First Day Back at Chandranagar School
After about a year, I returned to Chandranagar Government Primary School today. Chandranagar is about 3 km. from where I live, in an urban slum. Last year, there were 280 students for 7 grades and 7 teachers. This year, there are 330 students, 8 grades, and 5 teachers? Maybe 6 1/2 (two have been recently appointed by another charity in the last few days). The children and the teachers remembered me from last year, and it was slightly surreal seeing all of these kids, one year older, slightly bigger, slightly rowdier, and still not learning much.
The situation at Chandranagar has been quite rough in the past year-- 3 Asha appointed teachers gone, one new headmistress come and gone in a month, another long-standing government appointed teacher switched out to another school, and then 2 recent appointments by the government for a school desperately in need of teachers. The 5th grade class is now taken underneath a tree. But apparently the tree causes a lot of noise blowing with the heavy wind at times, and the teachers are afraid that branches will fall on the children!
I was greeted with the usual "Good Morning Miss!!" and smiling faces. I was really surprised to have remembered the special handshake that they do at the end of the day. After spending less than an hour there, I was already left in a classroom of 8th graders, alone, and instructed to do some English with them. We read a story together, with the students competing for their chance to read, some struggling, some reading each word very well but having absolutely no clue what it meant. At times I would stop and ask the class, in either English or broken Kannada, what "ocean," or "frightened," or "peak" meant, sometimes having to draw diagrams on the board.
One definite improvement from last year to this year has been the nutrition and midday meals situation. Last year, the mid-day meals provided by the government came infrequently, if at all on time, and were typically tasteless and void of nutritional value. The teachers always brought their own lunch. This year, an NGO called Akshaya Patra, in conjunction with the Government of Karnataka (GOK), is feeding children through the kitchens of the ISKCON temple. The GOK only pays one rupee (~2.5 cents) per head out of the cost to feed the children through Akshaya Patra's Midday Meals, the rest of the cost is covered by other donors. Needless to say, these kids are now getting fed better tasting food in bigger quantities, and apparently even the teachers eat it as well.
These kids are absolutely adorable, of course, but it is very troubling to see just how much of the day was characterized by classrooms stuffed to capacity without teachers.
When I asked about advocating for more government teacher appointments, the HM told me that government teachers are appointed from a group of teachers that are interested in transferring locations. The teachers get the option of choosing which school they would like to work in, and often choose schools close to home. So, when the HM requested 5 new teachers from the Block Education Officer, they only brought in 2 because only two chose to work in Chandranagar School.
One of the most troubling situations, apart from the lack of basic needs in the school-- adequate teachers and space-- is the 3rd grade (III Std.). There are over 60 third standard students in one classroom, and according to the headmistress, maybe only 10 students are at the level they should be, the rest are quite far behind. This is apparently due to the chaos of this past year. When these children were in II Std, their teacher (Asha hired), left in October, and there was no new teacher for II Std. until the following February. The reasons for leaving were probably for the right reasons (see last year's blog for a full account of the drama that went down), but these children suffered a lot without a consistent teacher for so long. So many of these small children that used to be so quiet have now grown bigger and more rambunctious, certainly difficult to control all at once. The headmistress had to tell them, as I sat to visit their classroom, "Behave so 'Miss' can go back to America and say what nice children there are here."
The GOK has also instructed Chandranagar School to hold upper primary classes up to the 8th standard now, as last year only went until the 7th. To keep students from dropping out, an entire grade was added, and one additional teacher certified to teach upper level science and math was appointed by the GOK. When I was in the 8th grade class, I noticed that one of my favorite kids from last year, Selvakumar, was not in the classroom. He was a little troublemaker sometimes, but a sweet kid that had hopes to start his own business named after the headmistress, "Padmaja Electrics." I later asked the HM where he was. Apparently, his father had suffered from some illness, and is no longer able to work. Selvakumar has now left school and become the "working man." Apparently he is working in an aluminum factory. He is probably 13 years old.
I asked the HM what I could do for them, because apart from writing a follow-up report on the school, I'd like to spend my free time there doing whatever I can. Part of me feels helpless, yet empowered to do something for a school lodged in a broken system. The GOK has now established that English should be taught from the 1st grade, yet no one is currently teaching English to these children, with not enough teachers to go around. The HM gave me the new 1 std. English workbook and a teacher's guide to go with it, and got very excited at the thought of me teaching English to the tiniest of the lot. I'm not a teacher. I don't know a thing about teaching. But there is a need, so I'm reading the instructors guide and studying up. I also need to learn some more basic Kannada, fast. That would make things a lot easier. But still, I can't help but feel troubled by it all-- this school needs serious changes, not quick fixes.
Doing research on how NGOs should be investing in government schools, and then acting as an NGO player in a government school itself creates an interesting work dynamic in India. Many things are familiar from last year, and some of the same things I debated with myself then are just as relevant one year later. In a city and a country with an 8% growth rate, construction and development occurring rapidly from one year to the next, the middle and upper classes growing wealthier by the minute, it is also startling to see just how much things have not changed, even deteriorated, in the government schools.
