For the juniors, a BMC school with a difference
Anahita Mukherji | TNN
[Times of India- page 4 main supplement; oct 10, 2006]
HAPPY FACES: A teacher and her students at a Muktangan classroom
Mumbai: Imagine a model classroom, with one teacher for every six to 15 kids, and innovative methods of teaching where children choose what they want to learn.
Well, this is what is happening in the latest international school coming to town; instead, all this is taking place in a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation school, where Muktangan a voluntary organisation is working on a pilot project in collaboration with the BMC.
The initiative by former Bombay International School vice-principal Elizabeth Mehta works on the principle of breaking up the students into small groups of 15 and then allowing the teacher to pay closer attention to each students needs.
Muktangan started as a pre-primary school in 2003 with seven teachers and 90 children. It now has classrooms that can accommodate 45 students, who are further divided into groups of 15 under the care of a teacher. Circles are drawn on the floor, around which children sit and decide on what they wish to learn.
No innovative teaching methods can work in an overcrowded classroom where a teacher has to act as a policewoman, Mehta said.
A Muktangan classroom has two boards, the Home Board and the Balwadi Board, and children mark their own attendance by taking their nametags off the Home Board and placing them on the Balwadi Board.
The classroom is divided into different areas like the Home Corner (with toy utensils), the Art and Craft Corner, the Building Blocks Corner and the Quiet Area (which has materials like beads). Children sit in a circle with their eyes shut every morning and the teacher asks each child what s/he wants to do; so, iIf children want to draw a flower, they go to the Art and Craft Corner; and, if they want to cook, they go to the Home Corner. Each child makes his or her plan for the day. Teachers join the children in their play but dont interfere with the childs work; instead, teachers simply carry forward a childs conversation.
If a child is playing with blocks, and says s/he is making a train, the teacher can ask where it is going and so on. This method of teaching requires tremendous observation skills, said Mehta. Teachers write down specific observations about three children a day and every child has been observed individually in a week.
Mehta set up Muktangan in 2003 as a pilot project to impart low-cost, English education for the economically disadvantaged.
She also provided teacher-training programmes to women in the local community and slum areas to solve the staff crunch.
Many of the teachers have not completed their graduation, some have not even passed HSC. But these women, once trained, make excellent teachers and are a valuable human resource, says Mehta.
Those who have sent their kids to Muktangan certainly endorse the system and want their children to continue in a similar system throughout their schooling years.
(Muktangan runs pre-primary classes in Globe Mill BMC School, Worli, and Prabhadevi Municipal School; it also supports a BMC teacher in running class I in Globe Mill BMC School and classes II and III in the annexe opposite the school.)