January 23 meeting: the details: by Vipul
From Cmi Spark
This meeting was based on an agenda decided by Vipul Naik (the article writer) available at Agenda for January 23 meeting: by Vipul.
Contents |
Venue and other sundry details
- Venue: Seminar hall
- Date: January 23, 2007
- Starting time: 5:10 p.m. (approx)
- Ending time: 6:25 p.m. (scheduled departure time of the Tempo Traveller from CMI)
- Open to: all interested students
Attendance
The meeting was attended by: Vipul, Kshitij, Arnab, Shreevatsa, Ramprasad, Ravitej, Anirbit, Padmavathi, Jayanth, Arpith, Swarnava, Bodhayan and Anshul.
The stage was taken by me (Vipul) and Kshitij played the role of documenting important points on the black board.
Progress on agenda points
Whom to teach
The following were to be decided
- Whether to go ahead with the CCCL Hexaware project: There was a unanimous yes
- Whether to parallely attempt to contact a local school (as Bodhayan was making efforts for): It was decided that Bodhayan will go to the Navalur Panchayat Office and collect information about local schools. It is possible that we might pursue this line if the CCCL Hexaware line doesn't work out.
- Whether to continue gathering information about corporation schools in the city (as Ramprasad is currently supposed to do): This has been shelved for now, and will be picked up if the current lines of effort don't pan out.
What to teach
Before beginning, I made it clear that all further discussion would be in the context of Spark's proposed activities When the topic of what to teach was raised, Anirbit said that the matter had already been discussed and decided upon in the January 11 meeting. I pointed out to him that while it was true that the matter had been extensively debated and that he may personally have decided what to teach, no consensus had been reached. Further, we did not at the time have an idea of who our target audience would be, whereas we now had a clearer picture.
dulo the assumption that we are teaching people in the CCCL Hexaware construction site, we need to decide on the following:
- Which subjects should be taught (presumably: mother-tongue, English and mathematics)
- What other skills are to be taught (e.g. counting money, reading clocks, reading road signs etc.)
How to organize the teaching
- Where to teach: Should we teach in the construction site or get the people to CMI? The project office people said they would be willing to provide us logistic support if we needed help in teaching at the construction site.
- How to organize the students and teachers: Should we segregate students based on age, language and other factors and have separate teaching sessions (with different volunteers) or should we teach them all in one big bunch with 6-7 teachers hovering over them?
Small groups of students all with the same language and within the same age group could mean more focus, less distraction.
Teaching aids/tools
- Teaching kit: Belliappa mentioned something, and Arpith said that K. S. Balaji's friend could help us in the matter.
- Slate, crayons, stationery etc.: This is not expected to be a big issue, though any further suggestions are welcome
- Books for the children: These include basic math and basic language books
- Books for the teachers to decide how to go about the teaching: Apart from books for the children, there may be books/resources that will help the volunteers decide on a more effective teaching programme.
- Other aids that we haven't thought of
When to teach
The project office people said that Sundays were the only days when they could help us because they (as well as the workers) were busy for the rest of the days. However, it is possible that once we have acquired the trust of the workers and the project office, and once we are reasonably comfortable, we can go on weekdays as well.
Allurement policy
This involves questions like:
- Should we offer any sops to the kids for coming and listening to us?
- How should we convince the children and their parents to trust us and see value in the services we are providing?
Addressing the workers
The project office people suggested that, on the coming Sunday, somebody from CMI address all the workers describing our plans and enlisting the support of the workers. The project office people assured us of logistic support but said that it was up to us to convince the workers of the worth of our services. We need to decide:
- Whether to address the workers
- What to say in our address
- What language(s) to address in: presumably Telugu and Oriya
- Who will address: currently, Bhanukiran and Anirbit are the likely candidates
Possible action points
Collecting more information
Questions raised in the meeting can help us survey the CCCL Hexaware site better and collect more information that can help us take more informed decisions on how to educate the children.
This may involve getting an idea of the kind of economic and social profile, finding out more about who knows which languages and how much, and so on.
Decisions on addressing the workers
The meeting must decide details on addressing the workers so that people who are supposed to give the sppeches can prepare them, and so that we can contact Rajesh (the safety engineer who said he'll spread the word about us) indicating that we want to give the address this Sunday.
Collecting a list of volunteers and their constraints
We would like to use the meeting to get a clear idea of how many people are willing to volunteer for Spark, including Spark's teaching activities (as of now, on Sunday) at the CCCL Hexaware site. We will also try to get an idea of whether there will be enough volunteers to parallely carry on other activities such as helping out the local school.
