Eureka Child Site Visit Report

On January 24, I visited AID India's office in Chennai, India. My aim was to meet with the Eureka Child team and to check out some of the education initiatives in action. As soon as I arrived at the AID India office, I headed off to visit a Eureka Model School and a Eureka SuperKidz center in Kanchipuram district (about 80 km from Chennai). To give me company were Damu (Tamil Language Content lead) and Vivek (Coordinator, Eureka Model Schools).

Eureka Model School: Wallodai Village, Kanchipuram District

First, we visited the Eureka Model School in Wallodai. The Wallodai school was started about 5 years back, in the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami, with the support of Banca Sella group, an Italian bank, which has an offshore center in Chennai.

The Eureka Model School is a primary school with about 120 kids from Grade 1-5. As the name suggests, this school is one of a select few that have been designed and run by the Eureka Child team so that they can serve as models for delivering low cost high quality education. It has a lot of open space to allow for free play and the class rooms are designed to be conducive to activity based learning. The class room walls were decked with various age appropriate paintings (puzzles, concepts) and posters. There was a blackboard, but it didn't necessarily set the orientation of the class. None of the class rooms had any desks or tables. The kids, and even the teachers, were pretty comfortable sitting on the floor. Apparently, the absence of desks/tables is intentional, as it allows children to form small groups and engage in group learning activities with ease. The activities themselves are really quite interactive and play based. For instance, in Grade 1, the teacher was teaching alphabets, a bunch of cards with various alphabets would be laid out on the floor; a child would be called upon at random and given a letter to pick out. Once the right card was picked up, there would be a lot of clapping and cheering, following which, another kid would go through the same. This way the entire class was engaged in the activity and was having fun at the same time. This is very different from a typical teacher directed classroom environment where children are passive participants. Other learning activities, such as, learning shapes, numbers etc, were carried out in the same fashion. I also noticed that most teachers were enjoying themselves and unleashing their creativity in their classes! The Grade 2 teacher, Muthulakshmi, showed us how she herself designed a picture card learning activity to teach tamil words. She also would hand a newspaper to the children and ask them to find a particular word or phrase in the paper. John Holt might be smiling in appreciation! It was nice to see that even though they had a curriculum to follow, there

Grade 1: Language learning activity, Children picking out a

letter

Grade 1: Entire cheerful class w. Teacher Parimalla

Grade 1: Kids learning shapes

seemed to be enough room for flexibility and adaptation on how the learning was imparted. The kids in Grade 3 were busy showing off their growing math and phonetics-based English speaking skills and the kids in Grade 4 were excited to demonstrate to us a series of science experiments. To ensure that we understood what was going on, they would not only demonstrate the experiments but then also explain the concepts (such as, the Bernoulli's principle, air pressure changes etc). The girls in Grade 5 happily demonstrated Yoga and and the boys showed off their newly acquired Silamban skills (a Tamil stick fighting/dance form)! Their teacher mentioned that they are taught Yoga and Silamban once a week.

Education is free in the school. Most of the kids were from modest backgrounds, with parents working in lower economic spectrum jobs such as, daily wage laborers, truck drivers etc. One could notice that the kids, as they progressed through the grades were gaining in self confidence. Not surprisingly, these kids often stand out in many state competitions and even recently got a high placing in a national Design for Change contest. Even though there is a government (public) school in the area, the Eureka school is in high demand! There is usually a waiting list and stiff competition for enrollment to the school! All in all, the program was very well rounded. The teaching methods were interactive and creative. There was a lot of room for play and physical activities. Most importantly, the kids and the teachers seem to be having loads of fun!

Grade 2: Kids using picture cards to learn words

Grade 2: Vivek against the backdrop a typically colorful

classroom wall

Grade 2: Damu setting up a math problem and inviting a kid to solve

it

Grade 2: Solvng an addition problem

Eureka Superkidz Center: Tattampattu Village, Lathur Block, Kanchipuram

After visiting the Eureka School, we went on to Tattampattu village in the same district (~30 minutes drive) to check out the Eureka Superkidz (ESK) center in that village. As a background, there are about 550 Eureka Superkidz Centers across Tamil Nadu, which conduct daily 3 hrs of reading, match and science classes for children. The center in Tattampattu village had about 70 children, split into two separate groups, Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-6. This ESK center operated in the open grounds of the local government (public) school, most of the children at the ESK study in the same school during the day.

