Asha’s annual teacher training programme, RightStart was held from May 24th to 28th. This included training in English and Maths. All teachers from Asha suppoted projects and some teachers from other partner organisations attended this 5 day event at IIT Madras.

About RightStart

Several Asha-Chennai projects involve improving the operations of government and government-aided schools and Balwadis. Some of the teachers in these projects are funded by Asha-Chennai. The teachers are often qualified from an educational standpoint. However both their knowledge of the subjects and of good education methodology needs further training. Asha Chennai has been organizing training for the teachers through out the year. The academic year starts with a residential training programme, RightStart in May every year.

About RightStart-2017

ASHA Chennai organized a residential training programme for ASHA teachers from rural areas from May 24 -28, 2017 inclusive at IIT campus Vanavani School. There was training in English language skills and Maths.  Teachers from various Asha Chennai associated projects attended the programme.

The following training sessions were held:

1. English teaching with emphasis on grammar – Jayashree Arun (teacher from PS Senior Secondary School) – 2 days.
2. Maths (dealing with Samacheer Kalvi term 1 topics) – Meena Suresh from Ramanujam Museum & Math Education Centre – 2 days.
3. Computer Science – esp. using computer and the contents that we have put together to teach effectively in the classroom – 0.5 days.

In addition to four and a half days of training, for the fifth day we have planned something different this year. For the last year we have been training children in about 40 primary schools in the Poondi block of Thiruvallur District to use computers. Children from 4^th and 5^th standard have been learning OpenOffice. Since January they have been organized into teams creating presentations using OpenOffice Impress. Ten best teams were invited to Chennai. The top teams presented their work and the winners were chosen by a group of judges. Awarding prizes to these children was clubbed together with the presentation of the certificates to the teachers on the evening of the 28^th of May.

Click here to see photos from RightStart 2017. Click here to see the detailed report.