As one walks through the narrow streets of Goripalya, Bengaluru, one can witness the chaos within. As one’s eyes get adjusted to the garbage and fleeting visions of rats darting through open drains, one notices a harmonious blend of the hustle and languid. The streets are particularly jammed with a variety of vehicles, and in the midst of it all, there are students disappearing into the many adjoining streets clutching lunch bags, with backpacks slung over their shoulder, all wearing different uniforms. Goripalya is a signature example of an avenue where the affordable private schools mushroomed in dozens owing to the unpopularity of the Government run schools.

One of our partner schools in Goripalya holds its stead by being one of the many alternatives that parents turn to get their ward literate in English. If I take a walk down the memory lane, the school could easily be described as the tower Rapunzel was held captive. Narrow staircases leading up to the classrooms that just weren’t sufficient to hold close to 900 students, overworked and tired staff due, a completely exhausted administrative person (singular!), an irritable and stressed Principal and kids with pants hanging low, shirts undone running all over the little space available to them. This was the building for the high school. An adjoining annexe told the same story with kids aged from three to twelve.

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A glimpse into the Principal cabin showed you what it would look like if papers came alive and took over the world. The Principal started the school with the intention of serving the community kids but remained buried in the tonnes of paperwork and financial matters that came his way and few of what comprises the meagre staff also used to get pulled in to manage this large school in the little space. All these problems notwithstanding, the teachers were more often than not, under – qualified and barely equipped to handle classrooms of forty or more kids. No amount of campaigning for quality teachers brought them to the area due to the stigma associated with “slums”. The children rarely met grade level standards, and their discipline was out for a toss, and the school infrastructure barely met the minimum standards.

As Mantra4Change did its month-long need analysis exercise, we realised that low teacher productivity, among other issues in the school, was a result of many factors. It was one link in the vicious circle that prevented quality education from being delivered. This led us to be a part of the school, its processes and its problems – the whole package. The exercise of blending in with the system opened up a whole new way of viewing the problems. We started out by helping with the little ones. For example we got volunteers to teach in regular and extra classes, got question papers and blueprints for the 10th graders, brainstormed ideas to solve multiple operational issues, convinced the Principal to invest in a few more hands to help him with the administrative chores, helped address the disciplinary issues by setting some standards and procedures. As life became easier, teachers less stressed and Principal freer, everybody was suddenly in a mood to listen and learn. We thus launched our well-researched teacher professional development modules on classroom practices, long term and short term planning, et al. We employed the Indian version of a Trojan Horse!

For a Principal, who was mostly known as a ‘Hitler’ and not ready to listen, a little bit of head space worked wonders. He was slowly transforming and along with him, so was the school. It started off with small things that we initially failed to notice. He began taking ownership of the academic progress and procedures of the school. He began taking ownership of the attendance of teachers during training sessions, started sitting down with new teachers to explain lesson planning, recruited more teachers, increased the salary of the staff, started observing classes and even attended the training. This motivated us to launch a variety of projects in the school including the inclusion of Montessori Method in the pre-primary section of the school. Read more about it here.

Propelled by the changes in attitude of teachers and improvement in classrooms, we have gradually increased the rigour of our intervention. In the second year of our association, the teachers showed motivation and readiness to start planning their units in advance. The Principal invested time and money in creating a second tier of instructional leaders in the school, which is now independently functioning. The rate of change within the school has accelerated. There are teaching aids in Teachers’ Learning Centre; Learning circles are being conducted within the school by the second tier leaders, discipline among students has improved as a by-product of improved classroom management, morning assembly has become more structured and meaningful, the school has a functional…