The Teacher of Stories in an Urban Ghetto
A plot where there were none before
''Whenever I would ask them to write a story based on a picture, my students would look at the picture and write simple, identifying words like 'a tree' or 'a mango','' says Krishnadev Yelgavakar, grade two class teacher at Mohite Patil Vidyalaya, Mankhurd East, and Teacher Pages Innovator Fellow, batch of June 2018. There are, however, few mango trees to be seen around the classroom that Yelgavakar and his students occupy.
Classrooms are on the ground floor of a low-income residential building with shop shutters instead of doors and windows. Notice boards screen the children at their desks from the curious eyes of passersby on the street. Prayers at the local places of worship bring teaching to a standstill every few hours. The school is in one of Mumbai's poorest areas and studies show that the highest percentage of borrowing by families here is for educational expenses.
Teacher by chance...
Yelgavakar is a stocky 37-year-old with an easygoing smile. ''When I was in the 6th grade of my village school, my father passed away. If he had been alive, I would have aspired to be a Class 1 government officer,'' he recounts. ''To be honest, I did a Diploma in Education as a shortcut to a job that I needed badly.''
Although he liked children, before he underwent TPIF training, he would stand before his class and ''teach'' in a loud voice and lose his temper quite easily if they did not answer correctly. TPIF coaches and mentors helped him to understand that a teacher simply facilitates learning; students should be encouraged to participate, to speak more than the teacher speaks. All this made him realise that his students were too frightened of him to speak!
Teacher by calling…
Guided and mentored by CEQUE experts, Yelgavakar worked hard with the tiny, energetic children in his class. ''Before TPIF, I didn't focus on the elements of a story. I didn't expect much from them in terms of writing output either. Then I learnt that if you give them actual inputs, the output is amazing. I took them, step-by-step, through the TPIF story writing module about the elements of a story, how to structure it into beginning, middle and end, and much more.''
Yelgavakar has changed his teaching methodology. ''Earlier if I wanted my students to enact a play, I would read out a story, then call a few of them to the front of the class and tell them to simply act it out with dialogues. Now we read and discuss the story. We list the characters. We divide the story into where each event takes place. We make and write down the dialogues and then work on enactment.''
After effects of TPIF
The tiny wall cupboard in Yelgavakar's cramped classroom is the repository for a host of storybooks that he has purchased from the Ideal Bookshop at Dadar. ''During our training in June, the coaches from CEQUE told us that we must expose our students to books. I invested in 70 to 80 inexpensive but interesting books.'' The children borrow one each week. So Class 2B has its own little circulating library!
The wall cupboard also contains bundles of ruled notebook paper. These are covered with stories neatly written with pencil. Students now write just for fun. In the past couple of months, each has written five (three to four page) animal stories.
Stories are discussed regularly in class. ''We talk about life situations as if they are stories,'' Yelgavakar smiles. ''I ask my children, if you went home and found your front door locked and no one home... Or if your friend came to school without his pencils, what would happen? The children discuss and decide what the character would do in this situation. If the plot is weak, they insist on making a good strong one!'' These discussions have brought his children much closer to him. And so Yelgavakar's 'tiny tellers', in their shop-like classroom, weave a tapestry of stories.
''My father is a house painter. He does not have time to read my stories and talk to me about them. But the next story I write will be about him!''
- Samarth Ghadage, 7 years old
''When we are bored... we write stories!''
- Trisha Kulaye, 7 years old
