Kartka Kasadara – 2017

Ideating on our future plans in our partner school, there were many thoughts but we were firm on one thing that this time our teachers will have an experiential learning other than just usual workshops or sessions and thus the idea of Kartka Kasadara was born. Kartka Kasadara which means Learn without flaw was 20 days long competition among teachers where teachers work in groups, pairs and individually.

The objective of the competition was to give an experiential learning on different pedagogies that could be used for teaching learning practices and also discover skills for time management and classroom management, leadership, teacher initiatives. The Kartka Kasadara aimed at providing a space for all teachers to come together and learn together from each other. Everyday teachers were given tasks on themes such as Pedagogies, Lesson Planning, Problem solving, Quiz, etc.

At first teachers did not accept this idea as this seemed to be just another load on their work but due to peer pressures and dilemma’s 21 teachers among 33 teachers enrolled for this competition.

Day 1 started with setting common goals to achieve post 20 days of Kartka Kasadara. As interventionist we had structures and processes in our mind but we wanted our teachers to come with their own needs. Keeping this in mind we asked teachers what they would want post 20 days of Kartka Kasadara. Thus, these goals were designed and decided by the teachers.

Teachers came together everyday for 45 mins to work for Kartka Kasadara. The efforts and openness to learn by teachers was incredible! Each teacher participated and gave their best for the Kartka Kasadara. There came a point when teachers actually forgot that this was a competition and bonded together, taught each other and shared their resources with their friends to motivate them to do their best.

Every task had presentations at the end of the week where all teachers would assess each other and learn from each other. The space was formed to allow give and take feedbacks from each other. Teachers were also given suggestions based on their content, idea and presentation skills. Each day Vidhya Vidhai team worked closely with the groups and individuals to trigger questions and possibilities of thoughts. Apart from the academics, teachers gained confidence to express their idea and accept feedbacks positively. Not only did they learn to face people confidently but also teachers learned the skill of presenting.

In the first week of Kartka Kasadara, teachers were given task on choosing a subject and topic of their interest and choose the best teaching method possible to make the concept clear to students. Teachers were also document their method to ensure that if any teacher wants to use the method designed by you, it should be user friendly. Since this was the very first task there were many confusions on the path of thinking and aligning group members thoughts but teachers felt a ray of hope when they had their presentation in front of all teachers and leaders of the school.

The second week of Kartka Kasadara, teachers were free to choose their subject and topic but this time the pedagogies/teaching methods were given to each group like gardening, cooking, games, storytelling, ICT, etc. This time teachers understood what was expected from them and therefore there seemed lot of good inputs in the task. On the end of the week along with presentation, a food fest was also planned where all teachers got their home cooked food and shared with each other with great laughter and joy.

As all reached the third week of Kartka Kasadara, teachers were more excited and energy level of all teachers was very high. All were curious to know the task for this week but this week was planned differently than the first two weeks. First two days was quiz competition based on the subject knowledge of teachers. Teachers had to write a blog about their experience as a teacher or the best moment from their classroom. Indeed, this task was very interesting for both teachers and Vidhya Vidhai team. We received 21 different amazing stories from classrooms and life of teacher. Teachers also worked on lesson planning for the pedagogy that they worked on previous week.

On the final week teachers took up one problem of their school and worked on solving this problem. Each group was asked to select an existing problem in the school and was asked to think on how would they solve the problem. This task was designed to help teachers take initiative to solve the problem in school. This task took up the level of Kartka Kasadara as teachers identified problems and without our say they decided not to leave this solution only for presentation but should be taken and dealt in reality to solve the problem in school. Therefore, initiatives such as Gender sensitivity, Relationship among teachers, Teacher motivation, Experiential learning for students through Gardening, issues of late comers were all taken by teachers. Teachers made it a point to not do this only for the competition but go beyond that and hence teachers had planned their next steps and asked others to collaborate to solve the problem. The final day of Kartka Kasadara was organized by the Student Parliament of the school. The students depicted their love for teachers and shared the importance of teacher in their life through speech, singing and skit.

In all, Kartka Kasadara was a great learning space for teachers to express, learn and develop as individuals. The feedback from all teachers motivated Vidhya Vidhai to not leave Kartka Kasadara only in this school but take it to all teachers across.

-Regila Marinus, Vidhya Vidhai