Thanks for the long update Saurabh.  A quick glance sounds excellent
:)  I will read your mail more carefully and get back to you :)  But
yes, we should move to the "next steps" :)


On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Saurabh Panjwani
<Saurabh.Panjwani@microsoft.com> wrote:
>  I’m back from my trip to Bagli. Sending a trip report (see below). Trip 
>  highlights: 
>  
>  
>  
>  1.       I trained 15 school teachers in a region where one of the Digital 
>  Green partners (SPS) operates.  Training consisted of 3 components: (a) 
>  classroom observations and subsequent feedback sessions; (b) exposure to 
>  Digital StudyHall (DSH) content and training to use the same; (c) Exposure 
>  to other teaching techniques (which I’ve picked up from my interactions with 
>  Rishi Valley and other NGOs). Most of the emphasis was on (a) and (b); 
>  didn’t find enough time for (c). 
>  
>  
>  
>  2.       Teachers seemed to be very interested in using DSH content (in 
>  their feedback, they said they liked component (b) of the training the 
>  most). I think this is a good school for DSH to intervene in: motivated 
>  teachers, broken infrastructure, easy (shared) access to DVD players. Power 
>  is an issue but not as bad as we’d initially thought. Home-grown solutions 
>  exist and there is support from SPS. 
>  
>  
>  
>  There’s an interesting hierarchy in the school system which makes it a good 
>  candidate DSH “spoke”. There are 2 “layers” of teachers: an upper layer of 8 
>  “school leaders” who started the school, who do all administrative work, and 
>  who also teach from time to time. Below them are the 7 teachers who do most 
>  of the teaching. The school leaders are more educated (most have been 
>  through college), have better analytical skills, and can find creative ways 
>  to apply DSH content in their context. The school teachers have a limited 
>  skill set and won’t immediately make good content mediators. The school 
>  leaders can “bridge” the gap between the DSH teachers and their own 
>  teachers. At least for some of the DSH content (e.g., English), this type of 
>  bridging seems necessary. 
>  
>  
>  
>  3.       There is some Digital Green staff in the region, and the school 
>  leaders are reachable by phone. We should use these 2 avenues for follow-up. 
>  I do want to return in person too, but not sure when that will happen. I’m 
>  in touch with one of the school leaders (Lakshmi) over phone. 
>  
>  4.       Randy: Could you send me the address of the StudyHall school? The 
>  teachers at the Bagli school have written letters for your teachers, which 
>  I’d like to send. I also plan to put them on DSH-voice. What’s the number 
>  they should call? 
>  
>  
>  
>  I’ll send pictures in a follow-up email. 
>  
>  Visit to “The One Star Public School” 
>  
>  29-09-2009 to 02-10-2009 
>  
>  Saurabh Panjwani 
>  
>  
>  
>  About the School 
>  
>  Small private school in the Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Tribal belt; 
>  arid climate; water scarcity; agrarian economy; poor electricity 
>  infrastructure; one of the most backward regions of the country. 
>  
>  School has 170 kids across grades KG to 7, who come from surrounding 
>  villages; seven teachers (most only high school pass). Started by a group of 
>  8 village youngsters (referred to as “school leaders”, henceforth) in 
>  response to the ailing public school system in the area – high teacher 
>  truancy (I got reports of some teachers attending school at most once a 
>  month), low academic standards (less than 5% pass rate per year). The 
>  village youth’s efforts to work with a local public school (e.g., 
>  volunteering to teach, building a school garden) was met with hostility from 
>  teachers, which incited them to start a school of their own. School is 2 
>  years old. 
>  
>  ·         MP State board affiliation. Hindi medium school; English and 
>  Sanskrit as other languages. Standards of English are poor; teachers and 
>  students are good with spoken Hindi. 
