Gramin Shiksha Kendra

Gramin Shiksha Kendra
Sawai Madhopur
Gramin Shiksha Kendra
Kilol 2016
23rd January 2016
Kilol the sound of children having fun, the sound of children playing, the
sound that comes from playfields when you can feel it within your heart that
children are having fun. Kilol for Gramin Shiksha Kendra is about creating
that space for children. Where they feel and know that they ‘are’ and it is
about them and for them.
As in the past few years Kilol was held in the month of January this year in
village Lahsoda on the southern side of the Ranthambhor National Park. Lost
in the Sawai Mansingh sanctuary lies the village of Lahsoda. Lahsoda was
known for its remoteness. Almost the last village of Rajasthan on the banks
of
the Chambal – the border of Madhya Pradesh and to get there (before the
road was built around 10 years ago) one had to cross 7 khalls – deep streams.
Access to Lahsoda was impossible in the monsoons and even after until the
seasonal streams would flow.
The road to Lahsoda is picturesque. One drives through the southern border
of the Ranthambhor National Park with dense Dhok forests around and
crosses the Kushalidara gate and then village Bodal. The road takes a turn to
the right and curves its way through the forests and hills. Then all of a
sudden – at this time of the year – appear the fields lush green – wheat, and
bright yellow – mustard on the left. The forest continues on the right and
then moves away from the road. The hills of the Aravalis and the forest
however never leave your sight. Amidst them lies Jhojeshwar the deepest
waterfall in the region.
Seven khalls later you arrive at Lahsoda – to a festive atmosphere that is
beginning to be built in the school and the village. It is clearly a special day
in the village.
Lahsoda is a medium sized village and made up of almost all the
communities that live in the region. It was a business hub for the area before
access became possible to Sawai Madhopur. It was a rich village at one point
and the biggest business people of the district were at one point from the
village. Stories still abound about Kakoriya seth who was so virtuous that he
always had enough money to give out to people in need. It is said that he
had people spread all over informing him of families in trouble and no sooner
did he get to know he would send out the exact amount of money that the
families were in need of. The same people who delivered the money were
responsible of collecting it back when the situation in the family got better.
While people who benefitted almost always did return the money, it is said
that over time the middlemen stopped returning the money to the seth and
soon his wealth diminished.
We arrived at Lahsoda around 9 30 am and just as the children from Uday
schools and the other schools began coming into the Lahsoda Senior
Secondary School. Invitations had been sent to all the government schools in
the area and all the private schools as well.
But before we proceed a little background on Kilol.
Gramin Shiksha Kendra has been working in the Sawai Madhopur and Khandar
blocks of Sawai Madhopur district to improve quality of education in all
schools of the area. GSK has evolved this idea as a community led initiative
and we believe that the overall responsibility of education has to be with the
community. Schools are but an extension of the community and sustaining
quality education at the school level can happen only if the community takes
responsibility. The government plays the role of the service provider and
within the context of the right to primary education, ensures that the basic
framework necessary for education is available. This includes the school
infrastructure, the teachers, the material, the curriculum and the necessary
operations. All of this must be managed and governed by the community.
With this intention, it was important to share with the community a vision of
what quality education might mean. To do this GSK set up 5 schools within
the community – schools that were like fishbowls and schools where we could
demonstrate what our idea of quality education was. We called them Uday
Community Schools. We recognised this a community development process-
not something that would get accepted immediately but something that
needed to grow within the community. Through strong academic inputs at
the school level, improved pedagogical practices, by creating a democratic
and friendly teacher child relationship, introducing co-scholastic initiatives
and generally creating a happy atmosphere around education we were able
to demonstrate what we believed. We felt that we needed to communicate
this effectively to the community and while they were seeing what was
happening, also make a more direct effort to provide the community a
structured mechanism to understand what they were becoming part of. The
community was convinced with what they saw and began to feel a part of
the change.
We also wanted to share these developments with other villages and
communities in the area and the vicinity of our schools.
More excited than us were the children in our schools. They were expressing
themselves in a variety of different ways. Through art, craft, sports,
academics, their overall demeanour and their excitement of the process of
learning. They were ready to share this with other people and when the idea
was mooted they were excited and through one of such discussions came up
the idea of Kilol. A festival. Their festival. Their means of being able to
share and express themselves. They even chose the name.
Kilol thus began with the idea of sharing what Uday Community Schools had
been doing in the midst of the community. The first 5 Kilols were organised
at the Uday schools and with the support of a community we were very
closely associated with. They had by now begun to believe in the idea of
Uday and even they were ready to share. Thus we had very exciting Kilol’s at
the Uday schools each year with a variant. One year we focussed on the arts,
one year on science, one year we undertook an Olympic flame kind of event
visiting every village to invite them to Kilol and be part of our celebration.
Kilol is thus a celebration. Of a way of education where in children are
enthusiastic about it. We have often said that the closing bell of school does
not mean anything to the children – the excitement for them is before the
closing bell and so you will rarely see children rushing back home from and
Uday school as if they have just been freed from confinement. Kilol is a
forum for children’s expression and Kilol is an occasion for the community to
reiterate its support to the idea of quality education and the idea of an Uday
Pathshala.
