News And Updates

Vikramshila’s Teachers’ Convention at Tripura November 2009‘
The Dignity of the Teaching Profession is at Stake’

 

Having worked with a number of organizations and state governments, across India, and having come face to face with hundreds of teachers of various kinds, from various regions, Vikramshila felt that this systematic undermining of the teaching profession is symptomatic of very deep chasms within the education system.As a resource organization whose primary stakeholders are teachers, we felt it is our responsibility to initiate a widespread dialogue on these issues, and bring them to the notice of teachers across the spectrum, whose practice and professional dignity are at stake.
 In the light of the above sentiment, Vikramshila organized a Shikshak Sammelan (Teacher Convention) to bring these issues to the forefront with the actual stakeholders of the debate- namely, the teachers. Given the organization’s history with the State of Tripura, the proximity with which it has been associated with the teachers there, its relationship with the state government of Tripura and its people (both at the bureaucratic as well as the ground level); the State of Tripura became the first choice as venue.

The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tripura, Mr. Manik Sarkar kindly conceded to attend the convention as Chief Guest. In addition noted educationists and teachers Prof. Pabitra Sarkar and Prof Ranjugopal Mukhopadhyay committed to act as our esteemed panelists for the event.

Prof. Mukhopadhayay and Prof. Sarkar supported the teachers and emphasized that there were difficulties in delivering the state curriculum in the classroom because of its constricting curriculum leaving little scope or time for a teacher to be innovative or introduce methods to strengthen the social and emotional development of the child. In the session, the master trainers applauded Vikramshila’s methods as these were seen to be easily transferable to the classroom. It was also discussed that ongoing training is necessary to keep up with the changing times we live in.

For a full report on the convention please go to ‘Modules and Documents


SPEED COURSE- ct (July- December 09)

To meet the demands of the present day job market a unique project has been taken up by Naba Disha Programme for its high school graduates. The students here will get exposure to communicative English, soft skills and basic computer literacy. These fields are chosen keeping in mind the demands of the employers and the employability scene. The Naba Disha children are come from the most underprivileged sections of society. Through this effort the project is trying to generate employable skills sets in them. The 120 hours course has been designed by IL&FS-ETS and WEBEL who will also be providing a certification to these children.

Following the completion of the course efforts will be on to map suitable employable options for the children.

Documentation Workshop Phase 2 (August 09)
The second round of the documentation workshop was scheduled from the 3rd to the 7th of August 2009 at the IITD, near Ruby Hospital. The workshop was facilitated by Mr. Sheshagiri K.M from Bangalore, an ex EDCIL member. The participants were the Project Heads of all the units along with selected members from each project

Objectives of the Workshop

· To explore the various techniques and approaches to doing ‘good’ process documentation

· To understand the steps in process documentation, and develop/discuss guidelines and parameters for the same

· To understand the potential constraints and problems with respect to process documentation and discuss ways to deal with/overcome them

The second workshop took off from where we left after the first interaction in June. There was a fair amount of recapitulation of the first workshop, and ideas and themes that emerged were taken up as and when required. Based on these, the specifics of Project Documentation were also discussed.

Shikshak Sammelan on ICT in Quality Education (August 09)
The Shikshak Sammelan on ICT in Quality Education was organized by Vikramshila Education Resource Society with the idea to generate discourse on the subject of ICT, which was hitherto lacking in West Bengal. It was also hoped that insights could be gained into the minds of the teaching community,and they could be provided an apolitical platform to share and express their views.The Objective of the Theme- "ICT in Quality Education" was a)To create a preliminary awareness among the teachers about the nature , need and scope of ICT To explore the various stages of ICT use, to be able to map the current status and prepare a roadmap for the future. Given the 2 point agenda, one can say that the one-day
seminar was successful in terms of outcomes. What emerged from the discussions as outcomes can be seen as

 

(i)Awareness building among the teaching community

(ii) Mapping the various stages of ICT use across the state

(iii) Preparing a detailed work plan for each stage for proper implementation

The participants in this round table were head teachers and teachers from Kolkata, North 24 Paraganas and Burdwan. The schools invited were of 2 types-

a) Those which have received some kind of ICT intervention

b) Those which have not received any ICT intervention

The representatives of IL & FS- ETS, Ms Poulami Ghosh, Mr. Debajyoti Basu and Ms. Samina Alam, ELT trainer Mr. Amit Poddar, Ms. Jaya Biswas from SPJS, Mr. Arindam Sengupta from Hare School, Mr. Pranab Ray from Informatics Computer Centre, Ms Sushmita Banerjee from ‘Sambhav’, Jaipur, Ms. Madhu Ranjan of USAID and Mr. Victor Paul, Education Development Centre, were also present in the Discussions and shared their experiences with the group. The Sammelan was chaired by Ms. Shubhra Chatterji, Director, and Vikramshila Education Resource Society.

The Speaking Festival (August 09)

  

Vikramshila Education Resource Society (VERS) organized a unique program of its kind called the speaking festival for the students of classes VII, VIII and IX of six Bengali medium schools across Kolkata, namely, Baranagar Mayapith Narisiksha Ashram, Netaji Nagar Vidyamandir, Baranagar Sri Sri Ramkrishna Vidyapith, Bratachari Vidyasram and Kamarhati Sagore Dutt Free High School. This festival is a part of the communicative English program of the Education to Employability (E2E) project, which attempts to build the English communication skills of the vernacular medium govt. aided private schools. Filled with colors,excitement and fun, speaking festival saw the turnout of around 195 finalists after a week long grueling preliminary selection process in these six schools. It was remarkable to see the once shy, introvert children changing into confident, smart speakers. Participants spoke on a pre-decided topic, such as India, hobbies,cartoons and myself, which was judged on the basis of speaker’s pronunciation, clarity and expression. The event was judged by Jaya Biswas, assistant professor of statesman school of journalism; Amit Poddar, communicative English expert and Joanne Melon
 from Suas organization. Mayapith Narisiksha Ashram and Sagore Dutt Free High School swept the maximum number of prizes in group, pair and individual speaking. Shubhra Chatterjee, director of Vikramshila, told the children that speaking in English should be enjoyed like any other activity and must not be feared. She encouraged the children to speak with their classmates and parents to gain.

  
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