A wellspring of energy
Urvashi Nangia
During my journey in the last seven years in the Education for the Development Sector space, I have doubted my decisions every now and then. I know that I am not alone. There are many people like me, in the Development Sector, who feel the same way as I do. The sector is defined by the lack of human and financial resources, coupled with very slow visibility of any real impact. Every time I have questioned my choice and debated giving it up altogether, I have gone back to reconnect with the ultimate beneficiary in this space – the children. Gandhiji had his talisman whenever he was in doubt and I have my children!
For a larger part of my stint in the sector, my work has been a little distanced from the schools. I have worked as a program manager, a researcher as well as a monitoring and evaluation consultant for different organizations and programs. Apart from some primary research, which involved going to schools and being there for observations, interviews and assessments, my direct contact with students has been pretty limited. Conducting research in schools has given me insights into how teaching and learning actually happen in classrooms, the nature of student-teacher interactions and the kinds of pedagogy, which encourage free and unfettered expression of the students. What I found most interesting during any primary research that I have undertaken till date has been the children’s talk, their involvement with discussion groups as well as their independent writing and drawing sessions. For instance, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, the students of a particular NGO school were exposed to a lot of reading material on Gandhiji, in addition to discussions held by the teachers in their classrooms. After these sessions, the students were expected to write or draw anything they had understood and/or related with. Each student’s work was displayed in the courtyard and time was given to everyone, so that they could see each other’s work. It was like a gallery walk. It’s a simple idea, which encourages dialogue. For instance, one child took Gandhiji’s three monkeys to a new level by adding another monkey and titling it ‘Bura na socho’! I find it to be an excellent example of how primary students also have the capacity to question the adequacy of existing ideas and to further build on them, given an opportunity to do so.
In addition to primary research, another way that I have found useful to connect to children’s worlds and views is by designing assessments which have open-ended questions. Analyzing answers to open-ended questions is one of the most rewarding and challenging tasks. Objective assessments also have their use, but for me it is engaging with the subjective, open-ended questions that has been far more exciting. For instance, to a question like, “Can you change the world? How?” some 70 odd students gave increasingly varied responses. It is not a simple yes or no, the key is in the reasoning. Why do the students think that they can or cannot change the world? Their responses, when studied in depth, give insights into how students think, what their beliefs and reservations are, their current knowledge base and what is required, for each one of them, individually as well as as a group, to take them in the desired direction.
Throughout this journey, I have also found energy in connecting with students directly. I have volunteered with different organizations and at some points, also started my own initiatives. These have helped me to connect my work at different levels to the ground level. Via these engagements, I have tried to understand what the students want to learn and why, along with exploring how teaching and learning can be an interesting activity that promotes a life-long learning, for both the students and the teacher. For instance, with a group of 10 students that I taught last year, there was a unanimous demand for learning English. On probing further, who would have thought that one of the main reasons for the group’s desire to learn English was to be able to use mobile phones better!!
Play and reading books together, are also some teaching-learning strategies that I have had the chance to work with. With both play as well as read-alouds, the engagement level of the children rises phenomenally and the transformation seen is magical. Why does getting an education involve so much boredom when one of its actual goals is to open up a world of different, amazing things for the students? It doesn’t need to be this way.
I am thankful for all student interactions, however long or short they might have been, for all their honest answers in interviews or assessments and engagements in discussions. I am thankful to the students for sharing their worlds with me. These have time and again, added joy to my work and life. They have also helped me refine my own questions and program designs so that they are more student-centric. Whenever in need of energy or in doubt, I return to the basics, to the ground realities, to the actual children whom we are working for. And, to this day, whenever I have gone back to the children, I have never come back without a new fervor to my pursuits in this sector.
The author is currently working as an Independent Consultant in the Development Sector. She holds a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and an M.Phil in Education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She can be reached on urvashinangia@gmail.com.