Over the past ten years we have demonstrated what we meant. This led us
to the next step in our journey. To take what we had demonstrated and
learnt and experiences in the Uday schools to the other schools in the
vicinity. In the government schools. Thus began the Vistaar journey. The
extension and spread journey.
Over the past two years we have been reaching out to government schools in
the area. Through a systematic programme involving the communities, the
school management committees the children who are irregular in school (or
drop outs) and the government school teachers we have been creating an
atmosphere wherein all of them work together on their parts to make the
government school an effective and exciting learning institution. Each of our
5 schools reach out to around 15 to 25 schools in their vicinity and undertake
Vistaar activities.
The Bodal school which we jointly run with the government as part of an
MoU with them is a Resource node for the Vistaar programme. It reaches out
to
18
schools in the region. Lahsoda is one of the villages that we cover as part of
the programme. To connect what we do at Kilol with our journey with
Vistaar we decided to have Kilol at the Government Senior Secondary School
in Lahsoda. Lahsoda is categorized as a Nodal school for the government to
support other schools in the area1. Lahsoda was also chosen because it had a
large ground which could be used as the space for Kilol.
A typical Vistaar village and school is one where we have a limited presence.
Usually the teachers from the Uday resource school would visit them once a
week and incorporate them into our programmes. So by organising Kilol in a
village where we did not know the entire community very well, nor the
children, and where we were still trying to make headway working with the
government teachers was in a way a leap of faith for our team. We were
venturing into unknown territory. When I spoke to the team they said that
they were very confident and that they knew the pulse as over the past 8
months or so more and more teachers, parents, community representatives
and even children were reaching out to us as we reached out to them.
1
This is in lieu of the cluster resource centres which used to exist earlier
I
have tried to explain the background just to understand better what really
happened at Lahsoda.
The programme began as village programmes do – children of the
government schools and private schools all sitting in class wise rows and a
series of speeches by village dignitaries. But by the 5th speech the children
were quite bored and then came the dance performances children of the
Lahsoda school. These excited children up a bit – but they were now itching
to move. Over a 1000 children from schools around Lahsoda had already
arrived – parents of the children, women who we found out later had never
been to the school before had all come in and numerous bystanders watching
from outside. By the time the Kilol flag was unfurled and the Kilol torch lit,
there must have been over 2000 children in that compound.
The celebrations started with a kabaddi match between the local Lahsoda
team and a GSK team set up from all the schools. The exhibition match was
a thunderous draw. It built excitement in that sports field like perhaps it had
never seen before, and in a competitive but friendly atmosphere the home
team defeated the visitors by a solitary point in the last minute of play! The
atmosphere around this game was lightening – and there was further
excitement later in the day for the girls’ kabaddi exhibition match. And
similar for the boys and girl’s Kho-Kho exhibition matches.
The matches had the girls from the local school asking why they were not
included in sports. A question we were happy they had begun to put words
to.
Following the sports exhibition matches was time for the “Corner” activities.
The GSK team had designed and devised a 6 room exhibition for the visitors.
The four rooms called corners were - a reading corner, an art corner, a
science corner, a language corner and a craft corner. In addition, we had
also planned a boundary wall of the school available to the children for them
to paint and express themselves.
I am not going in the details of each corner except to say that the children
broke upon them like a person who had been walking in the sun for hours
and reaches out for water. It was difficult to contain the excitement of the
children. Their interest in the TLM, and wanting to watch basic science
experiments, peer through the microscope, take a look through the
telescope, sit in a corner and devour as many books as they could, paint
their imagination on paper or colour their imagination on mud toys, or try
the potter’s wheel – the children were all over the place.
Along with the children from the schools came the teachers. Teachers came
in turns from their schools – and over 60 government school teachers from
the 19 odd schools visited Kilol. Each of them spent time, engaged with the
issue of TLM and were curious an wanted to know more about how we did
things.
The big lesson we learnt from this Kilol was that children were starved of
information, that we needed to give it to them, and that children ae
desperate to learn. And that if we did a Kilol in a government school we
needed better preparation on crowd management.
We loved the crowd; the men the women, the children, the bystanders, the
shopkeepers who immediately set up snack food stalls around the Kilol areas.
We loved he attention that Kilol got. We loved it that over 3,500 people had
visited Kilol. We loved it that the parents and the panchayat representatives
repeatedly told us how thrilled they were that Kilol was held in Lahsoda.
We loved it when Neetu’s mother sat with around 20 young school girls
around her and told them the story of how Neetu who was from the Uday
Jaganpura School is now a national level hand ball player and lies and study’s
in a sports school in Jodhpur and how proud she is and how happy she is to
see what Neetu has accomplished. And how the initial concern about sending
a daughter away troubled her – but that she was soon over it and is a proud
mother now. Neetu’s mother is how she likes to be called. And I am
confident that she would have encouraged a few girls from there to think
and be like Neetu.
