A group of senior school students has volunteered to take spoken English classes for primary school children living in the Sunderbans.
Fifty students of Birla Bharati school are taking online classes twice a week for an hour each where they are teaching basic English speaking skills to children who are mostly first-generation learners.
The programme called Angrezi Medium started in January and will continue till June.
The student mentors have been assigned a mentee each from Basanti block of South 24-Parganas. Some of the children are irregular in school and some have dropped out. They do not get any academic support at home.
When Birla Bharati school came up with the idea, several students volunteered.
“We did not want to make it compulsory for children and we did not want to decide for them. It was up to them. We were happy to see as many as 50 children showing interest,” said Apala Dutta, principal of Birla Bharati school.
Student of Birla Bharati school take online lessons. The Telegraph
“The mentors are getting first-hand knowledge of the challenges rural children face. They are interacting with them in a fun and productive way. This is an example of experiential learning, where the children are providing foundation and digital literacy,” she said.
There have been days when Class XI student Md Zunayed Hussain Mallick has waited for his student in the Sunderbans who could not log in.
Student of Birla Bharati school take online lessons. The Telegraph
“The boy’s father took the smartphone with him and so, he could not join class. I am thinking of giving my old phone to him so he can attend classes regularly,” said Zunayed.
Before taking a class, Zunayed revises what he is going to teach that day.
“I am learning how to interact with children,” he said.
For some of the students, seeing their mentees progress gives them a sense of satisfaction.
“After seven or eight classes, I have seen my mentee, a 10-year-old, pronounce words more clearly,” said Zunayed.
Class XI student Shivani Gautam Sinha said: “Two hours is not a lot of time. We spend that amount of time going through reels on social media.”
The mentorship was first launched in August 2022. In the pilot project, there were five students from Birla Bharati.
The use of phones and gadgets has gone up during and after the pandemic but it has also made interaction easy for rural children in some ways.
“It would not have been possible for our students to visit and teach them twice a week but with the help of smartphones, they can do so. They can also put their devices to good use,” said Dutta.