Tribal community teachers, empowered by an NGO fellowship programme, have used innovative art with leaves to improve the learning skills of the marginalised students in rural areas of Jharkhand's East Singhbhum district.

The Jamshedpur NGO, People for Change, has so far attained success in five primary schools located at Bada Govindpur (near Jamshedpur), Turi, Tirildih (both in Potka block), Hitku and Byangbil (both in Jamshedpur block).

“We selected these state-owned schools as they were located in remote villages and had fewer resources. It is a challenge for students to learn in classrooms having fewer resources. The lack of resources affects the students in different ways. It means they are not getting the most out of their education. They are learning parts of topics and lessons, but they are not getting the full picture like they deserve,” said founder of People for Change (PFC), Souvik Saha.

“According to the Commonwealth Institute report in 2017, students in high-poverty schools do worse on standardised tests and are more likely to be chronically absent during the school year, more likely to be held back in their grades, and less likely to graduate on time. This made us launch a tribal women fellowship where fellows use interesting methodologies to mitigate this challenge. They use leaves and have evolved it into a beautiful art to teach lessons to the children," added Saha.

He said this methodology is not just building interest in the children but it has a lot more hidden benefits. "Art exploration is not only fun and entertaining but also educational. Children are naturally curious. They explore, observe, imitate and try to figure out how things operate and how to control themselves and their environments. This unrestricted exploration helps children form connections in their brain, it helps them learn — and it’s also fun,” informed Saha.

“Through leaves, teachers taught us about butterflies which increased our curiosity and we observed butterflies, their life cycle and also helped us to identify colours which helped us in our studies,” said a third grader from Bayangbil primary school, Alok Hembrom.

Another third grader from the same school in Bayangbil, Sarita Mardi, said that the community teachers through leaves also helped her learn to count and frame sentences.

“Through the leaves. I managed to learn the counting of numbers more easily. The teachers also helped me in framing sentences both in Hindi and English on different topics shown through leaves,” said Mardi.

Bada Govindpur primary school headmistress Rupa Kumari said that the intervention has not increased students’ interest in reading and observation and directly helped them in their studies.

“At the moment we have five community teachers, one each for each of the five schools. We frequently give the community teachers training in using leaves to pass on various information on day-to-day life. We are happy with the positive feedback from the school as well as the students in a span of less than a year. Depending on the response, we might increase the number of schools,” said People for Change programme manager Nora Samad.

“Art allows children to practise a wide range of skills that are useful not only for life but also for learning. Art can help practise critical thinking skills by making a mental plan. As children describe and share their artwork, as well as their process, they also develop language skills,” added Samad.