My White Lotus

Much water has flown under the bridge, ever since the first article was written on this blog. I’ve been overwhelmed by the support in word and kind. In fact, I struggle on a daily basis to make the optimal use of resources I have amassed.

Quick facts: I have books still unutilized; I have teaching aids like an abacus, a globe, and a set of flash cards not being used to their potential; I have loads of CDs which haven’t come under my kids scanner; I have a resource centre space which is open and waiting for computers to come in. This is the inefficiency of a guy who works through the week with a single minded pursuit. I can only dare to multiply it with the 10 million classrooms around the country, wherein teacher motivation is the first hurdle to cross.

In my struggle to make a meaningful difference, time and energy continue to be my biggest foes. If I have to single out the biggest challenge, this is it. How do I democratize education in a classroom and yet provide Socratic education to each and every child at his readiness levels? When I see my mastery scores dip to 40% in Reading comprehension, when my kids score an average of 35% in Social Sciences just coz they can’t read English, when progress doesn’t have a direct correlation to your efforts – I sit and cringe. When I look at my despair in that moment, I can only laugh at myself for the moments I wrote essays from ivory towers about Indian education system and teacher apathy; I can ridicule myself for waxing eloquent about the “paradigm shift” that needs to happen in the education system.

When I walked in on the first day, I told myself this, “If my kids are 2.5 years behind, I will strive to be 2.5 times better than the best 3^rd standard teacher in this country”. Today, I manage to barely stand equivalent to the average private school teacher!!

Last week, when I came back from an Art fest on Saturday evening, where on a heavy antibiotic course, I still managed to stay awake for 24 hours; I crashed head on for the next 13 hours. I woke up and worked through the Sunday on a Unit assessment creation almost in a robotic fashion. I knew then that I had hit my limits of physical, mental and spiritual capacities and yet there was so much more to be done for the classroom. What do I do for Ganesh, the dyslexic? What do I do for Saurabh and Vinay, who have an attention disability? What do I do for the kleptomaniac, Nirmala? What do I do for Poonam, who still believes in the dreams of running a kirana shop than a dream of higher education? What do I do for all my 10 lowest level kids who are falling even more behind? What do I do to Daniel and Swapnil who deserve a Socratic education? In all these permutations, how do I still pull off an Annual day English play? What about shaping the culture of the school? What about the research on the community development project? As my own diminutive self consumes me, I shudder to think how most of our people’s representatives catch a goodnight’s sleep.

When I saw this video of “Once upon a School” on TED, it gave me hope. Hope, that there was an idea worth pursuing. Hope, that things can be made more efficient. Hope, in the painting that stands right above my class board proclaiming, “Every cloud has a silver lining”.

Think of the most memorable moments of your life. Was it the day you showed the Archimedes principle to your mom in the bathroom? Was it the day when you collected fruits for a solar system model? Or the day your sister from the neighborhood prepared you to intonate the Bruce and the Spider story? Or the day you won those gold medals? Or maybe the day you made your successful boardroom presentations? All of us know our answers even on the wrong side of the bed.

If you’ve read this far, please do read on for the next few lines. Here’s my proposal to adapt the idea. I am looking for mentors for my kids. A mentor per kid is my target. The expectations are simple. Give your mental and physical faculties to a child for at least a few hours a week. The structure of what’s and how’s to be done will be in place (I will ensure that). You will assist your kid as a mentor in reading, writing and Math work apart from keeping him motivated for education.

If you are someone who loves numbers to substantiate a point, take this. 45 hrs of one-to-one tutorship by a graduate in a year on an average improves the grade level of a kid by 1. In short, you are doing my job of providing a grade level excellent education to 34 kids at the same time in 1/6^th the time with 1 kid.

Years from now, it won’t matter how much money we made, how many cars we had owned, how many places we had visited, or how many people we knew. But, it matters that you made a difference to a kid’s life. So, here’s asking you for 60 minutes of idealism. 60 minutes of being the change. 60 minutes of creation. 60 minutes to let yourselves be changed by a 9 year old.

60 minutes to make a difference to the status quo. Period. The clock is ticking.

- Tarun

Tarun.cherukuri2009@teachforindia.org

9004949114