The role of teachers is not limited to standing in front of a class and teaching from books written by other experts. Giving them the freedom to design the syllabus, compile support materials and certain other facilities is an important step to make teachers feel respected—which is not being done, especially in government schools. I am of the opinion that no matter how much money you spend, how beautiful your schools are, or how good your courses are, unless you show your teachers respect, and involve them in decision-making, no work on education is possible. The teacher is not a delivery person. Teachers are institutions that convey the knowledge of one generation to another, point out the faults of the previous system to the next generation and develop new knowledge. Their responsibility also includes teaching students the skill of questioning the knowledge and opinions of previous generations. It is this spirit of questioning and rebellion that will lead to discoveries and inventions. Hence, it is important to make teachers financially and mentally free, so they can teach freely. All the attempts made by the Delhi government were to ensure this, though a lot remains to be done.
Mentor–Teacher: A New Tradition
When I took over the charge as the education minister of Delhi, I realized that government school teachers didn’t have anyone to guide them. There were no experienced persons or consulting agencies which could help them enhance their domain knowledge and hone their skills, or even look for solutions to challenges in teaching or learn newer, better methods of teaching. In other parts of the world, especially where the education system is truly evolved, a lot of emphasis is placed on mentoring and training teachers; encouraging them to adopt new ways of teaching. In our country, however, such exercises are often considered a sheer waste of resources. In a hierarchical order teachers have principals above them who have other responsibilities such as school administration and exams, etc., leaving them with little time to mentor the teachers. Even if they find the time, they can only mentor them in the subject they are familiar with. When I was closely studying education models in other countries around the world, I found that other than subject–teachers, mentor–teachers played a big role in developing an academic environment in the school, monitoring and analysing it constantly.
My advisers, Atishi and Shailendra along with the officers in the Directorate of Education, designed a framework to initiate the mentorship programme for teachers. There were many obstacles in this endeavour. The first being that the mentor–teacher post did not exist in the government. And second, who would do this work? We drew up a plan for this. We decided to have one mentor for every five schools. Then the next challenge was how to identify these mentors. So, I sent a letter to all the teachers in Delhi outlining my vision and wrote in detail about the role of the mentor–teacher. I exhorted these teachers to take on this responsibility on a voluntary basis. Around 1200 teachers from different schools wrote back expressing an interest to become mentor–teachers. Before we received the letters, I had met almost 2000 to 3000 teachers and principals, either in groups or on a one-to-one basis, and discussed my vision with them. They had seen from our endeavours—from increasing the budget to various other measures—that we were committed to improving the state of education, and the message had reached almost all the schools. At the same time, a few teachers were upset because of my surprise inspections and of my efforts to bring more discipline in schools. However, they knew that measures were being taken only against the most lethargic and careless. I was enthused to see so many applications for the post of mentors.
This was only an idea at this point. We still had to do all the legwork and we needed only 200 mentor–teachers for 1000 schools. So, we did extensive verification of the outcomes of their teaching/learning strategies, their relations with other teachers and asked them to write a note on why they wanted to become mentor–teachers. On the basis of this, an unbiased and strict selection procedure was put in place. We conveyed to these applicants that rather than following the regular timetable, they would have to work for almost twenty-four hours a day for a year. They would have to work day in, day out to create an academic environment in the schools assigned to them. We had many schemes in our mind to encourage these mentor–teachers. For example, they would be paid an extra month’s salary in the year, given special training, provided space in the deputy director’s office, sent for national and international teacher training programmes, etc. Some of these plans didn’t come to fruition because of departmental obstacles and issues in financial rules, but I believe that we found an amazing batch of 200 mentor–teachers in the very first year. Whenever I met them, their body language exuded self-confidence.
Initially, some teachers felt a little strange that a teacher from outside their school would interfere in their classes, but things smoothened out after a while and our initiative was a big success.
Taking the plan forward, we decided to take 100 new mentor–teachers every year and retain 100 from the previous year. Thus, one mentor–teacher could stay in the post for two years but every year we would have 100 new ones. What did these mentor–teachers do? What was their experience? What was their contribution? To answer these questions, I am including excerpts from the feedback received from principals and a few mentor–teachers. One can gauge their contribution in the teaching–learning environment in the schools from these excerpts.
‘I began this journey in March 2016 after getting inspired by Deputy CM Manish Sisodia’s letter to teachers. His thought of “bringing revolution in the world of education” inspired me to go beyond teaching a few students in a few classes to explore new methodologies and hone my skills. I realized that it was time to work together for positive results.’
