---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: urvashi sahni <urvashi.sahni@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:08 PM
Subject: (dsh-lko-office) Re: [DSH-LKO blog] school visit notes:
really long version
To: dsh-lko-office@googlegroups.com


OK.. so my responses in Randy's comments below in italics:

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:02 AM, DSH-LKO <dsh.lko.office@gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>  This is the long version of the school visit notes from a couple weeks 
>  ago. I had planned to type this up in Nepal. But instead, I'm still 
>  typing up this in the rat hole. 
>  
>  The schools are listed in random order below. I will write a separate 
>  short mail about a list of issues that we should follow up (big and 
>  small) for each school, as I see it. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  High-level summary: 
>  
>  So far, it seems that it's a dichotomy. The formal schools are doing 
>  much better than the informal single-teacher schools. Set 1 is 
>  EduAcad, SEWA, M2c, Gangaganj, Raebareli. Set 2 is Mauthri, Sahara, 
>  Mavaiya, Kannar-afternoon. 
>  
>  The single-teacher informal schools: it's hard to say what's cause and 
>  what's effect. (1) Because of the condition and environment they 
>  operate in, they are informal, and this is the best we can do giving 
>  the circumstances. Or (2) Because they are informal, so people don't 
>  take them seriously, so they suck, but this is NOT the best we can 
>  do---we could have done better. 
>  
>  Which is it? Or is it a chicken-and-egg entangled mixture? 

It's the chiken-and-egg entangled mixture. We are trying to do our
best and will continue to try.  I told the folks today that we should
try and get some dedicated funding for our non-formal schools on a
school by school basis. This will help us to make em better. We can
pay more, get more for the kids etc.  Should try Asha for this.
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Mauthri: 
>  
>  -- About the problem of girls leaving. 
>  
>  I wrote about that before: let's discuss whether we should have a 
>  different "curriculum" for schools that can't keep kids for longer 
>  than a year, and what we might do talking with parents about this, 
>  possibly as a topic over the phone system. 
>  
>  -- About the "other" school that's using Kanta's children as "teachers." 
>  
>  I wanted to find out whether it might make the slightest sense to 
>  consider putting out stuff there. (The impact we have at Kanta's 
>  school seems limited in comparison.) 
>  
>  My point is that if the dude there is reasonably enthusiastic, we 
>  could perhaps consider splitting the cost. For example, he currently 
>  has no enclosed space, so if he really wants our stuff, he will be 
>  responsible to find a solution (like bricking up an enclosed space) 
>  for housing the stuff. If he's really interested, he will also need 
>  to pay for at least a part of the cost. 
>  
>  (This is not just about this particular dude per se---this is a theme 
>  we could/should consider for all other possible places.) 
>  
>  The school has classes for KG to 10th. We don't know how many kids in 
>  total, but the class 3 that Kanta's girl is "teaching" has 52 kids in 
>  it. So it sounds like a pretty big school. Tuition starts at Rs35 
>  and goes up from there. The school divides into shifts that overlap. 
>  KG to class 2 is early morning hours. 9th-10th is 10:30am to 2:30pm. 
>  classes 3 - 7 begin at 12:30pm. 
>  
>  Kanta thinks their school should benefit from us. But she has limited 
>  interaction with the dude because women are not supposed to talk to 
>  (distant) male relatives in the same village. The dude has come to 
>  Kanta's place to check things out a bunch of times. Said some 
>  positive things about Kanta's place to the UNICEF dudes when some 
>  UNICEF dudes came to visit. 
>  
>  I asked the girl-teacher to hand Tanuja's number to the dude who runs 
>  the school. Asked him to call if interested. So far, I have not 
>  heard whether Tanuja has received a call. Probably not. We probably 
>  should follow up at least one more time. 

