Do we need to educate a Girl??

❓❓  "Do we need to educate a Girl?" this the question that we get in the rural sector and I don't know how to answer this question but from last few weeks I am learning it from taking some sessions to the students. And I would like to share about the sessions that I was taking to understand the importance of educating the Girl child. 

                    

Hi, I am Manjunath v tevar and I am working in the government higher primary school in the rural area of the Dharwad district. When I first attended the slam out loud session I just felt that we can do this in our schools but it won’t effect or it won’t give any results but I was wrong because from the 1st session only I got good response from the students as well as from my colleague. 

I am working in the rural sector and I can see many dropouts in my school area and more than 70% of dropouts are girls. After 10th there are very few students who are visiting the colleges and the reason they are giving for their drops from the education is their family members are not supporting them for the continuation of the education. 

And I feel that we should educate the students about the importance of education because as we all know our students know how to convince their parents for their favorite things. So we need to make education the favorite thing and the 1st preference thing for them so that they should be ready to face their whole family if their family had thought of stopping their education. 

Slam out loud sessions give some great sessions through which we get the place and time to express these things to the students in an understandable way.


First session was giving an introduction about the slam out loud session to the students and explaining the vision or motto of the program. In this session I saw the replica of myself in my students' facial expressions because I too got confused in the 1st session of slam out loud. Students firstly got confused but at the end of the session they started liking the program.


It was the second session and students sat in silence because they didn't know what was going to happen in the session. We discussed the Ruksana story and then we started discussing their goals and the support for their goals. Usually students explain their goals in the classroom with the high josh but then they realise how they are going to reach those goals. But then we start discussing with them about the support that they have to reach the goals, then they feel happy that they have good support from the family and the school teachers too and they are very happy with their supportive environment. 

In third session we discussed about the Wardley’s story and we discussed about how strong should be our decisions about the things that we want and the very important thing that we should need for the life is education. My students discuss how they are going to convenience their parents to support them for their education. From this session onwards I got to know that my students are also very serious about their goals and their life. I was very happy after this session.

In the fourth session we are discussing the Suma story. This story we can relate with my village parents because in the suma story we can see that her parents are not letting her into education and they all think that girls will not fit for getting education and earning a job to lead a life. As we started discussing this topic, they explained what are the things they are facing as the topic was education for the girls and how their elder sisters are now just doing household work and their family members do not allow them to go for further education. We discussed how we are going to face this in a team.

 Fifth session where we discussed the Amina story. Students shared that they even saw some early age marriages in their village too. When I asked them to write about their inspiration, some of them wrote about celebrities and few of them wrote about their family members. But one student Fayaz wrote about the farmer and he is very fascinated towards agriculture. It was an inspiring session for me.

Sixth session was about the Ajmera story. In this session I asked them to draw two circles on the white sheet. They wrote their goals and the support that they are getting from their family members. 

Seventh session is about Senna’s story. This session was full of laughter because my students wrote letters in different forms such as they have just changed the lyrics of some film songs and some of the students were very creative. They just change their lyrics with the song that they have in their Kannada book. 

In the eighth session we just discussed all the sessions and stories that we have in this slam out loud program. Students asked me that if we are finalizing these sessions do we have any other sessions from next week. 

From baseline assessments to end-line assessments we can see some small changes in students answering about the girl's education and the good support for the girl child to have the better future and the better life as boys have. 

I am very happy that I got good time to spend with my students with the good learnings and the new learnings and thought for myself. 


THANK YOU😊

Manjunath v t
Team Vidya poshak



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