ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Making a Difference

Bhavana Uchil

Mumbai: Contrary to the belief that municipal schools lack good teachers, we find teachers from the city’s municipal schools go out of their way to give a better quality of education to their students.

Rajesh D. Bujad, Principal, Bajaj Road BMC Marathi School, Kandivali West, a teacher for the past 24 years, Bujad goes from Aurangabad, Pune, Latur to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in search of the best ways to teach children in his school. His school is one of the 200-odd BMC schools in the city which have started using the activity-based learning method of teaching children.

His chamber has a stock of materials needed for teaching in this method called ‘constructivism’. “We teachers mostly spend from our own pockets for getting these materials,” he says pointing to jars full of colourful beads of different shapes and colours. He has also made a blog which is useful for teachers. Called ‘Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika Shikshak Mitra’, in the two months since the blog has gone online, it has seen 5,000 visitors. It guides fellow municipal school teachers on how to keep records – the municipal schools lack clerks, and teachers have to carry out administrative work in addition to their primary duty of teaching.

 A section in his blog guides teachers about the toys to be used to teach children. A recipient of last year’s Mayor’s Award given to model teachers, Bujad is continuously experimenting with technology to develop new ways to teach children. Showing an app in his phone, he says, “I have made all teachers in my school to download such apps in their phone.

This app can be used to teach children to write letters,” The app works like a slate, only children use their fingers to write the letter, instead of a chalk!

“This way they learn better,” he says. Bujad also seeks corporate help to improve facilities in his school. “A company has promised us two projectors which we will use for e-learning. My dream is that my school should be a digital school,” he says. Thinking why municipal schools should lag behind in adopting e-learning methods as compared to private schools, Zeeshan Sheikh took an initiative to start a digital classroom in his school. The children now learn through power-point presentations and videos. They also record their poem recitals. Explaining the difference between the virtual classrooms that many BMC schools already have and a digital classroom, Zeeshan said, “Virtual classrooms are handled by a third person, children can listen to telecasts or interact using a microphone, but in a digital classroom children can create their own media. My children have started showing more interest in projects after the facility.”

Zeeshan, who had been a supervisor in an Aadhar centre before coming into teaching and had taken many computer courses out of interest. He says having a digital classroom can help solve the problem of bogus student records. “Also when officers come for inspection, children are a little afraid and do not speak. But this way we have a record of all the activities children do for the officers to see for themselves,” he said.

Zeeshan was invited by BMC commissioner Ajoy Mehta for a presentation on his digital classroom. “Mr. Mehta said the BMC will try to make a digital classroom in every school,” he said.