RightStart 2011 and Beyond

History-

Asha Chennai started the project in 2003 to

  • Select teachers for its new projects
  • To provide pedagogical inputs to teachers already working in the projects
  • To provide opportunities for exposure for the government teachers working in the projects into child centred and child friendly practices for better class room environments

We had well respected and experienced resource persons in teaching methods and practices to run the sessions. The programme was intense one week and it did achieve its objectives.

In the following years from 2004 to 2009 we had yearly programmes with similar objectives. The groups became larger as more and more projects Asha Chennai and others asked for inclusion in the training. More teachers from a variety schools govt. govt.-aided, private joined the Asha teachers empowerment programmes held in IIT with support from the JR and computer departments.

  • The programmes focused help with making and using learning teaching materials
  • Use of different teaching strategies at different levels
  • Specific inputs for different levels, balwadi(KG) , primary School, Middle school
  • Moving from the methods to improve Tamil reading and writing to teacjing of arithmetic meaningfully and joyfully to exposure to good and inquiring methods of teaching science

A team of resource persons evolved to plan and move the programme futher every year.

Asha Chennai also did similar week long sessions for Bhoomika Trust, Asha Darshan on their request.

Asha Chennai felt the need to make possible some sessions onsite as a part of being able to give regular inputs and also monitoring progress of its own teachers.

Current Plans based on changing Needs-

As trends are all over Tamilnadu-

The Asha Chennai Project schools observed that declining strength in govt. schools it worked with was arrested with providing computers in the schools and also better English language inputs through colourful books in the library.

It was carefully thought over for a while (2010 was more on introspection and estimating impact) and the project proposal and plans in its present form were formulated and approved by the Chennai chapter.

As our Asha Chennai teachers have become child centric and know how to handle children with care, the programme is now geared to

  • Focus on English language improvement – the content aspects- as methods have already been part of the previous programmes and teachers are implementing good language teaching methods as part of their teaching
  • More sustainable as it is tied up with a professional training set up with a venue, proper teaching facilities and regular trainers required for English language content up-gradation
  • Working with smaller well knit groups who can continue to interact amongst their members for sustained progress
  • More efficient monitoring of teachers learning and using the inputs as the numbers are limited to not more than 25
  • Regular inputs thrice a month on Saturdays and intense sessions during holidays.
  • Lodging available free for women teachers and not very expensive for the intense sessions
  • Plans to move to further sessions online once teachers become familiar with the use of the internet facilities.
  • Can include similar modules for other Asha projects on request

Cost increase is due to the cost of more sessions for the year and regular payment to professional resource persons