Operating out of rooms donated by a school in Lucknow, Springdale exists as an afternoon program for nearby kids who otherwise do not attend school. The school runs from nursery through 4th grade, with the goal of getting kids up to par and feeding them into formal, local schools. Teachers are university students who work on a volunteer basis, and often do not show up when exam period approaches.
On this particular visit, the 2nd / 3rd grade teacher was absent, and the nursery school teacher was forced to take her place. She was planning on simply doing dictation, as she wasn’t comfortable teaching them actual content, but we insisted that she actually teach. (After all, why can you not teach, particularly when you have a DVD to use with the lesson already in place?) She ended up teaching the alphabet, as that was within her comfort zone. These kids had already done the alphabet, and they were all capable of reciting their ABC’s. I questioned their comprehension, however, when the principal sat in and probed the students. (Which is the letter “M”? What does “M” stand for?) Few of the students were able to identify letters without reciting the entire alphabet, and even fewer could rattle of sample words off the cuff.
I just don’t understand how you can operate a school where teachers can simply not show up. Then again, I think teacher absenteeism is a pretty substantial problem throughout government schools; I just haven’t seen it because DSH currently doesn’t really operate in government schools. Even in those cases, however, DSH can be a powerful tool, because the DVD can run not only a pretty good class, but it can also facilitate peer-to-peer teaching. It’s just a matter of getting schools to adopt it and simply play the DVD when a teacher doesn’t show up.
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