>  
>  
>  
>  ·         Makeshift building – part of it used to be a hospital earlier, 
>  part of it someone’s house. Infrastructure is in bad shape (e.g., poor 
>  sound-proofing across classrooms which is very annoying), but much better 
>  than the worst I have seen. There is a classroom for every grade, and there 
>  is a teacher in every classroom. There are decent blackboards (although 
>  rather small), there is one textbook per child, and there is a very healthy 
>  teacher-student ratio (given that some of the school leaders also teach). 
>  New school campus under preparation, and there seems to be a lot of thought 
>  and resources behind it. 
>  
>  
>  
>  ·         School gets organizational (and some monetary) support from SPS 
>  (Samaj Pragati Sahyog) – Digital Green partner in the region which has done 
>  extensive work on water harvesting (over 400 watersheds), microfinance (over 
>  900 SHGs) and organic agriculture (lots of work around NPM, dairy) in the 
>  last 20 years. All 8 school leaders are involved with SPS in some capacity, 
>  or otherwise do evangelization for them. This is SPS’s first venture into 
>  education; a bit surprising to me, given that the org has done quite a bit 
>  in development and has been around for a while now. Healthcare is also on 
>  their to-do list. 
>  
>  
>  
>  ·         Fee paying school with fees ranging from INR 60 to INR 150 
>  depending upon which grade the child is in. 75% fee turnover, which, I 
>  think, is huge! (Still, leaders reported to have gone into loss last year.) 
>  School leaders claim that in general, there’s a lot of support from parents 
>  to run the school. Parents are especially contributing a lot (monetarily and 
>  in kind) in setting up the new school building. 
>  
>  
>  
>  ·         There seems to be a growing rift between the teachers at this 
>  school and those at neighbouring public schools, and there were some reports 
>  of the latter interfering in school affairs. 
>  
>  Stuff I Did 
>  
>  I spent 3 days in the school and trained teachers using a variety of 
>  techniques (with some help from the local DG area manager – Kevin). Training 
>  had 3 major components: 
>  
>  1.        Classroom observations and feedback: School went on normally in 
>  the mornings for the most part, and we observed and filmed a lot of their 
>  regular classes. Later, there were feedback sessions and group discussions 
>  around the videos. This was a very critical component since it helped me 
>  understand the current classroom situation well and adapt the training to 
>  the teachers’ and students’ needs. On the first day, we only observed, but 
>  later we also started interrupting the teacher as he/she taught and 
>  instigated them to try different things. 
>  
>  
>  
>  2.        Training to use Digital StudyHall (DSH) content: I was carrying 
>  with me about 20 DVDs of classroom videos from StudyHall’s Prerna school in 
>  Lucknow, and we used these DVDs in different modes. For hardware, we used a 
>  mobile van (DVD player + projector) operated by SPS most of the times, but 
>  also a locally-procured TV-DVD-player (when power was available). 
>  
>  
>  
>  a.        On the first day, I did a demo “mediated lesson” for 5th-7th grade 
>  kids, as all the teachers in the school watched and took notes. Later, we 
>  discussed this class extensively, and I used it as a reference to talk about 
>  some dos and don’ts of mediation. 
>  
>  
>  
>  b.       The next day we did two DSH-based maths classes, in which teachers 
>  at the school mediated. Later on, we discussed these classes. 
>  
>  
>  
>  c.        Final day: we did an English class. This class was co-mediated by 
>  myself and one of the school leaders; I did more of the mediation in the 
>  beginning and let him do more of it towards the end. 
>  
>  
>  
>  3.        New teaching techniques (not covered by DSH): I taught teachers 
>  about some of the stuff I’ve learnt by attending other teacher training 
>  programs in the past. Part of this included tricks I learnt at Rishi Valley, 
>  which are particularly useful for rural schools. Part of this had stuff I’ve 
>  learnt from interactions with Akanksha/Teach-for-India (e.g., importance of 
>  group-work, using public displays in the classroom). 
