TEACHING & LEARNING FROM CLASSES TO MASSES
Goal:
- To extend teaching services of the faculty members to the society
- To make teaching and learning informal
- To train the students for societal use
- To take teaching services beyond the classrooms
- To establish some collaborations with NGOs
- The Context:
Since SVKT College is situated in the semi-rural area, majority of the students come from the illiterate backgrounds. The family members of such students areunable to read and write English for their personal purposes. The department considered it as an opportunity to help out such families and enable them to read and write English language. The department also aims at training some students from the department to go and teach such kind of students from remote areas. Apart from this the faculty from the department also extend their services to some of the organisations who seek guidance from the teachers in order to improve their communication skills in English
- The Practice:
Considering teaching as a noble profession, the faculty from the department constantly attempts to extend their skills and services to the society. There are lot of people who are working in some private sectors but since they have completed their education through Marathi medium, they struggle to use English language at their working places. Many of the Employers of such industries or organisations contacted the department and requested for conducting few training sessions as far as communication skills in English is concerned. The department gave a positive response to their call and extended the expertise of the faculty from the department. Dr. Swati Singh, conducted three months training programme atAnand Eye Power Ltd, Satpur. The sessions proved to be very fruitful to those employers and demanded mores sessions on various topics. She also conducted a project on Competency Mapping atPerfect Circle India Ltd. Dr. Swati Singh is also a cofounder of Gyanse Udan, NGO working in remote areas of UP. She visits such places during the vacations. She trained around 40 government teachers for better performance.
Ms. Sunita Adake is working as a Vice President of Gharkul, an organization that works for especially abled girl children. It is her regular practice to visit the organisation on weekends and engage some interesting and motivation sessions. It helped out a lot for such students in gaining their confidence.
Not only the faculty but, taking into consideration the value and importance of English language, the department trained some of the students and motivated them to go and teach some English to the students from Marathi medium. They also taught some of the people form remote areas, especially from their surroundings, about filling up bank forms, writing their names in proper way and basics in English Language. A team of students conducted two moths coaching programme at Cantonment Schools successively for two years. It has been made practice by the students to engage some sessions at their own native places for the school going children.
- Evidence of Success:
The feedback taken from the employees shows that, the practice proved to be very useful for them and the evidence of success is that those people demanded many more such sessions. The school going children have started showing interest in reading out some stories in English. The parents of such students appreciated the attempts made by such students and they too asked for repetitive sessions. The teachers as well as students got the appreciation letter from the concerned authorities.
- Problems Encountered and Resources Required
Initially the parents were reluctant to send their children for such session but gradually they understood the importance and after seeing the progress the started sending their children on regular basis. Matching time between the targets learners and the teachers is the main problem and one of the parties needs to compromise with it. If students are given some incentives for such noble activity, at least under the scheme of Earn While Learn, they will devote more and more time for such activities.
