Transforming Teaching

Teachers are central to facilitating learning. Having one teacher under a tree is better than a school with all the facilities but no teacher.

VBERC conducted workshops for the teachers to help them inculcate a better understanding of language and math learning. These workshops also helped them understand different methodologies to enrich the classroom environment and assessment models.

“Academic output inside the classroom is dependent directly on what the teachers and students are doing outside the classroom.”

- Prasoon Kumar, VBERC

Questioning the fundamentals

The trainings were designed to address some deep rooted biases around education and learning. By dispelling some of those myths and understanding how humans acquire knowledge, teachers gained a better understanding of different pedagogies and subject matter.

Connect with classroom

The trainings with teachers were not conducted in a vacuum. Connections with the learning experience were explored with the classroom almost becoming a natural extension of the training itself.

Supplementary resources

Access to additional resources is essential for the development of both teachers and students. Exposure to the written word, whether that is linked to the curriculum or not, improves the grasp over the language and helps in forming a more evolved understanding of the world.

Looking back

Telling teachers how to teach is almost like walking into someone’s home and telling them how to live. Developing an evolved understanding around learning if often more about unlearning - a time consuming and difficult task.

Complacency and resistance to change is a natural state for many educators, especially in the government system. To bring about a shift in that attitude involves the demanding task of putting a larger vision before personal needs.

In an environment of limited resources, getting teachers out of school for training is an impossible feat. Trainings were conducted while teachers were responsible for classes and teaching leading to short attention spans and distractions.

The poor subject matter expertise of teachers proved to be another hurdle. An understanding of pedagogy must be supplemented by domain knowledge to drive a meaningful learning experience.