Teachers Know Everything — A Step Towards Channeling Their Hidden Superpowers!

Inside Tarkeybein
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

I don’t know if you have been tagged with the beautiful Tsunamika doll. It reads an intriguing message, “Made by women who are empowering themselves to be the change!”

It put a big smile on my face because it helped me notice the difference in ownership of empowerment. A lot of us in the social sector are used to mission statements where we take the onus of empowering, enabling, supporting, creating, and this in itself had become Tarkeybein’s biggest design flaws!

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Mistakes Made With Good Intention

We started two years ago with a mission of designing contextual content for primary school children. We soon hit a roadblock in the implementation because the teachers were unable to take ownership of our content. And we all know ownership is the secret sauce in any successful change story.

We took a step back to understand the obstacle for teachers in designing and implementing contextual learning content in their classrooms. It was beautiful to listen to teachers deeply, move beyond their anger and frustrations, to reach the realization that we share the same vision for all children growing up to be responsible and caring beings.

Most importantly, we understood that “Teachers know everything”, just the belief that they can be the change gets buried deep down in a hierarchical bureaucratic structure.

Placing Belief On All Teachers

Teachers need to be heard, they need a space where they can come together and reflect on their work.

In our beautiful circle with around 20 teachers from primary government schools from two clusters of Khekra Block in Uttar Pradesh, we made astonishing discoveries for ourselves. It not only shifted our mindset but also our framework for working with teachers to improve learning outcomes for all children.

Our circle began with buckets of negativity and ended with an ocean of possibilities and a new positivity. The magic began to unravel with the reflections of teachers as they had the space to speak their heart and mind. We asked them to share their expectations from an educated person and the words on the blackboard were Caring, Responsible, Creative, Collaborative, Problem Solver. In this list of character and skills, Literacy came somewhere in the end.

Teachers were sad to note that they currently were not able to focus on character building but were actually spending most of their time on teaching how to read and write. It was a moment of great reflection for all of us to realize that children enter school with a lot of these skills, but lose most of them by the end of their learning journey.

What Is Learning & How Does It Happen?

We then collectively held the question on “What is Learning and How Does it Happen”.

Teachers shared from their experiences of learning in real life and felt that learning can happen from everything, from everyone and everywhere. They also reflected that learning is a lifelong process and when we really learn something, we do not forget it.

It made teachers reflect on their earlier complaint that children forgot everything taught in the classrooms because the parents were not revising it at home. This took us to the key difference between teaching and building understanding.

Teachers looked through all the school textbooks for primary grades and listed the concepts to be understood by children. This made them shift from teaching syllabus to learning concepts. These reflections from teachers got them to question the conditioning of a school system where learning is restricted to textbooks and the entire onus of learning lies only on the teacher.

How To Create Learning Opportunities For Children?

Our next step was to brainstorm together on how do we create learning opportunities for children in our schools. And it brought out the hidden spark in each teacher as they shared about how children learn more from each other rather than adults. When they connect learning to the context of children, they are able to grasp it much faster. This is when we knew that our work is not to create content and train teachers, but rather to hold space for teachers to reflect and bring meaning back to learning!

It was only four hours but we all knew something had shifted within all of us. And this time it was the teachers who took ownership of the discussion; it was their thoughts and reflections on the blackboard. It is their collective understanding of learning that they want to bring forth in their classrooms. Team Tarkeybein has decided to walk with teachers in this journey together. Are you with us? :)


If you resonate with our work, want to implement this model in your community, want to support this initiative, or just want to drop in some encouraging words, we invite you to write to us at tarkeybein@gmail.com :)

Tarkeybein Education Foundation

Our vision to bring systemic reforms in public education system through navigated learning approach which builds capabilities. We currently offer 3 programs — I Can Read, World of Possibilities and Quality Learning Initiative.

Inside Tarkeybein

Written by

A peek into the journey & learning of Team Tarkeybein as we dig deeper into the Education landscape through our multiple programs, products and services.

Tarkeybein Education Foundation

Our vision to bring systemic reforms in public education system through navigated learning approach which builds capabilities. We currently offer 3 programs — I Can Read, World of Possibilities and Quality Learning Initiative.

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