....And, I learn!!!

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" - oft quoted , yet extremely relevant, irrespective of the times we are in. Education as a cause has been close to my heart, and has tugged at many-a-chord, all these years.


They say, if your intention is good, and will indomitable, a bevy of opportunities come a-calling....all that you need to do is pounce and get a grabful.... A motley group of us at office got an opportunity to teach students of Community Colleges. For the uninitiated, Community Colleges are a group of institutions that dot the educational landscape of South India. They impart 'Vocational' and 'Life' skills to students who are either dropouts off the formal education system, or cannot afford it. The age group varies between 14 to 20 years, for both boys and girls. 


We zeroed down upon two Community Colleges in Bangalore, and formed a group of around 15 of us. Having put the preliminaries in place, we had to deal with the next big question, the most important and challenging of all - "How to teach"? With no prior experience in teaching, we sweated bullets, and doubts seemed to dampen our enthusiasm. Thence stepped in a good samaritan Prof Albert and his wife Ma'm Rosalind, who helped organize a couple of 'Train the Trainer' sessions. They also happened to run one of the Community Colleges with which began a wonderful association, that we cherish and uphold even today. A couple of extremely enriching and eye-opening sessions later, we were 'Ready' ....ready for the new roles we were stepping into...roles that became an integral part of our lives, and continue to be.

Since Retail is what we specialized in, we came up with a module that imparted Retail domain knowledge to the students, along with relevant life skills to echo the mantra 'Fit for Job, Fit for Life'. Innumerable discussions, brain storming sessions, internet research, and drafting of presentations & notes went behind putting up 6 hours of teaching every week. A multitude of challenges hit us :

 - Extreme heterogeneity of the group in terms of age group, educational background (10th pass/ 10th fail/ 12th pass/ 12th fail), socioeconomic and geographic divide (urban and rural regions)

- Language barrier due to incomprehensibility of English as a medium of instruction

- Resistance to a new set of teachers

- Absolute lack of interest

- Reluctance to participate due to shyness etc

- Difficulty in comprehending the subject matter

- Time constraint for the teachers

Our initial few classes were more like laboratory adventures to crack our 'Eureka' moment of teaching. We aligned different methodologies - role plays, discussions, games, stories, quizzes, presentations, projects, field visits, activities to drive the information across. Finally, the seemingly insurmountable challenges began to loosen up, and teaching became an exhilarating experience, wherein we learnt more than we taught.

Then came striding along, the greatest challenge : our group began to taper off, until we reached the current number of 5. Nonetheless, the enthusiasm refused to ebb away. We gave up one college, after having seen one batch successfully passing out and getting placed. 

It's been a little over two years, and the tryst with education continues. The whole process has been wonderfully symbiotic and incredibly rewarding for us; the learnings we've garnered are priceless!

With pride in our hearts and farewell prayers on our lips, I dedicate this post to our second batch of students who successfully pass out at the end of this month! Thankyou!!!!