Teaching, One Illuminated Square at a Time
Rohini Dandge, enrolled in the Teacher Innovator Program 2020, walks across railway tracks, a narrow bridge, down a hilly slope to reach her students. A small batch of 25, studying in ZP School, Barabangla, Kasara. A school that has no toilet or running water and gets a meagre allowance of 8000 rupees annually for upkeep.
Teacher Rohini Gangadhar Dandge waits patiently till a beam of light illuminates’ eager little faces of children aged 7 to 10 years. Children who are students of Zila Parishad School, Barabangla, a village in the Shahpur Block in Thane District – about 150 Kms from Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City. The time of the day is 8.00 pm. It is pitch dark outside. Children have gathered together in their houses or some at theirfriends’ to attend an online class. They are going to learn ‘Addition using Expanded Form’. The microphone picks up sounds of students giggling and the ‘tr-tr-tr’ sound of crickets. Parents work as daily wage labor picking up small jobs on fields and nearby urban clusters, returning only late at night.
They and teacher Rohini have agreed to 8:00 pm being the most suitable time for online learning. That is when they can give their phones to children to log into a zoom call. But, attending calls requires not just network connectivity, money for recharge and of course the devices, but electricity to charge them. People, young and old, parents and children are used to frequent power outages. The past 2 days the village saw heavy rainfall, knocking out the power supply. No one had any idea when it would be restored. Undeterred, Rohini teacher invited her 14 students, 5 from Grade 2 and 10 from Grade 4 to the online class. To help the teacher see the students, siblings and parents did their bit. They stood behind with a torch that they shone on the children while in the still of the night, Rohini teacher asked: ‘What is the place value of 3 in 3219?’. “Teacher, 3000”, replied Sayli in a bright and clear voice.
Collaborating to find solutions
CEQUE's coaches worked with Rohini teacher to find on-ground solutions to address the problem. Rohini shared that it would be helpful if she could engage the children in learning during the day as well, when parents were away and no online classes were possible. Furthermore, she wanted from time to time give worksheets to children to solve. For this, the school had no printer available and Rohini would more often than not, take out the money from her salary for such expenses.
To address this problem, CEQUE was able to provide her a two-fold solution. One was to give workbooks aligned to the lessons she was teaching and the second was to raise funds for purchasing a printer for the school. With the funds raised not only did the school buy a printer, but also an LED TV set in preparation for using technology whenever schools will reopen and students begin to come to school. Local education officials, parents and the village gram panchayat committee members organized a small function and expressed gratitude towards the support provided to the school. Today all 25 kids of her class are in the fold of learning as opposed to 6 to 7 at the beginning of the program.
