Teachers don't need training

I was out for a school visit today to a government school which has a strength of about 1500 students and 35 teachers. I got a chance to interact with the school principal and a couple of teachers - all of whom were really motivated and invested in the well-being and success of their children.

What struck me as part of the conversation was the multiple roles that teachers play day in and day out. While we have heard about things like election duty, census, there is so much more at play here. Here are some of the roles that came out for me in the conversation:

Alarm Clock:

The School Principal has made all the teachers adopt a certain number of students from class 10th to make sure that they don't slack on their attendance, prepare well for the boards and sit for the exam. One teacher said how he wakes up at 5.10 am in the morning - makes calls to all the parents of his adopted children for half an hour - to make sure they send them to school and then goes back to sleep.

Family Counsellor:

The teachers narrated how they have children who come from families who are in conflict - father is an alcoholic, mother has left the family and gone to live with someone else. In such instances the morale and motivation of their learners gets affected by the family environment. It is not something that the children come and share with them. But they check in with students when they notice a change in their behaviour patterns. Then the teachers get into action. The teachers have gotten the family members together, counselled them about how their relationship is impacting their children and gotten them to improve the family environment. After the counselling, they constantly check in with the family members by making regular phone calls and having one on one conversations with the children as well.

Child Protection Officers:

The teachers educate the students about safe touch, bad touch, look out for instances of bullying both in the physical world and the world of social media. Teachers shared instances of how girls shared their numbers with random people like - auto rickshaw drivers, pani puri sellers and then have been lured by them and they have run away with them. They have had to trace the girls and bring them back. The conversations around safe touch and bad touch have gotten the girl students to open up about instances of abuse that they have faced from their step fathers and real fathers. Teachers have responded by getting them admission into child protection homes. They realise that it is like choosing between the devil and the deep sea but they choose to go for the lesser of the evils - putting more faith in the systems of child protection.

Data Managers:

With a lot of technology based systems coming in for attendance tracking, learning management, student profiling the teachers have had to become experts in data collection, data entry and managing tech based platforms. The teachers said how every student now has to have a PEN - personal education number - which will enable the government to create a centralised tracking system. This has meant teachers ensuring that all the backend data that is needed for the students like their Aadhar, date of birth, parents details is fed in correctly into the system and synced with all the relevant platforms. And since technology has a mind of it's own, it does not always work seamlessly. So while they might have updated the data, it does not always get reflected in the district dashboard and that requires multiple round of follow ups. Because data is what is believed today and it must reflect the correct picture of the school.

The teachers said how this year has been a difficult one with all the changes introduced with PEN, UDISE+ but still they were appreciated of how data systems can help improve things at the school level and bring in more transparency.

Career Counsellors:

The teachers make the best effort to ensure that children continue their education beyond 10th standard. They introduce them to different kind of options - open schooling , vocational education, junior college, engineering colleges. They know that if children drop out at 10th standard then they will either get into work or girls will be married off. This also means that they are on the look out for all kind of scholarship opportunities and help students apply for those as well.

Subject Teachers:

This is an obvious one. Teachers shared how each teacher is mandated to take 4 periods a day ranging from 35 to 45 minutes. However, given the teacher shortages and high student enrolment numbers some of them are taking 7 to 8 periods a day.

Volunteers:

This one really made me emotional. One teacher got her students enrolled into a junior college. But the students could afford to pay only half the college fees. In return the teacher volunteers to teach for an hour in that college for free!!! She does that on most days of the week. Teaches in the college and then comes to the school so her students can continue to get higher education.

I ended the conversation totally in awe of the teachers. Teachers are our true champions. Especially our teachers in the lakhs of government schools, working in difficult conditions. And yet they deal with a negative narrative about the plight of government schools in our country.

And they definitely don't need more training.

They need resources, more teachers, a better, welcoming and pleasant working environment. What they need are experiences which:

• inspire them
• validate their expertise
• acknowledge their efforts
• recognise them as champions and innovators
• build a feeling of community, safety and connection for them
• allow them to rest and create time for meaningful reflection

As someone working in the civil society space with government schools I am also guilty of designing 'scalable' 'sustainable' teacher training approaches. About time as a sector we also let go off our known ways of working, push ourselves out of our comfort zones and work towards truly enriching the lives of our teachers.