I don't know if Tanuja has received a call..but we should try and put
our stuff there if he is willing to do the rest.
>  
>  -- the box. 
>  
>  The box there is not used as much as at some other places. Ironic 
>  considering Kanta was the one who requested more Tatasky DVDs. It's 
>  probably the case that she can handle DVDs but the box is still a 
>  little too hard for her. She even forgot how to do full-screen and 
>  how to pause. We can definitely significantly improve the box 
>  interface over time. 
>  
>  They want more "village life" videos. They seemed to have liked the 
>  "girl with 8 limbs" movie from NatGeo. Not sure if they actually 
>  understood the message (despite the fact it was in Hindi). 
>  
>  -- Notes about the phone system. 
>  
>  She was freaked out by the earlier "monitoring" calls that Sumeet 
>  tried. Kind of felt that she couldn't meet our expectations---for one 
>  thing, there's quota to meet from BETI and then girls keep leaving and 
>  such. 
>  
>  Auto-dial is definitely convenient for her. She does have a phone. 
>  So far she has been listening to our messages, but she has not 
>  recorded anything. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Raebareli 
>  
>  School started in 2006. Has 106 children. Only grades 6, 7, 8. 
>  Three teachers, one principal. They seem very responsible and very 
>  eager to do our stuff. They have picked up almost all auto-dials. 
>  Anisha also dials in with the school landline often. 
>  
>  The Raebareli school has a bit of an electricity problem. At the 
>  moment, juice comes at 10am---they would have preferred to use our 
>  stuff even before 10am. (I hope the power backup problem is being 
>  solved; if not, we need to look into it.) 
>  
>  Because they have only grades 6,7,8, I asked whether there might be a 
>  problem with kids who are not up to the level they are supposed to be 
>  in and whether they might want some discs of lower grades; I think the 
>  answer was definitely. We should talk to them more about this to get 
>  the specifics. 
>  
>  The day I was there, they scheduled way too many events for the "chief 
>  guest." One event was the last day of a training of adult literacy 
>  trainers, who happen to use the school premises to do the training. I 
>  had to say something to them. 
>  
>  I asked them what they do to convince parents that education was of 
>  any use at all when it's not obvious how learning literacy doesn't 
>  translate to immediate job opportunities. They had a bunch of pretty 
>  good answers (which we could use by ourselves). 
>  
>  The best one was that they needed/wanted to get their own kids 
>  educated; and if you're illiterate, it's hard for you to help your 
>  kids. 
>  
>  The other things mentioned include: learning to manage your own 
>  expenses and budgeting, reducing the chance of getting cheated by 
>  others, learning to save money, etc. I gave them some of my own 
>  answers, along the line of what I wrote before, plus the factors of 
>  building self-esteem, and building self-confidence to confront and 
>  solve problems in life, about being independent. 
>  
>  These trainers of adult literacy workers are paid by a state 
>  government program. They teach literacy in their neighborhoods. 
>  
>  The dude who was supposedly responsible for the whole operation was 
>  there and he approached me. He was the one who brought up that he 
>  would like pursue some partnership with DSH in terms of his adult 
>  literacy trainer program. 
>  
>  Not sure, but my notes seemed to say that he has 2000 trainers or 
>  workers working under him. They do a lot of stuff. I think he said 
>  they reached about 162,000 villagers. 
>  
>  He said that if we wanted to try something small to begin with, there 
>  are 6-10 places that have his best people. One possibility is the DPC 
>  stuff. The other possibility is to record the best of their own 
>  people. He also said some of his workers had TVs and stuff. 
>  
>  We agreed that we should talk. So far we haven't follow up. Not sure 
>  how serious he was and how serious we want to be. 

Hmmm.. I'm a bit wary about spreading ourselves too thin. i want us to
get the school stuff under our belt first.  Because we will need to
monitor anything else we do. So lets wait on it.  also you know how
serious folks sound in the beginning .. :)

>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Madantoosi 
>  
>  Overall things seem pretty good. 
>  
>  The DSH log books are meticulously kept. The entries look good. 
>  Responsible. No significant holes. 
>  
>  I really would like to see the DVD test results in the future. 
>  
>  They should have two DVD players. Currently only one. So that one is 
>  being shared and kids are being shifted. We should resolve the DVD 
>  player problem really soon (if not yet). [Just talked to Pratyush, 
>  the 2nd DVD player still hasn't been delivered. It's a mistake on our 
>  part that this hasn't been done sooner!! We really need to be more on 
>  top of such things in the future!] 
>  
>  Because there's an apparent shortage of teachers, I asked about peer 
>  mediation again. They said classes 6, 7, 8 have designated peer 
>  mediators. They said they paused a lot, asked teachers when they 
>  didn't understand stuff. They say there are other mediators too. 
>  They claim they are very active and smart. On a later trip, Tanuja 
>  should see some peer-mediated sessions and tape them too. 
>  
>  About the box: during the summer, initially about 20 students were 
>  there. Later it dwindled down to only 10 because it was getting too 
>  hot. The box is still being used regularly now during breaks and such 
>  of the school year. They have no problem operating it and the box has 
>  given no trouble. 
>  
>  I haven't seen that Geeta chick for a long time, so I asked what's up. 
>  Here's something unbelievable. A teacher is given 6 months of 
>  maternity leave plus 2 years of child-raising for each child, for two 
>  children. So a teacher can stay home for 5 years, doing absolutely 
>  nothing, and collecting pay for 5 years!!!!! 
>  
>  !!!!!  RIDICULOUS!! PRETTY OUTRAGEOUS ACTUALLY! 
>  
>  Sharda and Siyaram are in the process of being "promoted" and they are 
>  likely (or, hope, after some convolution) to be assigned to a school 
>  nearby. If/when that happens, it would be a time for us to consider 
>  putting our stuff at their newly-assigned school. 