—Sheetal, mentor–teacher
‘I would like to mention Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, Chandpur Majra, while talking about the mentor–teacher initiative. In 2016, the number of students was 225, in 2017, it increased to almost 350. The reason for this was that teachers went to Majra Davas and Chandpur Village in a group to meet the locals and were successful in rebuilding their confidence in government schools.
In the same way, Rajkiya Kanya Vidyalaya, Begumpur, was facing the issue of absenteeism. After consulting the head of the school and other teachers, we contacted the parents and, as a result, irregularity is almost nil in the school now.
I didn’t face any major difficulties as a mentor–teacher, but there was some opposition from a few teachers in the initial days. One has to make a few efforts to go against the grain and shake things up.’
—Dr Karamveer Singh, mentor–teacher
‘I consider the mentor–teacher programme a wonderful step towards the empowerment of teachers. For years, I have seen teachers being dependent on others, obedient to government diktats and just obeying the rules of the education department and fulfilling the expectations of the officials. The mentor–teacher programme has given us the confidence and opportunity to decipher the aim of teaching, understand the needs of teachers and students and take informed decisions in keeping with those needs. This is not about training 200 mentor–teachers but a step towards bringing all the teachers to work together in unison.’
—Alok Kumar Mishra, mentor–teacher
‘As a mentor–teacher, I performed the role of preparing the teaching–learning material for my schools and discussing it, inspiring teachers and guiding them to adopt newer ways of teaching. To understand ways in which the teaching–learning process could be made more innovative, I took many demo classes. To create a scholastic environment in school and outside of it, I organized workshops for parents too.’
—Sandeep, mentor–teacher
‘Interacting with teachers and telling them about the experiments of others in the profession made me see the curiosity teachers have for their subjects and ways of teaching. The biggest change was in the conduct of teachers in classrooms, and in my interaction with students I found it was felt by them as well.’
—Balistar Kumar, mentor–teacher
‘I always consider
ed myself a perfect teacher. I always thought that a good educator was one who had a tight hold on his/her subject and taught it in innovative ways. When I started sitting on the last bench as a mentor–teacher, observing classes, I realized how different learning and teaching were. As a mentor, it is my endeavour to reduce this gap between teaching and learning.’
—Bhavna Savnani, mentor–teacher
‘While supervising class 8 in Rajkiya Kanya Vidyalaya School, Block Shakarpur, it was found that one student was irregular to school. One day when she came to the class, I spoke with her but she couldn’t give a clear reason for her irregularity. I requested one of my colleagues to watch her closely and take care of her. A few days later, she found out that the student was emotionally distraught. Her mother had left home, her father had remarried and the child was living with her grandmother. With my colleague’s “connect” and emotional support, the child started attending school regularly and her academic performance improved. Most of the work was done by my colleague, but, as a mentor, I have often drawn the attention of teachers towards students who get overlooked during the regular school schedule.’
—Vishnu Kumar Pande, mentor–teacher
‘I remember that when the education minister wrote to us asking us to come forward as mentor–teachers to contribute towards better education, he said that only those who wanted to work without expecting a position or money should do so. I filled the application form for mentorship with a lot of enthusiasm and got selected. I wanted to do something new and good. I knew working as a mentor would give my enthusiasm and vigour the right platform. I had two big challenges before me—my own familial responsibilities and the desire to do better as a teacher. My personal challenge was that 80 per cent of my husband’s liver had been declared damaged, and he needed a transplant. My son was also appearing for class 12 board examinations. Many of my colleagues advised me to not become a mentor and focus on my family. But I wanted to do something for education, and I became a mentor. I am happy to say that my husband is well and my son has cleared his exams, and I am involved in the great endeavour to improve the level of education.
As a mentor–teacher, I have seen a number of challenges in schools—the lack of self-confidence in children, lack of family support, irregular school attendance, parents not meeting teachers in spite of being called or going away to their native villages for long durations.’
—Usha Kiran, mentor–teacher
‘I have worked at a lot of schools as a teacher, and I have found something new everywhere. I didn’t want to let go of this opportunity which would add to my experience. I have contributed to education in a meaningful way and have been a part of many reforms in my two years as a mentor–teacher. In this journey, I have also participated in many training programmes. This initiative has given me the opportunity to visit national and international educational institutions where we met some excellent teachers and scholars. I was able to assess myself and become a better teacher. The use of technical words in teaching in the Singapore training programme influenced me, and I am trying to use these words in my interactions with my colleagues.’
—Sheelu, mentor–teacher
‘Not everything was as easy as it seemed in this process of change. The first challenge that I faced in this journey was the thought process of my colleagues. They were resistant to change.
