagine.
You might have also thought about the sustainability of the TLMs, How do you ensure that they would be used even when you’re not around?
To be honest, I am not sure if they will continue doing it. But I am sure of this; If it the TLMs are just lying around, these objects are meant to be used. They would rather use it rather than rather not. The kids and the teachers were involved in making and giving direction to the TLMs, so I believe that there is a sense of ownership that is instilled in them.
Apart from that, I also ensured documenting the way they were using TLMs. I observed that they very much liked the idea of seeing themselves in a video format, and that actually motivated them to do more TLMs. There is no Oriya related content related to TLMs in online platforms such as Youtube. I want to get the teachers recognized somehow. We just have 2G connection, so I plan to publish it one day when I have good internet. Internet life here is pretty slow, yesterday I was trying to send three pictures through email and it was estimated to be completed by 30 hours 45 minutes.
We live in this generation wherein the first thought comes to our mind when we’re unsure of something is to Google. On that note to live in such a remote tribal belt where you hardly get network, what to speak of getting an internet connection. How is it like?
I really didn’t think of this connectivity to be that important; Now I realize that without internet I could still do what I would like to do. I could go to the closest town use the internet there and download all the documents which I could later read when I am at the village. The project and its implementation might have been a little faster had I been in a more connected area, but that’s something I don’t know and can’t presume.
What are your views on education after working with these tribal children? Have you received any definite answers?
The metaphorical bucket of the educational system is filled with a lot of holes. See, you’re getting kids from their homes to the school. These kids, if not, would have atleast done some farming and contributed to the family income by helping their father. But then, you are getting them to the schools were they are not learning anything. What’s the whole point of them coming to school then? They are not well educated. They are not working in the field.
The needs of the tribal kids are different and perhaps there is a need for a different type of education that nourishes their needs. But then I realize that ultimately when they finish their 12th grade, they will be competing with the same urban folks for the same type of jobs.
To answer this, in a ‘definitive’ manner, I think there is no right or wrong answer to this question. Some of the solutions could be both right or wrong or both right and wrong at the same time. I’m just doing my little bit to understand this divide and resolve it.
(To know more about her work, you could reach out to her at zeenattinwala95@gmail.com)
