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School Teacher Uses Currency Notes, Colour Pencils To Teach Students In Village Near Mumbai
India, 14 Sep 2020 11:23 AM GMT
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Pralhad Kathole, an assistant teacher at the Zilla Parishad School at Baliwali, scanned a range of currency notes and arranged them on a sheet of paper to teach class III and IV students some basic maths.
In an innovative and creative way of teaching, a government school teacher in a village 100 Km Northeast of Mumbai, is using currency notes and colour pencils to teach his students.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the schools moved to online classes. However, as the Baliwali village in Palgarh is in the interiors of the city and has thinly distributed network and most of the families are not financially sound to afford smartphones, online classes were not an option.
Pralhad Kathole works as an assistant teacher at the Zilla Parishad School at Baliwali. Of the 44 students in his class, only two students' parents had smartphones with internet connectivity. Yet, the school teacher did not lose hope and adopted a unique method of teaching.
Kathole scanned a range of currency notes and arranged them on a sheet of paper to teach class III and IV students some basic maths like addition and subtraction. He also provided colour pencils to the younger students.
The school teacher also travelled through the hamlets to visit his students with the worksheets, while taking proper social distancing measures.
"I have used technology to reduce the burden on children. Most of the students in our class are familiar with household chores. The worksheets were designed around the everyday life of students," Hindustan Times quoted Kathole as saying.
Baliwali, located in the Wada taluka of Palghar, constitutes a cluster of hamlets spread across the forests. While most of the students in Kathole's school belong to scheduled tribes, four girls are from other backward classes.
Most of the families in the village live in small areas of land and many of them seasonally migrate to work in brick kilns around Vasai, Bhiwandi and Kalyan.
Kathole also helped the parents to get engaged in their children's education. Kathole, who was one among the several speakers at the National Mathematics Teacher's Association (MTA) annual conference that dealt with "Mathematics Education in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic" said that while most of the parents are not literate, they can recognize currency notes, which enables them to help their children while studying.
"My basic aim was to make sure my kids should not forget school. There are too many distractions for these kids to leave school. So I meet them every alternate days and we share stories with each other. Sometimes we read stories together, sometimes we sing songs together, and sometimes we solve indigenous riddles together. I try to do everything during our meeting so that they feel connected with the school," Kathole added.
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