Ok Saurabh, thanks for the long report.  I finally read it in its entirety :)

I think the plan you put in place is good! :)

In the mean time, perhaps we should get a phone number of a person
there and have our Lucknow office people talk to them.  Who is it
going to be?  The Lakshmi you're talking to?  We'll keep in the loop
too.  (In the future, we can also do 3-way conference call.)

Here're the things I think Tanuja can discuss with them:

(1) Discuss what they they are doing with the DVDs they already have.
(Classes 3 and 5, first discs of all subjects, as I understand it.)

(2) Discuss what other DVDs we might want to send them.  We don't have
to send a whole lot, pending what we hear from them about what they
have done.  But depending on the outcome of the discussion and their
needs, we could give them some more.  Like lower grade discs.  I
repeat: let's not send too much.  We can always send more later.

(3) Send some Khomeini training videos.  (The shorter versions that I
asked you guys to compile.)  Let's also send some sample videos of how
some of the best spoke school teacher mediation videos.  Saurabh says
they are having difficulty seeing how "mediation" could work.

(4) Talk about equipment.  Tanuja, you might want them to talk to
Pratyush too.  There might be need for a stablizer and stuff.  Get a
feel of how often electricity comes.  You said 2 hours a day when you
were there, but what about at other times, like at nights.  The point
I guess is to assess stuff like how big a battery.  Talk to them about
size of TV screen.  How much they should be paying etc.

Those are the first things...  I think.

The following is not super-important.  Just random responses to what
Saurabh said.


-----

Re: SH address and teacher letters

C-3/67,
Vipul Khand-2
(near Jeevan Plaza)
Gomti Nagar, Lucknow
226010

If you happen to be there, it's easier if you photographed the letters
and emailed to us :)

This is also exactly the kind of stuff that they can do on the phone
system :)  If they left messages for our SH teachers, the phone system
can forward it to SH teachers.  It will be even free for the callers
because the system will call them.

The phone system business can probably wait a bit.  Let's not scare
them with too much stuff :)  But we need to get THEIR numbers.  So,
for example, the system can call them.  As opposed to the other way
around.

The info we need to collect from the teachers will be: name, phone
number, three preferred times per week when they will get a call from
us.


Saurabh says:

 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.

Me says:

Glad to hear they are excited! :)

I was going to offer to print out the subtitles, but then again, I
thought the better of it: perhaps it's not such a bad idea that THEY
will have to copy down the subtitles by hand!  Gives them something
tangible to do and to shoot for.  But if you think you want it, we can
print out the subtitles.

Saurabh:

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).

Me:

I'll let Priyanka or Tanuja to convey the "song-heavy" advice.    Re:
editing.  REMEMBER: those 25 minute lessons are not meant to be
consumed/mediated during a single class period!!  They are supposed to
be spread over many periods.  The teachers make the decision on
pacing, but hopefully with the aim of covering a semester's worth of
curriculum in time.  It's like concentrated orange juice---just add
water, add a lot of water :)

We already did some editing.  Of course, we welcome specific advice on
what more to edit out.

Saurabh:

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.

Me:

Two things.  One, we could send you some videos of how "rural
teachers" do the "mediation" very effectively :)  Two, it takes some
time to get used to.  The first exposure to all this new stuff, I
think it can be quite overwhelming.  It will probably be unreasonable
to expect them to "get it" from the very beginning and off to the
races.  Particularly for English, it's hard.  But they will get
better.  They need to see this stuff repeatedly.  Use it in class
repeatedly.  It will take time.  (In fact, an important point of DSH
is that the "video-teachers" can be there to help for as long as it
takes, day in and day out, to be arbitrarily rewound over and over and
over again.  As opposed to pretty much any other kind of
teacher-training scheme, which is almost always very limited in
time---as good and as idealistic Mr. Saurabh is, he can only be there
for a short time and he can't expect to see brilliant teacher
performance during the limited time he's there :)



2009/10/6 Saurabh Panjwani <Saurabh.Panjwani@microsoft.com>:
>  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! 
>  
>  
>  
>  
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