JOURNEY OF LEARNINGS

         VIDYA POSHAK YUVA FELLOWSHIP - 2023

JOURNEY OF LEARNINGS 

This journey of learning was the small story of a man who came to the teaching field as he had some interest in teaching, but now he is working in the teaching field as the explorer. 

I am Manjunath from Sirsi. I have completed my B.Sc. in Government First Grade College Sirsi. I have completed my degree in the pandemic time and after the completion of the degree also I have been sitting at home for a few weeks because there are no working opportunities. Another issue is to work in the teaching field. I don't have a B.Ed. completion certificate with me. In that situation I heard about Vidya Poshak Yuva Fellowship 2021 and applied for it. I felt this would be a great opportunity to move forward in the teaching profession. 

Selection process of Vidya Poshak Yuva Fellowship is really nice because it has been divided into three parts and each part has its own values. I have applied for the Fellowship which is the first stage of the selection process. Next I got the mail to write two different essays on the given topic and also the field survey task. Second stage also cleared very easily and in the third stage I had faced the interview and this was a crazy experience for me because I have been attending such an interview for the first time in life. After a few days I got the call from Mrs.Namita madam regarding the selection for the Fellowship and I got so excited to work with the students and also to work with the VP team. 

My journey in fellowship begins with this institute training. A new team and the new learnings. Our total training was conducted through virtual media. I can say that this training provides us the route map for the two years fellowship. I attended the training from the Sirsi branch office. I got many learnings and ideas from the training which can be used in my classrooms. The many things that I have learned in the Institute are very new to me and also I feel that there are still many amazing things to learn in the teaching career. I am grateful to all my facilitators because at the beginning we all were not good at communicating English but still they taught us the topic in a very easily understandable method. Before the training I was just a teacher who can educate the students but after this training I can say that I became a teacher who can provide an excellent education to kids. Every session that has been planned for us is very helpful to us as a teacher. 

On 11th August I firstly visited the Government higher primary school, Jeerigiwad. I feel very uncomfortable with the school location because it is too far away from the city. Even though I was very unhappy with the school allocated to me but later within some weeks I got a very good understanding and response from the school. I visited the students' houses to introduce myself to the parents in the beginning of the school and it brought a good bonding with the parents. I had a good interaction with the students and built a good relationship with them.

The school allocated for me is a very small school with a student count of 131 and there are only 4 government teachers in the school. I didn’t take more time to be close to all of them and my journey of learning in the school also starts very calmly. I got allocated to the 7th class as a class teacher and the student count of class 7th is just 12. Also I taught mathematics to 6th grade students also.

 Students' level of learning was very poor in the beginning which we got to know by the ASER survey. Students were hyperactive in the school but not in the learning process. Students were very rude to teachers and also the 7th grade class is known for its bad behavior in the school. I began by building a good relationship with the students and this helps me alot because we all saw the complete change in the 7th grade students behavior that an irresponsible batch becomes the more responsible and working batch of the school. Students were now showing a good interest in curriculum and also in co-curricular activities. 

A special thing in my fellowship journey is bonding with my stakeholders. I work with my co teachers very nicely and they taught me many things to be a good teacher. They give me feedback to improve myself as a teacher and as a human being. We believe that parents are also our stakeholders and working with them gives a huge amount of learning. My students' parents gave me a love that I will never forget in my life. All these things I got only because of my work that I am doing in my school. Regular house visits to bring the absent students to the school builds a good relationship with the parents. 

When I first conducted the parent teacher meeting, the parents' strength was very low and I was unhappy to start the meeting but in a few minutes the parents' count increased. I feel “Parent Circle” is very informative and it gives positive reinforcement to parents too. 

I got many sessions from the Fellowship team to sharpen ourselves for the better teaching learning process. The training was planned for us when there is a holiday for the school. These trainings include many things such as firki course, effective English teaching, differentiation session, positive teacher - student relationship, sharing circle, development dialogue, etc are the trainings which are provided for us throughout the two years of fellowship journey. 

When there is vacation for the students we actually plan some activities through which we can provide some learnings to our students. From last year we started the concept of summer camp for the students in the April May holidays. We also planned some “chinnara dasara” camp during the October holidays. For these summer camps we made a plan by discussing with our team and our total fellows team gave different ideas for the  summer camps. We also finalized the activities on the theme basis and our themes will be students friendly and massage oriented. We show our respect to soldiers, farmers and to nature through some of our activities. 

