SEWA is a school for children whose mothers work for SEWA by doing chikan embroidery. Aside from Study Hall school (founded by Urvashi), SEWA is the best-resourced DSH school I’ve seen yet. (I say this simply because it’s in an enclosed building.) Students have benches that serve as chairs and desks, and classrooms are interconnected (i.e., rooms are separated by a wall but have no door, only a doorway on either side).
Its student population is mostly Muslim, and boy are these kids charming! I took some time out toward the end of our visit to interact with the students, and it turned into a performance where they showcased a very talented dancer, in exchange for which I had to sing a song. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star it is. End of story.
But that’s just the beginning of the DSH story. DSH has been at SEWA for 2-3 years now, and the teachers are some of the most dedicated teachers DSH has worked with. Before there was a room to safely keep the equipment, the equipment was housed in the office building next door, and teachers would walk to the office, watch these lessons and take notes before teaching their class. A big reason is because the principal of the school holds the teachers accountable and creates a “culture of care,” as Urvashi calls it.A culture of apathy amongst teachers may be one of the biggest challenges DSH faces. How can you create similar “cultures of care” elsewhere, or rather, how can you expand your existing “culture of care” to influence the behavior of others? (For example, Teach for America has decided to tackle this by essentially making the “culture of care” a selection criteria for their candidate teachers.) When you don’t have the luxury to pick and choose the best and the brightest, what other tools can you use to break through the long-standing culture of apathy?
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