Agenda for January 30 meeting

From Cmi Spark

This describes the agenda set before the meeting. The meeting has not yet been held (or its details have not yet been put up)

To understand the background for this, please refer:

• CCCL Hexaware: first interaction with kids
• CCCL Hexaware: further data collection
• January 23 meeting: the details
• CCCL Hexaware: the project begins: by Vipul

Contents 1 Venue and other sundry details 2 Scheduling and logistics 2.1 Scheduling suggestions 2.2 Volunteer management 2.3 Student management 3 Teaching programme and tools/aids 3.1 What to teach 3.2 What books to get 4 Professional guidance and support 5 Immediate purchases 5.1 Replenishment of teaching kit 5.2 Book set 5.3 Other equipment to make the teaching environment more conducive 6 Other issues 6.1 Payment to CMI volunteers 6.2 How to attract the kids 6.3 Interfacing with the project office 7 Fund-raising

Venue and other sundry details

• Venue: Seminar hall (if free)
• Date: January 30, 2007
• Starting time: 6:00 p.m. (after arrival of the last IMSc-CMI shuttle)
• Ending time: 7:30 p.m.
• Open to: all interested students

Scheduling and logistics

Scheduling suggestions

The following suggestions emerged from Vipul after the session on Sunday:

• Separate teaching slots for Bengali/Oriya kids and for Telugu kids, all within Sunday itself. For instance, the Telugu kids could be taught in the 10-12 shift while the Bengali kids could be taught in the 2-4 shift. The main advantage of separate slots is that the room area is too small to handle a large number of kids

• For any teaching session, there should be at least two teachers who know/understand the language of the kids. Particularly there should be a person to handle left-out kids. For instance, in the session on Sunday, two Oriya girls and one Tamil girl felt rather excluded because we could not speak their language. A third person can help manage the boards, handle the teaching programme etc.

In the meeting, we hope to collect further suggestions and inputs on scheduling possibilities.

Volunteer management

The following is the volunteer situation:

• Bengali: Anirbit, Bodhayan, Arnab, Anupam
• Telugu: Ravitej, Bhanukiran, Jayanth
• Oriya: Anirbit
• Tamil: Nivedita, Padmavathi, Bhanukiran (somewhat), Jayanth (somewhat)
• Hindi: Anshul, Vipul, Kshitij and the others (somewhat)

Thus, the only critical person is Anirbit (for Oriya -- there are two Oriya girls). For the others, people can take turns and have off-days. (if Anirbit decides to take the Sunday off, we will have to find some other way to cater to the Oriya girls or we will have to give them a day off as well).

In the meeting, we hope to get a clearer idea of who volunteers for what.

Student management

Based on preliminary data collected on Saturday and Sunday, the following has been proposed:

• We prepare an attendance sheet for the students (including student and parent name) and take attendance each time
• We maintain separate progress records for each of the children (where we could possibly include a photograph and other data) and update these records after each session

Again, we need to sit down and take the effort to prepare the attendance sheet and individual data. Responsible people will be decided in tomorrow's meeting. How this will be put up and maintained on the wiki can also be decided.

Teaching programme and tools/aids

What to teach

The following are likely to be the focus areas (as per discussions in the January 23 meeting):

• Basic mathematics
• English alphabet (reading, writing, speaking and listening)
• Local language (reading, writing, speaking and listening)
• Some basic spoken Hindi
• Personal hygiene

We need to chalk out a more detailed programme in each of these areas. One possibility is to get lists for what could be taught from the Internet and books, and use that to formulate a teaching checklist. A better possibility is to talk to organizations like AID India to figure out how to evolve a teaching programme. However, we don't have to choose between the two possibilities: we can start on using web resources to get some idea even as we try to contact AID India for a more formal orientation.

Some sample checklists (from a homeschooling guidance website): kindergarten stuff, firststandard math and preschool stuff.

What books to get

In order to begin our teaching programme fast, it has been suggested that Spark students try to give a package of relevant books to the children soon and start teaching the children using those books. This has the following advantages:

• Teaching from the books will help ensure that we do not miss out any basic things, and will lend more structure to our lessons
• The students can take the books home and work on them. Even if they don't work on them, the presence of the books at their home will itself help motivate them towards learning. We had a very positive experience in this regard with Satish, one of Spark's earlier beneficiaries.
• It may play a role in convincing the children, their parents, and the project office of our seriousness.

If we intend to get books to give the children next Sunday, we need to decide on what books to get soon (by Wednesday) so that we can make a trip some time during the week to purchase the book.

This is discussed more later.