YES... actually we should be thinking of many more schools soon! i
went to 2 chinhat schools this morning and am encouraged by what I
saw. the TV is being used and the kids are responding very well!  And
these are Govt schools!!!!!
>  
>  The principal dude claims to be retiring next year too. 
>  
>  Sharda and Siya Ram are among the top best participants on the phone system. 
>  
>  At least our snitch needs to participate in the phone system better. 
>  he shares a phone with Mohan, and that's probably why so far we 
>  haven't got anything from him. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  EduAcad 
>  
>  Overall, they seem to be among the most responsible teachers. 
>  
>  The school as a whole participates in the phone system better than any 
>  other school I think... 
>  
>  -- more than one teacher never got any SMS from us. Clearly SMS can't 
>  be trusted. 
>  
>  -- wants a singing competition over the phone system. also mentioned 
>  drama competition. 

We discussed this today and are starting on it pronto... in fact we
should do cultural types of things regularly on the phone system, will
keep everyone engaged and involved and this will spill over into other
academic activities.  We are making a 3 month roll out plan for stuff
to do on the voice system.
>  
>  -- talked about the possibility of having a dedicated "school phone" 
>  for student activities. but the teachers' own phones seemed to have 
>  worked out ok so far since my visit. 
>  
>  but I have talked to Pratyush a bit about making a "phone-radio" box. 
>  If we make one, the first place to try it is probably here at EduAcad. 
>  
>  -- this is a place from which i would really like to see the DVD test 
>  results. (Bijendra sent the first results today over the phone. If 
>  we could do that regularly, do that at more places, it'll be awesome!) 
>  
>  -- then we talked a bunch about the library box. 
>  
>  they play it consistently on Fridays and Saturdays. 
>  lot of kids come in the hope of just seeing Mickey Mouse. 
>  they come everyday hoping to see it, so we're suggesting making the 
>  scheduled play less regular so kids don't wise up about which days to 
>  skip. 
>  
>  during the summer, they played the DVD versions. 
>  the first day, 24 children came, 60-70 children regularly later. 
>  
>  the school is known for "teaching through TV" and they guess this is 
>  one of the reasons that contributed to bigger enrollment. from 120 
>  children to 250 children in a year. 
>  
>  children pick picture icons to decide which movies to play. other 
>  choices made by teachers. liked animal movies. 
>  
>  Frankly, I think Praveen really wants to make me happy :) But still, I 
>  believe what he said was all true :) 
>  
>  they complained about the fact that "search" on the box is not very 
>  good. routinely get "no answer." 
>  
>  echoing Mauthri: wanted to see more "village life" videos. (don't 
>  know how to make that happen. is there more good stuff on DD-1?) 
>  
>  i was also wondering about the possibility of doing Hindi voice 
>  recognition across the entire video library, for the purpose of 
>  indexing and searching... 

What's Hindi voice recognition?
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Sahara: 
>  
>  a big problem is somewhat similar to Mauthri: migrant worker kids, 
>  they keep leaving, and the new ones come. you just keep going back to 
>  square one. how do we deal with that? 
>  
>  this was the first place we visited and most of the voice system 
>  features were worked out from there: for example, the fact that we 
>  should try three times a week regardless whether the messages have 
>  been completely heard on previous times. 
>  
>  didn't like our grade 1 Hindi DVD. too wordy. too many examples. 
>  poor examples. wants us to cut out the wordy portion. Tanuja advises 
>  just do the alphabets and use pictures of alphabets. 
>  
>  This school closes really early. At noon. It's a very nice place. 
>  It seems to me a pity that the place is closed so early. Asked about 
>  the possibility of keeping the place open after noon for other 
>  whatever activities. She says we need to talk to Sahara cheese about 
>  that. 
>  
>  I asked about the possibility of keeping the place open after noon for 
>  other kids (older kids, girls). The teacher didn't think the older 
>  girls want to study---they just want to sit around and gossip, 
>  according to her. 
>  
>  So far, this teacher, Poonam, has picked up the auto dial exactly just 
>  twice. (Irony because we got the feature specs mostly from her!) Has 
>  submitted absolutely nothing. A big goal of the phone system is to 
>  help single-teacher schools be part of a bigger world. We aren't 
>  accomplishing that here. 