We also loved it when Fore Singh’s wife who is a caretaker of the Jaganpura
school spoke to the women who had gathered there to explain to them the
story of the Uday school and the notion of quality and the way she had seen
the schools function and the ideas behind an Uday.
We can never say for sure but more than 3000 people must have visited the
Lahsoda school on the 23rd of January 2016. The festival around the school
was the first of its kind in Lahsoda and the excitement and energy around
education that was generated was worth seeing. It was palpable in the
atmosphere, visible in the inquisitive nature of children’s eyes as they
watched the science experiments, obvious in the clap of a child as he
managed to crack the way the TLM on language worked, visible in the
concentration on the face of a child with her tongue curled up her lip as she
moulded her clay into her imagination.
A few words on the costs of holding an event like this. We mentioned earlier
that it was a community event and the community takes responsibility or at
least shares the cost. Our major costs were developing a complete set of the
TLM which was done by the teachers, the cost of the library books which we
developed and left back for the school, and transportation of children from
our schools to Lahsoda which also was contributed to by the community. The
exact costs are not available at the time of writing this report – but people
interested may contact us to receive further information.
Kilol was all about laughter, a wantonness, a cheer and a breath of fresh air
for the Lahsoda school.
The essential learning from holding Kilol at a government school was the
obvious need for information. For learning and the excitement that can be
created in a group of children willing and engaging to learn. The attempts
made by some children to steal books from the library for us was a sign that
they were so keen to have access on a regular basis of such reading material
that they would like to have. The need to help the government structure
their library programme is clear.
The use of TLM for learning was appreciated by the visiting government
teachers as a critical differentiating factor between their teaching process
and the one followed at the Uday schools. Taking this from a situation of felt
‘deprivation’ to a strength is perhaps one of the key issues that we will have
to work on much more in the Vistaar programme.
The involvement of the community and their role cannot be underestimated
and this again became clear from the way in which they participated in the
event. At the risk of repeating ourselves, communities are today the keenest
stakeholders of education. Our work with them has to be built on a
foundation of respect and by understanding their aspirations and going
beyond just a token involvement with them as we see is the case in most
SMCs set up in government schools. There is an active need to engage the
SMCs, help them understand and appreciate their roles and responsibilities
and the positional power they enjoy by being governors of the schools.
Working with the school teachers to accept this as a precondition to quality
and working with the SMCs to play their roles effectively is an active
challenge in Vistaar.
We see some new ideas developing in our minds as we think of Vistaar in the
light of the Kilol at Lahsoda. We will be sitting to review this as a team and
learning from the experiences modify/add things we do in Vistaar. Kilol at
Lahsoda government school has given us food for thought.
And to conclude, a big congratulation to the GSK team and their stories on
the side – of how Mamta Sahu our teacher from Bodal was stuck with a 100
children on the road because the tractor trolley bringing them had a flat and
there was no other way to bring them over and how finally a bus had to be
sent across to fetch them – and so Mamta who worked so hard for the event
spent most of it on the roadside!
And the team of GSK …. all of them playing their roles as cogs in a wheel and
relentlessly explaining, over and over again the method of using a
microscope, or demonstrating the model of the lungs, or the word and umber
wheel and the hundred other TLMs that were on display.
And the story of Bal Kishan – nothing like a baby Krishna as his name suggests
but a burly 6 footer who becomes a child and can mimic a galloping horse for
the children with equal ease as he rides his motorcycle from village to
village as part of the Vistaar team.
And the Bodal team which has been able to create an atmosphere of trust in
their Vistaar area and had the confidence and was willing to take the
challenge of the first Kilol in a government school and deliver on it.
And Vishnu and Radheyshyam who like their mythological counterparts are
cool and calm and manage the show from a distance – giving responsibilities
and trusting their teams and knowing that they will be fulfilled.
And finally the administration and accounts teams who silently play their
support and backup role and ensure that all happens effectively.
With this step in Lahsoda we complete one – but start the second. We have
opened up the hearts and minds of the teachers and children and parents of
that area. We have to follow it up with some very sound and special work
which can give our mission and vision the strength to reach its conclusion.
Kudos to the Bodal Team, kudos to the Vistaar team and the operational
leadership of GSK.
Gramin Shiksha Kendra
Uday Learning Centre
Ranthambhor Road
Sawai Madhopur – 322001
www.graminshiksha.org.in
Gramin Shiksha Kendra
Gramin Shiksha Kendra is a social development organisation
which works on issues related to education and development in
the Sawai Madhopur and Khandar Blocks of Sawai Madhopur
district.
GSK runs five community led elementary schools called Uday
Pathshalas which aim to demonstrate an idea of quality
education and works closely with communities, school
management committees and government school teachers to
spread quality education in all schools in villages around the
Ranthambhor National Park.
The schools are located in village Jaganpura, village Bodal,
village Faria-Katar, village Girirajpura and in the Housing Board
colony of Sawai Madhopur town.
More on GSK is available on our website
www.graminshiksha.org.in