>  
>  
>  
>  Giving feedback to teachers turned out to be a sensitive affair (which I 
>  very well expected to be). I took care to start with identifying “good” 
>  behaviours – things that needed encouragement. For criticizing, I used the 
>  videos and tried to invoke self-criticism from teachers. This didn’t go very 
>  far, but often the school leaders, who were also present in the feedback 
>  sessions, pointed out mistakes/bad behaviours, and I took it from there. 
>  
>  
>  
>  Male teachers were visibly excited about video-assisted feedback; they 
>  viewed it more as an opportunity to being shown “on TV” than anything else. 
>  (The two whose videos we couldn’t analyze because of lack of time, later 
>  complained in their feedback forms.) 
>  
>  
>  
>  Female teachers were initially reluctant to watch themselves in front of 
>  others (for fear of their mistakes being exposed), but later, they asked for 
>  it themselves, too. 
>  
>  Interesting bits about how teachers perceived and used DSH content 
>  
>  1.        In general, they were pretty darn excited about viewing “city” 
>  teachers on TV, and wanted to keep doing it, just for watching sake. They 
>  loved Utpal (the maths teacher) in particular because of the way he builds 
>  humour into his classes. 
>  
>  
>  
>  2.        Teachers came up with some interesting observations on some of the 
>  DSH teachers which were somewhat unexpected e.g., the fact that DSH teachers 
>  began classes with a motivational discussion; the fact that they brought 
>  props to class; the fact that they used hand gestures, that they organized 
>  content differently. 
>  
>  
>  
>  3.        One of the teachers noticed a particular behaviour of a DSH 
>  teacher during a training session and the next day, “copied” it in his class 
>  (no video present). The context was slightly different, too: in the DSH 
>  class, the teacher was explaining the meaning of a patriotic song; in the 
>  local class, he was explaining the significance of Gandhi Jayanti (2nd 
>  October). I did not instigate the copying behaviour in any way. 
>  
>  
>  
>  4.        Teachers were super-excited about English content. School leaders 
>  sacrificed their dinner on the last night and voluntarily watched DSH’s 
>  English DVDs on my laptop. They wished I’d stayed back an extra day only to 
>  discuss the English content. Teachers confessed they couldn’t make much use 
>  of the content in the class, until they watched it thoroughly and learnt the 
>  subtitles themselves; school leaders suggested that teaches should write 
>  down all subtitles on paper before going to class. Two school leaders 
>  volunteered to “manage” the distribution of English DVDs in this style after 
>  I leave. Let’s see how far that goes. 
>  
>  
>  
>  5.        Re: English Content. In the demo class I ran, the engagement level 
>  of the students and the teachers was markedly greater when the DSH teacher 
>  was doing rhymes. I know there are lots of songs in the English classes 
>  already, but I’d recommend that they be made more song-heavy. In general, I 
>  feel the DSH DVDs can do with some editing. Most videos are more than 25 
>  minutes long, which is quite a bit (particularly, if the mode of usage is 
>  mediated instruction). 
>  
>  
>  
>  6.        Re: mediation: I think it’s a difficult skill to teach to rural 
>  school teachers, and I don’t think I went very far in the limited time I 
>  had. For mediation to work effectively, one needs to put in extra work ahead 
>  of class; just watching the DVD isn’t really enough (and in our case this 
>  didn’t happen). Also, video as a teaching tool tends to become a crutch, and 
>  detracts attention from learning (e.g., teachers constantly forgot to 
>  instruct students to make notes when showing DSH content). This issue has 
>  been discussed on DSH discussion lists before. 
>  
>  Teacher Feedback on Training Program 
>  
>  I collected written feedback from teachers on the last day of training. In 
>  the feedback form, teachers were asked (among other things) to rank 
>  different components of the training program. The verdict was clear: 
>  teachers like to see other teachers on video more than anything else! 
>  (Video-assisted teaching sessions were also reported as important.) At no. 
