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As we transition back into the life before the pandemic, new challenges emerge globally. The pressure to re-create a safe environment to work, learn and live raises now more than ever. Especially those in leadership positions across the globe. The school reopening in
India has ignited dialogues around school-readiness. All stakeholders like headteachers, teachers and parents are coming together to co-create safety measures at school while accounting for the learning loss that children have experienced over the past couple of years.
Vidya Pravesha is a school readiness initiative and accounts for the first 3 months for students of class 1. This program is developed by Nipun Bharath throughout the country for grade 1. In Karnataka, the support structures are provided for Grade 1 to 3 through the Nali Kali program, which is a multi-grade classroom structure. So, In Karnataka Vidhya Pravesha looks at all three grades.
These initiatives at state and national level also call for capacity building for those at the front of execution like teachers, headmasters, block and cluster resource persons. And surely a considerable amount of time and resources have been invested in the mentoring process for the same.
These mentoring and capacity building spaces aim to support and enable teachers to address and solve for unexpected lags and challenges at school level like delay in disbursing teaching handbooks or student workbooks. The main idea being empowering teachers to engage classrooms effectively even in absence of these resources.
Key objectives at a glance
To build the capacity of teachers to utilise locally available materials for effective engagement in classrooms
To clarify the doubts about the program objectives, document maintenance and more.
To motivate teachers to cope with the new challenges in the field
In Karnataka, this initiative has brought to light the stories of invested education leaders who are committed to support schools and develop contextual solutions with respect to execution.
The need for a mentoring space was initiated by the Block officials based on their observation and understanding of the needs of the teachers in their respective Blocks. The nodal and block education officer developed a session plan and took responsibility for arrangement of logistics. Investing all stakeholders in this initiative was a humongous task as the concept of Vidya Pravesha was new for all Block Education Officers. Venues were identified and dates were finalised for conducting hobli level training throughout the block. Block Resource Person - Mrs Rijwana showed exemplary level of leadership and took ownership of end to end execution of the training. She went on to prepare all the Teaching Learning Material (TLMs) herself for these sessions and also led most of these mentoring spaces in Hobli.
Impact that one invested Education Leader caused
5 mentoring sessions
500+ TLMs created
210 teachers attended the capacity building sessions