Looking Back

Contextual Changes in my Teaching and Learning practice.2000 - 2002
It had been nearly 3 years since I had begun working with children in a non formal school called Jeevana Kaushalya Paatashala. Children called it JKP and our team of teachers called it the Pre Vocational Programme. It was a programmed that aimed at connecting children who were found on the streets, loitering, of working, back to the world of education. Children came into the space in scores and we always found it a challenge “engage” them. Everything about the learning process was developed by us - curriculum, content, materials, etc.

My job there was not just one of being a teacher (which I realised by then that I enjoyed) but also one of a social worker. I travelled into the bi lanes of Gurappanpalya, Arasu Colony, Vinayaka Nagar, Gottigere and other slums of Bangalore, identifying places where children worked, locating their homes and talking to their parents about sending them to school – formal or non formal; or it involved us debating with owners of printing presses, bus body building units, loom owners and trying to pull children out of work places.

During the day I worked as a teacher with nearly 40 children in my classroom, and during the evenings I met parents, heads of masjids, and other local leaders trying to understand what we could do collectively to retain children in schools. The main focus for me in that role as a teacher was to see
a. What / how we could teach at school to see that children stayed connected to learning.
b. How did the role of the traditional teacher have to change in order to be responsible for such a consequence?
c. Who are the stake holders in this process?
d. What was quality of education defined?

I cannot say that the answers or even the questions were clear to us. The onus of the community in ensuring retention of children in learning processes became clearer with time.

In the meantime, I also developed curriculum (functional literature and Math) and supportive learning material for the children in school who wanted to learn but felt ashamed to do so because of their age, their learning level or their socio economic background and got into trouble either with police or because of substance abuse.

One question came back over and over again to me a thousand times if not a million – What were we doing? Why were we doing what we were doing? It was not that our organization did not answer these by means of vision or mission statements; I felt this was something that I had to answer for myself. We were dealing with children who wanted to learn. Every time I felt that a process sank deep into quick sand, I felt the compelling urge to go back to the basics and answer these questions. Some of the questions we asked over and over again were concerning community.
What was the role of the larger community?
Did the community we were working in relate to what we were teaching in our schools?
What could we do to see that parents understood the programme and sent the children to school, and ensured their retention?
Why was I even teaching what I was teaching?
I felt that as teachers/ educators, the process of reflection had to be inbuilt into the process of planning and executing.

These questions, addressed by my team and me, came back to me over and over again at the beginning of 2002, when I got involved with a learning centre focusing on self directed learning. Only this time, we were questioning teaching and learning as well. We could no longer deny that our teaching processes were not ok, and that we could retain children in schools through them. Out of school children were our main indicators. They knew the truth that something was not working, their own realities demanded that they take on stronger decisions and some left immediately as they joined the schools. I appreciated this process of reflection that the developmental organisation was doing as this meant that we looked at ever thing that was detrimental to the promises we had made and the vision that we had. I elucidate about this in detail because it was this year that brought in several new changes in my own understanding of teaching and learning and have since then become the foundation for what I have done.

The change in the way we looked at ourselves as teachers and at the learning groups of children (and later adults) came from a series of discussions and reading sessions that our own team started in 2002. This process introduced us to books of Miles Horton and Paulo Freire “We make the road by Walking” – conversation on Education and Social Change; or papers on Adult Education by Malcolm Knowles and Stephen Brookfield. I also remember papers like “A Nation at Risk”, books, papers and interviews by Howard Gardner. It did not matter that we were not reading about how children learn per se, our understanding of learning it self and the role of the community did let us see things differently. The benefit of letting self direction participate in learning became clear – it was not easy to practice but none the less it set the basis of all our work.

Presently, I sit down with my notes from 2002 trying to see some things that helped me change my way of looking at teaching and learning. I can see a lot of highlighted material, but some of the things that stand out for me are a couple of quotes and fast scribbles in my notebooks. I remember these notes particularly well for what they meant to me. There were cornerstones and guided me in my work at the centre. They are more postulates than just quotes. I would like to share them with you all.

1. Practice of learning is a great emancipator
2. The practice of education dignifies and respects people and their experience ( why not with children)
3. Miles Horton’s words “. . . you have to start (processes) from where people are, because their growth is going to be from there, not from some abstraction or where you are or someone else is” – this is the toughest for me at times since I see that I tell people what I think, but I have seen processes work really well when I pay attention to what the children are telling me, verbally and non verbally.
4. This statement by Miles Horton, resonated with my experience in the learning centre at Gurappanpalya, and I come back to this as and when needed – There is no such thing as just being a coordinator or a facilitator, as if you don’t know anything. What the hell are you around for, if you don’t know anything?‘We Make the Road by Walking’ (Horton and Freire, 1990, pg 154)

They may seem simple, but are to me very hard to practice since they penetrate into our basic value systems. This does not mean they are only theory – I have seen them work very well, but to keep coming to it is something of a task. However I don’t intend to stop.