Developing language proficiency

While growing up, Vidya always wanted to become a teacher and she gives credit to her teachers and love for children to ignite this passion. She agrees that most children often imitate their teachers and this motivates her to give her best in the class. Also, she wants her students to be passionate about achieving their goals and become self-reliant so that they can overcome all their obstacles with a positive attitude.

“I teach in a Municipal Corp School and most of my students come from economically underprivileged and marginalised families. Most of them don’t have a study environment at home and thus, the majority of them can’t do their homework, and this bothers me a lot” – says Vidya. Apart from this, she is also worried about her students’ future as most of the parents don’t cooperate with her for their child’s development. She also had a tough time with the students as they didn’t pay attention in the class and hesitated to speak in English.

Soon she realized that she can tackle her problems one at a time. She began by upgrading her pedagogy by joining the Foundation’s English-Winglish training program. The training helped her to create and use various teaching materials to keep her students engaged and spark their interest in studies.

Earlier, Vidya followed the lecture-based method in her classes which saw a steady decline in students’ interest in the class. But after completing her training with the Foundation, she started applying the activity-based teaching methods. Now she divides her class into various groups and conduct activities to help the students learn in a fun way. She acknowledges that this new teaching methodology has helped her to keep her students engaged and show interest in learning. The English-Winglish program aims toimprovethe English communication skills of teachers and to increase their confidence in teaching in English in the classroom. 

Our Shikshaantar trainers who witnessed her gradual improvements admits that Vidya quickly picked up her language skills and the new teaching pedagogy. They also say that she even supported and helped her colleagues at the training and constantly motivated them. Vidya continues to help her students learn through online classes during the lockdown period and regularly keeps an eye on their improvements.