When I started working as a mentor–teacher, I thought that I would get the opportunity to show other schools my teaching skills, experiments in the classroom and my capabilities. My outlook changed completely as the journey progressed. I didn’t have to showcase my abilities in the classroom. The work went a lot deeper. As a mentor–teacher, my role was to observe the practices of other teachers, understand them and inspire the teachers to look at education as a noble profession. I had to consider their feelings so that they did their work more diligently, worked honestly to change the lives of their students and improved their own abilities. I had to ignite the desire in my colleagues to do something new and experiment in classrooms. In a sense, this was an ambitious programme to change the overall environment of the school.
I saw many ups and downs in this time and did many experiments too. I’d like to talk about one such experiment. I had to make question papers for the different classes and subjects in the six schools I was associated with. Coordinating with so many teachers and finishing the work on time was in itself a big challenge. I personally compiled all the questions collected from all the different teachers and put them in serial order and made it available to everyone twenty days before the mid-term exams. I had to work hard to coordinate with the teachers from the six schools and to get them to reach a consensus. This effort disrupted the prevalent notion that it is not possible to work on one project with so many different schools. It also gave me an understanding of what different teachers in different schools thought of their subjects and which topics they thought were important.’
—Naseem Bano, mentor–teacher
‘I am primarily associated with mathematics. One of the reasons for joining this programme was to remove the fear of maths in students. Everybody in schools keeps talking about it being a difficult subject. In my opinion, it is a very enjoyable subject and once you have understood and practised it, you can keep doing more. To this end, I conducted exercises and activities designed by me in my classes. As a mentor–teacher, I share these exercises in all the schools and training programmes.’
—Manju Sharma, mentor–teacher
‘There are many noteworthy incidents from my experience as a mentor–teacher, but to summarize, the perception among teachers that ‘some students cannot learn’ has changed. I saw a spark in the eyes of the children when they learnt how to read. The students, who were earlier disinterested, now participate actively in class activities. It is heartening that the achievement of the students has become a topic of discussion in staffrooms among teachers.’
—Yogesh Kumar, mentor–teacher
‘I had to face some opposition when I started visiting schools. This was because some teachers just had the mentality of clocking in hours. The entire attention of the school was on the results of classes 9 to 12 but classes till class 6 often went without teachers. My frequent visits and constant cajoling brought about some change. Scolding and hitting stopped. Attendance improved. Activities conducted by a few teachers also opened doors for development.
I’d like to share my experience too. There was a student in Sarvodaya Vidyalaya Deenpura who was always getting into fights and was uninterested in studies. Every time I visited the school, I tried talking to her lovingly, but she had become a big problem for her teachers. A few days ago, when I was passing by her class, she came running to me and told me that she had learnt how to read. When she took me to her class, I thought she had probably learnt how to read Hindi. I was surprised when she read out a page from her English book. I still get gooseflesh when I remember the happy moment. As a mentor–teacher I see my achievement here—being able to make my mentees believe in their strength, knowledge and their actual role.’
—Asha Sharma, mentor–teacher
‘In my opinion, the biggest achievement of the mentorship programme is that it has given students and teachers in government schools self-confidence and pride. Speaking for myself, I got the chance to understand my work and myself better as a mentor–teacher.’
—Anuradha Jain, mentor–teacher
‘While working as a mentor–teacher in two of my schools, I came across teachers who were reluctant to conduct experiments in science labs because they were worried about what the students would think of them if they couldn’t use the equipment properly. I took practical sessions in both the schools and deliberately portrayed myself as unsuccessful in front of the students. This removed the hesitation amongst teachers. This also reduced the negativity that students had towards unsuccessful experiments.’
—Ajay Kishore, mentor–teacher
‘As a mentor–teacher, I have been learning new meth
ods of training and have been sharing them with my colleagues. I have observed that my small interventions have been instrumental in bringing about a change in the teachers’ behaviour and in their style of teaching. Teachers have now started thinking beyond the four walls of the school. The biggest challenge is to change the fixed mindset of a few teachers and to inspire them to adopt new methods of teaching for better results.’
—Rajan Kumar, mentor–teacher
‘After working as a mentor–teacher, I have experienced a change in my personality. Overcrowded classrooms, lack of communication skills, lack of cooperation among colleagues and lack of time management in teachers were some of the challenges that I faced. Striking a balance between my work as a mentor–teacher and my family was another major challenge.
I created ten WhatsApp groups of teachers teaching science in my schools. On these, I shared new and interesting aspects of teaching. I also realized that along with working on science as a subject, there was an urgent need to work with lab assistants in laboratories. By encouraging lab assistants and by training them, I observed many changes in the science teaching programmes.’
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