Professional guidance and support

Padma had a discussion with Balaji Sampath, who is working in the Chennai wing of AID India. Some of the points raised in the discussion, which we need to decide upon, are:

• Orientation: Dr. Balaji Sampath informed Padma that there will be a programme at Children's Park, Guindy on 3rd and 4th February and that interested CMI students could attend the programme.
• Daily Programme: Dr.Balaji Sampath also said that it would be a good idea to engage a local volunteer to keep the kids occupied. (Note: 'We' will have to locate a local volunteer) This would make it easier to keep our project running on a daily basis. He said that AID India would arrange to pay this person.

Questions before us are:

• Is it a good idea for us to tell him that we are interested in coming on 3rd and 4th?
• Should we ask for further orientation by aking them to come over here and meet the kids?
• Should we accept the daily programme suggestion?

Advantages of going with them:

• They have greater experience and can thus give a professional feel to the thing. This includes both the specific educational programmes and other auxilliary issues
• They also have better access to resources and can arrange logistics
• Involvement of a big name like AID India might help in convincing the children's parents as well as the people at the Project Office

Possible disadvantages:

• Tying our activities or making them contingent on AID India volunteers may slow us down in case these people are unable to arrange volunteers
• The collaboration with AID India may dilute the identity of Spark (A phrase picked from the January 11 meeting)

Immediate purchases

Replenishment of teaching kit

We need to replenish our teaching kit, which includes:

• Slates and cloth to wipe slates
• Chalks to write on the slates
• Pencils and crayons
• Paper (we could use CMI junk paper for that purpose)

We may also consider procuring the following:

• A big blackboard with chalk and duster for centralized control in the teaching process

We could seek suggestions from AID India or other organizations.

Book set

We plan to give one book each in basic mathematics (numbers) and basic English (ABC picture book) to each of the children. We have to decide on a few books (perhaps ranging from 2-5) to hand over to the children this Sunday and then we need to procure these books.

Since there are around 20 children (16 who turned up on Sunday and a few others who had gone to the market) we might look at purchasing 25 copies each. The remaining 5 copies can be used by the teachers or reserved for future beneficiaries.

How to procure: For procuring these books, it is best to go to a bookshop which is likely to store these in large numbers. Another possibility is to directly approach the wholesalers, if we have good contacts.

Other equipment to make the teaching environment more conducive

The teaching environment was full of distractions such as houseflies and poor lighting (it was daytime so poor lighting didn't make much of a difference). Though the children are used to it and we can also tolerate it, it does come in the way of effective learning since the child's attention at a crucial moment may be distracted by a housefly. We need to see whether we can do something to counter these problems.

Other issues

Payment to CMI volunteers

This issue, though an important bone of contention, has not been brought so far in the January meetings or informal discussions. There are two issues here:

• Whether CMI Spark has any principled objections to paying its student volunteers
• Whether we have the funds to pay student volunteers in practice

In addition to payment, there is also the issue of reimbursement for direct expenses incurred (such as phone calls, printouts etc.) We need to evolve a system to handle reimbursement requests.

If it is decided that student volunteers should be paid in principle, then we need to decide:

• The pay rate for every session of actual teaching (a 2-hour session)
• The pay rate for background work (preparing lessons, locating books to buy, contacting others, going to get orientation sessions, and last but not the least, maintaining the wiki)

How to attract the kids

The general impression on Saturday and Sunday was that if the kids were sufficiently enthused, we could get them in large numbers. Mr. Rajesh distributed toffees after our session on Sunday, and said that toffees would provide an important incentive to the students. However, the eagerness of the students indicated that toffees were probably a very negligible incentive compared to the other incentives/issues.

It has been suggested that we try to convince the students and parents of our keenness and seriousness. This could be done in various ways:

• By talking to the parents and gathering their feedback, trying to get them more on board
• By giving books etc. to the children and offering the parents some concrete gain that the children have got out of it
• By attaching to us an organization such as AID India

It has also been suggested that we offer a more substantial end-class incentive or reward than a toffee, something that could be seen as being of value to both the kid and the parent. No suggestions have yet been received as to what that reward could be.

Interfacing with the project office

Mr. Rajesh, the safety in-charge, said that given our ability to communicate in the languages that these people knew, we could help him in giving an orientation session to the workers on issues, of hygiene and diseases so that the workers could cooperate with the efforts to maintain cleanliness in the area. This way, we could also gather more feedback from the workers.

The project office was also keen to provide us other support, such as a better teaching area. It is up to us to convince the project office that our work is capable of producing real results.

Fund-raising

The issue of where we will get the funds for purchasing the books has also arisen. However, this is not a serious consideration -- people can pay out of their pockets on a temporary basis and have the money refunded later in our next fund collection drive. AID India might also help us with financial resources.