School Visit: Educational Academy

Summary: My first site visit was to the Educational Academy, a small LKG-8 school located in the outskirts of Lucknow. This visit has further convinced me of the value of DSH to teachers and schools.

Yesterday, I followed Tanuja on a school visit to the Educational Academy in Kannar (the outskirts of Lucknow). This school, founded by Pratyush, houses village students in grades LKG-8 and is a relatively new DSH site. Classrooms are open-air (they have 3 walls and all open to the central ‘quad’), and two grades sit together in a single ‘room.’ Yet this is still better than many other schools; students had benches / desks and teachers show up. (Low bar, I know.)

It was great seeing DSH in action; we observed three different teachers use the equipment. (I would’ve loved to see a non-DSH class for comparison.) DSH does not want to replace the in-person teacher, but rather to mediate in the lesson and lead / demonstrate with effective teaching methods. Teachers are encouraged to teach according to the students’ pace, and should pause the recording frequently to test comprehension and interject with their own follow-up questions or examples.

To me, the value proposition of DSH is quite clear (intuitively). The question remains: Why would teachers / principals / schools not want to adopt it?