Asha Chennai has been organising teacher training sessions for all the teachers it employs at all the projects. This was anchored by the RightStart 5-day teacher training session in May of every year. The other teacher training sessions were more sporadic. With Maths over the last couple of years it has evolved to once a term training session. The focus was on pedagogy related to the lessons they will need to teach in the upcoming term.

English training was hampered by the fact that the teachers’ own knowledge was very weak. Therefore there was confusion regarding whether to concentrate on teaching them English vs. teaching them the pedagogy of how to teach their students. We have recently moved towards training the teachers regularly over Email on a regular basis. This has helped us move the English training also to the same model as Maths. i.e. Once a term training sessions focussed on pedagogy. We started this pattern this December.

Maths and English training sessions were help on December 28th and 30th respectively. These sessions were held at the Olcott Memorial school. Mrs. Meena Suresh and Mrs. Kalyani from Ramanujan Museum and Centre for Math Resources conducted the training in Maths. Mrs. Jayashree Arun, a teacher from P.S. Senior Secondary School conducted the training in English. Both the sessions were very well received by the teachers. The facilities provided for the training by Olcott Memorial School were also very good.

Outstation teachers (from projects Pearl and Thulasi) stayed in Chennai for 3 days. The outstation teachers alone had a small computer training session on 29th December at Solnet Technologies office that focused on training them how to use the contents we provide for the laptops as part of Sangamam Kanini project.

Click here for the photos from these sessions.