Tech-won-do: techniques for effective self-learning + trip to Kolkata

20 Oct 2007

Hi folks,

For those of us involved in helping disadvantaged neighbourhood kids get access to a good education, this is about we ourselves learning some lessons.

Some of us may have had experience tutoring kids at shelter homes. I am looking for a blueprint that provides a rookie volunteer to take up a tutoring program with clear goals in sight just as it could help an experienced one to avoid lesser-known pitfalls while accomplishing bigger targets. With an emphasis towards helping the kids pick up self-learning skills along the way.

In short, do more in less time. For all of us run the race against time and so many of us want to achieve big.

While looking for success stories having the potential for take-home lessons, I came across one from a school in Kolkata. Outlook magazine’s reporter Jaideep Mazumdar, in a recent story Didi’s Day Out (Oct 15, 2007 issue) reports on how dainty girls from the school of Loreto Sealdah have been transformed into mission-focussed young ladies as they go about doing their work: guiding rural kids from a school 20 kms away from Kolkata with their studies. It’s a humbling thought, to say the least. Good reporting too.

It’s not clear how impactful the programme is. However, for its sheer novelty, the initiative and for the possibility of the tremendous impact similar exercises could have if the model is replicated in Mumbai and elsewhere, I feel it’s worth investigating. I am planning to do a case-study with the following objectives in mind:

1. Find out what is the teaching plan the programme draws out
2. Find out what learning aids the programme uses
3. Find out if the programme uses any method to measure success
4. Find out what sort of success the programme has achieved

I am planning a trip sometime in Nov/Dec 2007. Anyone keen to team up? Let me know.

Warm regards,
Aditya