Once I've finished visiting the Chinhat schools I will visit the
others and will make it a point to visit Sahara and mavaiya first. Let
me see how we can iron out their problems and kick them more into
shape
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Poison school. 
>  
>  -- Tanuja told me about planning with Khomeini about "meeting" the community. 
>  
>  get women from the area to come. 
>  any others who have children too. 
>  get census details of potential students. 
>  analysis of levels. 
>  take different levels at different "shifts." 
>  (maybe even different days.) 
>  otherwise, older children are unhappy because they are disturbed by young kids. 
>  so separate the timing of different groups. 
>  give more exercise books and pencils. 
>  
>  parents want to see the work of their children. 
>  something tangible. 
>  papers to show that they are doing something tangible. 
>  
>  give "slates." 
>  
>  -- The teacher (Sushma) claims to be giving DVD tests orally. We want 
>  them on papers. 
>  
>  -- 3-4 older girls came. (9 yrs old.) Very enthusiastic. Coming 
>  with siblings. Sushma doesn't think she can manage older kids. Says 
>  they are rude and use bad language etc. Parents told them to pick 
>  rags. Sushma doesn't want to deal with them. 
>  
>  -- She said that she asked Tanuja's phone system questions in class. 
>  So far, Sushma is very much like Poonam of Sahara: have picked up the 
>  phone exactly just twice. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Gangaganj 
>  
>  As I was saying, the school seems very well organized and responsible. 
>  This is also a place from which I'd really like to see the DVD test 
>  results. 
>  
>  There were a lot of teachers, about 16? Most teachers are new and 
>  don't know DSH. Most of them were zombie-like and completely 
>  non-responsive to anything you say. (Kind of somewhat contradicting 
>  my sense of a well-run place... I don't know which of these two 
>  impressions is wrong.) 
>  
>  Only a small number of the 16 have participated in the phone system 
>  regularly. Not sure how much the rest even understood. This Avanish 
>  guy is super-active and he also seems well-educated and intelligent. 
>  
>  I didn't have much notes because, I guess, because very little was said by them. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  SEWA 
>  
>  Being run in the SEWA office. The school is very well organized 
>  despite the fact that it's constantly in the middle of transitions. 
>  (They showed me the new temp place they will move to---they seem to be 
>  constantly moving from one temp place to another temp place.) 
>  
>  Shazia is the shining star. She does everything brilliantly. 
>  Mediation, participation on the phone system. If everyone is like 
>  her, we're so set. Pratima participates regularly. Haseena listens 
>  religiously but doesn't say stuff. The rest were a little less 
>  regular but ok. 
>  
>  This is also a place I'd like to see the DVD test results from. 
>  
>  One possibility is that we might want to explore setting up a separate 
>  phone system for other causes of SEWA. 
>  
>  I didn't take much notes there. 
>  
>  ------------------------------ 
>  
>  Kannar 
>  
>  This is the last school we went to and Tanuja didn't go. I went with Rahul. 
>  
>  We first met all the teachers and showed them the phone system and 
>  talked to them about it. Unlike all the previous schools, I made it 
>  explicit that their participation is only voluntary and they don't 
>  have to pick three slots. Two male teachers opted out. Everyone else 
>  opted in. Pretty much everyone picked two slots per week. 
>  
>  A couple of them participated reasonably regularly; the rest didn't 
>  pick up the phone much. Since my visit, only one teacher recorded a 
>  long response. 
>  
>  After talking to the teachers, I talked to the afternoon kid-teacher: 
>  Sandeep. He had 12 kids. I told him a bunch of things. 
>  
>  I said some of the stuff below before. He claims that if he plays 
>  DVDs, kids get bored so he would rather teach the stuff by himself. 
>  My response: 
>  
>  For the subjects that he knows, he should view the DVDs ahead of time 
>  by himself. It's not about the subject matter. It's about how the 
>  DVD teacher teaches and he's supposed to imitate that. It's ok if he 
>  doesn't use the DVDs in class but he should at least see them by 
>  himself. 
>  
>  For the subjects that he doesn't know. like English, I don't think 
>  it's justified for him not to play the DVDs. His problem there might 
>  be that he wasn't playing and pausing them properly. If he plays it 
>  for 10 minutes straight and neither he nor his kids can understand 
>  what's going on, of course they are going to be bored. 
>  
>  His library box has a display problem, which I fixed before I left. 
>  (There were workarounds before and he had been using it anyhow, which 
>  was good.) 
>  
>  Since then, Sandeep has not participated in the phone system. I don't 
>  know what the issue is. Does he have access to his phone? Does he 
>  feel that those were "adult discussions" way above his kid head? 

This could be the case.. let me ask Pratima
>  
>  -- 
>  Posted By DSH-LKO to DSH-LKO blog at 10/01/2009 09:31:00 P 
>  


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