Student Intervention Program-Teach English to Municipal School Children

This web-page /blog-spot is mainly intended for volunteers from Teach-India Initiative enrolled in the weekend 2-hours Spoken English Language / Communication program at Kumud Vidyamandir and other schools organized by Kotak Education Foundation (KEF). This is a temporary site prepared and posted by volunteers to help each other. This is not an official web-site of KEF.The solutions given here to some of the problem situations have come from the volunteers themselves. In general, the suggestions follow the basic guidelines proposed by the KEF Student Intervention Program (SIP).

Volunteering to teach is an admirable action. There are many ways to give back to society. Giving money is one way of giving back. However, the giving of one’s time seems to be more difficult in the contemporary world. Many people say – money, if lost, can be recovered later. Time, once gone, never comes back. Time spent in teaching means increasing the level of difficulty for oneself. Not only does the volunteer give time, but the volunteer is now interacting with a human being – with all its attendant joys and frustrations. Most importantly the volunteer can see the results of that interaction immediately – on the child’s face. The volunteer can also monitor progress and follow the child’s learning and development path.

Teaching comes close to parenting as one of the most important functions in society and plays a huge role in social reproduction. Teaching is one of the foundations of learning for the next generation.

Teaching is very powerful but it is also a responsibility.Teaching brings a lot of joy to both student and teacher. However, “creating joy” has its own difficulties and frustrations.
Remember - these obstacles, difficulties and frustrations are completely surmountable. Someone – some teacher overcame them when you were a child.

When we start teaching or anything new for that matter, it is natural to have apprehensions. All the volunteers who returned to the 2nd session were bubbling with happiness and joy of meeting their students again, however, it would also be right to say that all of them had anxieties, question, and reservations at the start. They were concerned – “Did I do this right?” “I hope I did not damage this child permanently with my bad teaching” J

Of course there are teething problems in any new activity. Of course we can overcome them. Of course we can help each other in the process. After all we volunteered because we wanted to share something in the first place.

This blog-spot is a site for sharing our experiences, concerns, problems and their potential solutions and it is intended to act as a discussion forum for volunteers for this program.

The THREE main objectives of the Blog are

1) List some of the common issues faced by the volunteers and articulated by them at the end of each session

2) List of potential solutions attempted by volunteers or arrived at by discussion to overcome them is provided.

3) To share your specific experiences with the child you are teaching and the progress you are making with them
Please feel free to add your problems and the potential solutions you have tried and have succeeded and write as many comments as possible for each of the posts here!
There are no correct answers or best strategies. This program is a learning process for the teacher as well as the student
Remember that just like every CEO / Manager has her / his own management style. Every teacher also develops her / his own style of teaching. There are general guidelines that can be shared. We can learn from each other’s experiences.

BOTTOM LINE!!
You are there to help the child – not evaluate and judge the child. Help the child to comprehend and form sentences and speak in sentences spontaneously. Be the child’s friend. Remember when you turn the alphabets around in T-E-A-C-H, you get the word c-h-e-a-t. So, don’t examine and evaluate the child from Session One. Help the child along. Ask a question and then - whisper the correct answer in their ears even as they are answering (or simply move your lips to mouth the words without saying it aloud).
HELP THE CHILD – PLAY GAMES – HAVE FUN.

(This site is managed by Shilpa Sehgal, a volunteer from the first batch. Any questions or suggestions can be emailed to her at shilpa.sehgal@gmail.com)