Rajaram: Witnessing the Changes in Life
On Saturdays i-Saksham office brims with people. On a usual day, the local landscape is interspersed with people out on a stroll, chatty men at the street side tea stall or youth just huddled up outside eateries and general stores. To see a gathering of about 20 odd men, women, boys and girls under one roof, seems next to unusual, given this backdrop. Almost all of these people are first year and second year fellows at i-Saksham’s Fellowship program.
I-SAKSHAM EDUCATION AND LEARNING FOUNDATION (i-Saksham) works in extremism affected regions of Munger and Jamui districts of Bihar, to provide quality elementary education to poor children. It does so by running a fellowship program of 2 years tenure, where the edu-leaders are trained on innovative practices applied in teaching and provided support to develop their learning centers in the village. The fellowship along with training these community edu-leaders on innovative practices create pathways for them to pursue their aspirations.The edu-leaders play the role of i-Saksham fellow in this two year duration and work on creating better life prospects for them and their communities.
The process first started by providing such edu-leaders with an initial 3 month-long training across two parameters: teacher training, which equipped them with basic knowledge of better pedagogy, better teaching approaches, etc, and secondly, basic computer or digital literacy. These two components were taught to the tutors by i-Saksham trainers, at the homes of the tutors, complete with tablets and laptops tagged along by the trainers, door to door.
Amongst the chatter of the assembled fellow, one face that is always smiling is of Rajaram Ji.
Rajaram is an i-Saksham fellow and teaches around 40 students at his study centre in Jamui’s Sarari. He was born and brought up in village Sarari, Jamui Bihar has joined i-Saksham two years ago as a fellow. He completed his primary education from Primary School Sarari. Then he switched to Middle School Bhajao, Jamui and spent two years of his further schooling there. As this school was too far from his residence, he had to walk around 6 kms everyday to reach school and come back. This became a difficult task for him and he again changed his school in 8th standard to Daulatpur High School and studied there till 10th standard. Rajaram says, this school has given him a lot of memories. He was liked by everyone in this school, from his classmates to the head master.
Rajaram is the second of four sons. The eldest is a construction worker in Bangalore, the third a rajmistri (bricklayer) in Jamui and the fourth a clerk with the Indian Army, posted in Kashmir.
After finishing schooling in the government school at Daulatpur, Rajaram graduated in Industrial Relations and Personal Management from Lakhisarai. He barely attended college, except on the says of exams due to which he didn’t have much people to interact with during the start of his youth life. “That’s a regret. Interacting with people exposes you to so many ideas and opportunities. Woh hua hi nahi,” says Rajaram.
Rajaram’s father had few unforgettable experiences since Rajaram is associated with i-Saksham. He speaks about hosting visitors from i-Saksham which isn’t novel for the village. Apparently, they have hosted Japanese and American visitors (the latter from the Yale School of Management) from i-Saksham, at Rajaram’s centre. His father recollects how the street was jam packed then. “We see foreigners on TV or on our phones. We got to see them in person, so everyone gathered around here!” he laughs.
Rajaram’s house which he calls jhopda has neighbouring plots of land on which, among other plots, Rajaram’s father cultivates crops, wheat being one of them. But the father is particularly proud of what his son does for their village. “Most of the kids from around here take classes from him. A lot of them have also branched out, under his guidance, to pursue higher studies,” he says.
The village finds no dearth in terms of aspiration. According to Rajaram, some time back, a then 17-year old native of the village landed himself a job in the Indian Air Force. This inspired other youth in Sarari to strive for similar positions and jobs — mostly in the armed forces. As a matter of fact, he himself was offered a job with the Indian Army, as a clerk. But with one son already in Kashmir, his father didn’t want Rajaram to follow suit — especially given the general hysteria guiding assumptions about life in the valley.
People in Sarari, who have landed themselves admissions in institutes of higher learning, or jobs with the armed forces or otherwise, have done so mostly through social interactions. Inquiring after such opportunities at school, with friends or even at the marketplace Rajram took up teaching soon after finishing class 12. The children in his neighbourhood in Sarari pushed him to take classes for them. Similarly, Rajaram’s school principal urged him to take up teaching, informs his father.
When representatives of i-Saksham first came to the village looking for Rajaram, he was quick to take the opportunity, given it was teacher training that he was going to benefit from.
“I was teaching my kids a song about the different parts of the body just now. How am I supposed to teach them, if I don’t know it thoroughly myself ?” says Rajaram.
This was his prime reason to associate with i-Saksham, in 2016. According to Rajaram, between studying by yourself and being taught by somebody, there’s a world of difference. The learning from the training received by him at i-Saksham is evident by the teaching methods he adopts at the centre; for example, by jumbling up cut-outs of the alphabets and asking children to arrange them in order, to form meaningful words.
But beyond the world of effective pedagogy and curriculum, the futility of dealing the children with a slap or two, with the hope of getting them to grasp things better, has come through. “Earlier, with the beginners in my class, I’d ask them to do solve some sums or learn something. If they’d get the wrong answer, I’d either make them jot down the answer 10 times or slap them for doing it incorrectly,” explains Rajaram. This eventually induced a certain attitude in kids which made them immune to any kind of belting or slapping — irrespective of if they had made a mistake or not. “The kids would think, what is the maximum that you will do if I answer something incorrectly? Slap me right?” he says. Today, when Rajaram teaches students — between classes one and five — about different parts of the body, there are still one/two particular boys who’d answer him incorrectly on purpose. But Rajaram’s patience with that student is indicative of his new talent.
The association with i-Saksham has pushed Rajaram to explore opportunities, that were either unknown to him or seemed out of reach. When Rajaram’s mentors proposed him to pursue a postgraduate degree at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, he said he wants to develop his English language skills in order to be better equipped to learn from an all-English course. Simultaneously, his mentors or trainers at i-Saksham are helping him prepare for general entrance tests — one of which is his prep for the banking exams.
As Rajaram Ji has completed his tenure of the fellowship program, he is now part time working with i-Saksham to support the team. As the team settles down every morning with their laptops, on his first day at the office, Rajaram Ji sits next to them to begin learning the ropes of the trade, starting first by getting a new email id for himself.
The team at i-Saksham is trying to get him to work at their office, helping with the swelling workload.
Currently, i-Saksham is building capacity of 100 community edu-leaders. It provides them weekly handholding through continuous training for two years and on-site support, content support, skill development trainings and assessment services.They have earned approximately INR 1.5 million through part time enterprising community learning centers along with building their own skills. These youths have shown a great aspirational growth during their journey, as a result of which 5 youths are currently pursuing higher education from prestigious universities of the country.
i-Saksham is pioneering an innovative model to produce a cadre of economic edu-leaders who have potential to transform the economic opportunities of children of tomorrow. The model has been rigorously tested over a period of last 5 years. I-Saksham has recently entered into partnership with Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (BRLPS), an autonomous body under GoB to replicate the model in partnerships of community based institutes of women self-help groups.
A better trained teacher, and improved classroom practices lead to huge improvement in learning outcomes of children. The children learning from i-Saksham fellows are gaining grade 5 competencies strengthening their basic educational foundation. They can play the role of enterprising educators in their community in the long term by becoming better teachers of tomorrow, thereby creating a virtuous cycle for the backward areas with not much access to external human resource. They will also be better prepared to avail the economic opportunities that modern technology of tomorrow produces.
We thank Simon Lesly from Christ University for helping us in covering this story.