I spent most of my time with the children belonging to Grades 4-6 and taught by teacher, Priya. The class started with all the children sitting in one big circle. Reading was the first skill the teacher was focusing on. Once she finished the short common lesson, she asked all the children to break themselves into Terriyum (We Know) and Terriyad (We don't Know) groups for reading. For each skill (reading, math and science), the teacher maintains a meticulous record of where each child stands, in their level of understanding. A skill chart is publicly displayed and the children know where they stand. In this particular class of about 40 children, about 8 children were lagging behind the rest of the class in reading, they formed the Terriyad group, and the teacher sat with them to pay special attention to them and help them catch up. The rest of the class split themselves into 4 smaller groups of 7-8 kids each, each group had a pre-assigned leader (probably the best kid in the group). The teacher would hand over reading material (picture cards, posters etc) to each of these groups and the group leader would ensure that his/her group was in sync. Meanwhile the teacher would spend about 20-30 minutes with the Terriyad group. Typically, when the school year begins or when a new skill is introduced, the number of kids in the Terriyad group is high, but over time, more and more kids acquire the skill and move over to the Terriyum group. The same process is repeated for math, science and English. Even though the whole process required constant regrouping and feeding of new material, it was surprisingly efficient; much credit is due to the teacher who had pretty good command over the class and had ingrained the whole thing into the kids to make a potentially chaotic process smooth. In this regard, teacher Priya was very impressive! She deserved the Teacher of the Month award (which I had the privilege of giving her, later that day!).

Having visited the Eureka School earlier in the day a comparison was inevitable. While the Eureka School is in itself a shining example of a low cost-high quality school (annual budget $12K), the ESK is a classic example of an attempt to meet a critical learning needs at a large scale with even lower amount of resources (operating costs are 10x less than a Eureka School and there is minimal

Eureka Superkidz Grades 4-6

One of the Terriyum (We know) groups for Tamil reading

Teacher paying special attention to the Terriyad (We don't know) group

infrastructure). The classes are held in borrowed property – in this case, the open grounds of the local government school! The classes are subject to the elements, a slight rain or drizzle, can cancel the class. Since there is no physical building, all the teaching aids/materials necessarily fit in one bag, which the teacher brings with her to class. This includes a makeshift blackboard, which is held in place by two kids, while the rest solve math problems or demonstrate writing skills. While most teaching methods were similar in both settings (activity and play based), the relatively higher teacher/student ratio and grouping of 3 grades together, calls for more creative teaching methods, like breaking kids in Terriyum/Terriyad groups, better teaching aids and monitoring etc.

The fact that the classes are providing real value to the kids is quite clear from observing them in action and also from the fact that their low-income parents consider it important enough to pay a regular fee to keep their kids enrolled in these classes.

During a break from the class activities, I had a chance to interact with the staff that supports the ESK center. I already mentioned the teacher, Priya, who is a young lady from the same village. This is her second job, she is also a part time teacher at the local government school. Also present was the Super Teacher, Shalini, who is responsible for 5 such ESK centers. Each day, she visits a different ESK center. She is an experienced teacher who has been promoted. As a Super Teacher, her job is to visit her centers and provide tips/suggestions to teachers, train them on new teaching methods, as well as serve as a conduit for distributing new resource material for the classes. Also present was Project Manager, Anballagi, who manages about 25 ESK centers. Shalini and other Super Teachers in the area, report into Anballagi. It was heartening to see that the ESK initiative was giving such individuals a meaningful opportunity to express their passion. It is also evident dedicated field staff like Priya, Shalini and Anballagi, are the key determinants of the success of the ESK program. Without a quality effort by them, the innovative teaching methods/materials developed by the State team will not have the same impact. For instance, both Shalini and Anballagi, spend each day of the week traveling to different remote villages – sometimes walking long distances (1-2 hrs each way from the main road), to do their job! Since most classes end at 8PM, it is quite late by the time they get home. The reason they continue work with the ESK program is because they enjoy their work and are inspired by the change they see themselves creating. A key challenge for the Eureka Child State team is to keep identifying the best field staff across its 500+ villages, train them effectively, and develop monitoring techniques and teaching methods to make for efficient implementation.

Solving a fractions problem on a makeshift black board

Priya receiving a well deserved Teacher of the Month Award