Special thanks to Abhinit Ranjan for the shooting and editing.
Teacher Learning Centre
The idea of the Teacher Learning Centre (TLC) evolved from long years of the Foundation's experience in teacher professional development. The basic idea is to improve quality of education and provide a better learning experience for children in government schools through improving the capacities of teachers at multiple levels:
Teachers’ perspective on education and the role of education in society,
Content knowledge in different subjects
Appropriate pedagogic approaches that work given the child’s context and developmental stage.
This requires regular academic engagements with teachers and head teachers and this cannot be achieved just through training or workshops alone. In fact it necessitates being closer to the teacher and creating an environment of regular academic engagements through multiple modes (workshops, discussions, seminar, melas etc.). The Teacher Learning Centre is one of the spaces that can enable this to happen. The idea is to have a space which, other than being conveniently accessible to teachers (which in most contexts means closer to the residences of the teachers), also has:
The space and materials required (books, teaching learning materials, laboratory equiment etc) which enable academic engagements with teachers
A team that is regularly working in and around the TLC to achieve the following
a. Enable/facilitate academic engagements
b. Build relations and actively mobilise teachers to visit and participate regularly
Over time has developed processes that enable regular and quality engagements – calendar of activities, regular informal events etc.
The goal is that such a centre will have participation from a large number of teachers residing close to the centre (2-3km radius) who regularly visit, utilize the resources available and participate in the activities at the centre. Over time this, along with other avenues of mobilizing teachers and multiple modes of engagements (like discussions, reading and sharing sessions, workshops etc), will enable professional development of teachers.
