Itching to Start

Well, since the last time I wrote I made some progress on my project and began to rethink it again! But don’t worry; the essence of what I am ready to do now is not too different from what I had been planning to do. To start working on the project, I approached three principals and told them what I wanted to do with teacher training and why. They seemed ready and eager and ready to get things moving. To start, I gave them principal surveys. The purpose of this was to gauge what they, as the principal, saw as their school’s weaknesses and strengths. I planned to survey a cross section of these schools’ teachers as well.

Side things have also com up: The Piramal Girls’ School wants me to work with their girls on holistic development. I am not 100% sure what they mean by that yet, but am following up on that because I think it is worth looking into. Also, Radhika, Ashish, and I have all acknowledged that English speaking skills are more important than we (or at least I) want to believe. We were toying with the idea of starting an independent English Institute that could be a constant for GDL. I looked into a few potential teachers who are already teaching Spoken English. I have not been impressed, however. The Chavo Viro School, for example, has hired an English teacher whose English is decent, but could be better. Furthermore, I have some issues with how he teaches the girls.

Anyway, Anand came for a day. We had a few group pow-wows. We discussed our individual projects and came to the understanding that we need FOCUS…which meant looking at the projects again.

So that’s where I am right now. I strongly believe that working on soft skills will make a difference in teacher quality AND is something that is not given enough credit. BUT it is also difficult to measure. So I’m trying to figure out what valuable practical, tangible skills would be good to focus on as well as how soft skills can be measured. I’m so attached to the soft skills concept (which would include reflecting over lesson plans or multi-skill teaching) so it’s hard for me to think beyond that. I get attached to ideas quite quickly and quite strongly as well.

So I’m hoping that over the next week, I’ll have a solid project that I can get moving on. Specifically, I really want to solidify plans with some organizations whose assistance I will need. Anand’s visit made the changes in GDL seem so real. It’s exciting!