We did some additional projects such as SOL and ThinkTac. Both the projects have different themes and my students got a very nice experience with these projects. SOL showcase was an inter school competition where all students met together in Kurubugatti school. I got the opportunity to teach my students a drama. Playing drama is my passion and my students' response is also very good so it will be one of my very good moments in the fellowship journey. Our drama is on the theme of girl education and we reached every audience through our skit. 

Under the ThinkTac project we provided materials to the students to perform the experiments and learn from doing. Conducting ThinkTac experiments in the classroom is a different kind of experience. All our students are getting engaged in the experiment and through the experiment they learned a lot.I feel very happy to give them learning through their personal experiences. 

Pleasure moment in my life to visit RRI and representing Vidya Poshak with our kids is appride moment. Our 27 students got the opportunity to visit Bangalore for the science exhibition and I feel this is not a small opportunity and along with students I got the opportunity to lead my team to this event. I was in some tension unless we completed this tour successfully. We completed it and achieved something for our kids.

My vision for my students was - “My students will grow as Leaders who can work in a team and contribute to the nation”. The reason behind this vision is my students were not so active and they are not taking any responsibility in the school so I chose this as my vision for my school and
I can proudly say that I have built the leadership quality among my students in the classroom and they are now showing excellent leadership quality. 

In the second year of Fellowship we are allowed to do one Community development project on the basis of our school needs. I chose hygiene and safe drinking water as a topic for the community development project because I feel that my students need to understand the importance of water and hygiene. When I started planning for the community development project I felt I am not mature enough to plan such things but I got the feedback and advice from my teammates that I can do this and I prepared a nice plan for the community development project. This gives a lot of learning because I searched a lot about this topic.

I believe in teamwork and also I feel that when there is a good bonding in the team then we can face anything very easily and if our team is not so strong then there will be force to face anything. I am very happy with my co-fellows (Ms.Madhura, Ms.Shobha, Ms.Deepa, Ms.Sushma, Ms.Manjula) because they never allowed me to complaint on anything because our bonding is very good throughout the two years of fellowship and we all helped each other to gain some knowledge which will be helpful to all of us. 

A small team of juniors I have got in my fellowship and they all are good at teaching and also they all built a good relationship with the team as well. In the beginning days they hesitate to be with us but later on our bonding becomes very good and now they are asking somethings if they have any doubts or any help if they needed. All four of my juniors have the ability to achieve something better in the teaching field. They will definitely do that for sure. 

We always say that the Vidya Poshak family and we very often use them as staff because there is such a nice bonding among all of us. Even there are some 4 staff working in the different branches of Vidya Poshak located in far places but we have bonding with them too. All the staff are very energetic and also they all support each other and for their work very enthusiastically. Being part of such an amazing team is also a good experience because when we are surrounded by the people with the positive reinforcement then we will definitely get the same. 

I am very thankful to our Fellow mentor Ms.Chandana Sahukar. She is very active and she finds new things to learn and tries to adapt them. She helped all of us in the complete two years of journey. Whenever we asked for any help from her she just provided that to us which is very nice about Chandana. 

 

I will be grateful to our Program manager Mrs.Namita hegde. From the beginning till the end I got complete support from our Program manager. She is workaholic and she  motivated me alot to bring my talent out. I feel  such a supportive Program manager is also a reason to complete two years of fellowship with lots of learnings from it. I would like to Thank our Program manager again for providing such amazing support and guidance. 

Vidya Poshak Yuva Fellowship gives me a great opportunity to be a teacher who will teach along with many learnings. The training provided by the fellowship will be with us for a long period of time and also I will definitely say that this program will build the leaders of the education sector. I will be thankful to the whole team of Vidya Poshak Yuva Fellowship for finding some qualities of teacher in myself and selecting me for fellowship and in complete two years filling maximum qualities of teacher in myself to make me fit in the teaching field. 

I am very much grateful to my NGO and my team for giving me such a large amount of learning and love. I have learned a lot from the team also because in some situations their advice helped me a lot. I am thankful to my beloved program manager and fellow mentor for their guidance and support throughout my two years of journey.

                                                                                      Thank You

                                                                                                Manjunath V T                                                                                                Fellow Teacher