>  2, was the session on learning “new teaching techniques”; some teachers 
>  positively commented about the Rishi Valley stuff I showed them and wished 
>  there was time to see more. One of them asked, “Aren’t there videos for 
>  this?” (Sadly, the answer is no.) At no. 3, were the sessions on 
>  video-assisted feedback. When asked what their most memorable moment was 
>  during the training, 5 out of 7 teachers commented that it was the time they 
>  got filmed. Still, how and whether the video helped them receive meaningful 
>  feedback from me was unclear. (I think it did, but not sure how the teachers 
>  perceive it.) 
>  
>  Through the feedback forms, I discovered serious gaps in the writing 
>  abilities of the teachers as well as of the school leaders. Some of the 
>  school leaders had a difficult time articulating their vision for the 
>  school. (The thought was clear, but they couldn’t translate it effectively 
>  into words.) It is clear that none of these teachers have been through good 
>  schooling themselves, which they are very aware of, and to which they 
>  attribute most of their current interest in running a school. 
>  
>  Students’ Take on Videos 
>  
>  No hard data on this, but students’ interest in DSH-style classes was quite 
>  evident. When I spoke to teachers, I emphasized the importance of 
>  interactivity in running DSH classes and in my demo lesson, I made it a 
>  point to instigate both questions and answers from students and enforce 
>  note-taking. It was heartening to see how students came out of their shells 
>  and asked questions during my demo lesson. For some kids, the very idea of 
>  asking questions seemed foreign till I did the training. One girl kept 
>  asking me questions on that class till the last day. 
>  
>  Some key observations outside of the training 
>  
>  1.        One of the objectives of starting the school was to improve the 
>  situation of girl child education in the village. A scholarship program for 
>  girls is also in place (~ INR 600 per girl child per year, 6th grade 
>  onwards). However, boys significantly outnumber girls in the school (no. of 
>  girls is less than 50). School leaders attribute this to competition from 
>  neighbouring public schools, where education is practically free for girls, 
>  and where girls get additional perks like bicycles and scholarships. (But 
>  even there, girls do not outnumber boys; the numbers are just about equal.) 
>  Message: parents in rural India are still reluctant to pay for their girl 
>  child’s education. 
>  
>  
>  
>  2.        Student absenteeism is high – in most of the classes I observed, 
>  at least 25% kids were absent. This is a common phenomenon in rural (public) 
>  schools in India – when harvesting time comes, parents would rather use 
>  their kids in the fields than send them to school. What’s interesting to me 
>  is that this behaviour carries over to a “private” school, where 75% of the 
>  parents pay the fees on time, and where parents reportedly contribute lakhs 
>  (in sum) to a new school campus. The immediate needs of the family always 
>  take precedence over “perceived” long-term benefits. 
>  
>  Next steps 
>  
>  Along with school leaders, I have chalked out a schedule for using the DSH 
>  DVDs for the entire month of October. Given that teachers were most 
>  interested in seeing and using DSH videos, it seems to me that the content 
>  will get used. I’ve appointed a video “librarian”, who amongst other things, 
>  will ensure that teachers view videos (most have easy access to DVD players) 
>  before going to class. The school leaders have taken responsibility of 
>  getting a TV-DVD-battery-pack in place at the scheduled time. The power 
>  situation is not as bad as I’d initially heard (there is electricity for at 
>  least 2 hours on at least one of the school days), so hopefully, stuff will 
>  happen in my absence. 
>  
>  Some of the content (English and Hindi, in particular) is currently unusable 
>  in their classroom: for Hindi, the curriculum is different; for English, the 
>  teachers need to work on their English first. For such content, I’ve 
>  instructed teachers that they view the content at home and write and submit 
>  summaries. This is a lot to expect, but I’m still hoping this will happen! 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  _______________________________________________ 
>  http://dsh.cs.washington.edu 
>  
>  archive: http://groups.google.com/group/dsh-discuss 
>  signup: https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/studyhall-discuss 
>  
>  
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