Welcome to eVidyaloka

Teach Rural India Online - Anywhere, Anytime

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

Now You Too Can Teach Hundreds of Rural Students From Your Living Room! Find Out How. - The Better India

This team wanted to bridge the gap between urban and rural education. Read how their idea of digital classrooms has changed the lives of hundreds of rural students.

A coverage on  eVidyaloka by THE BETTER INDIA

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

The Mother's Day Saga...

Here is an interesting, yet inspiring story of Mothers in Chengarbasa! Dr. Maleka Fakri is a talented Sixth Grade eVidyaloka teacher who inspires, ignites and instills values in young Children apart from academically making them proficient.

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning”~  Brad Henry 

A few days back, an idea struck her; “Why not celebrate Mother's Day in our school?” She asked Basant Sir (Class Assistant of Chengarbasa center) if it was possible for them to invite all the Mothers to the programme.  When he positively replied, Dr. Maleka started the preparations enthusiastically! This great idea had sprung-up from a tiny seed of thought. The idea was to get the village Mothers involved actively with their kids, as normally they would be busy with the household chores.  She wanted the children to express their feelings to their Mothers that how much they appreciate them and what they mean in their lives. Dr. Maleka thought that the Children could do this through their Dance performances, Music, Poetry or Art. Her aim was to make the Mothers feel special and important on the lovely occasion of “Mother's Day”! Well, in the end, Dr. Maleka did succeed in making them happy and proud! After all, Mothers are the epitomes of Love!

The Mother's Day celebration at Chengarbasa School was a grand success. Everyone from the Mothers, Teachers, Principal and Students enjoyed the day to bits! Why wouldn't it be a success when the motive was to give happiness and love to the earthly angels?

The Mother's Day Saga did not end there, a few days later Dr. Maleka learned that the village had a similar function organized inspired by this grand function. This village-level function was initiated by the students who had replicated the school function! She felt blessed and proud to see the pictures shared by Basant Sir. The village people looked so happy participating in their own version of Mother's Day! What an honor to know that you are the trigger-cause for a great change that seems to be growing into an ocean of love, spreading and touching lives! These are the deeds that give you a sense of fulfillment (inner-peace) in life.

Dr.Maleka says, “Feeling blessed, that such a small Noble idea led to everyone, especially mothers, having a gala time at least for a day in male-dominated villages.”

It is surely a Noble idea! We are happy that we have such talented and inspiring teachers working with us making our mere existence possible. eVidyaloka sincerely appreciates Dr. Maleka's dedication and her efforts in spreading love and peace. Also, the village School is proud to have such a great teacher!

We truly hope that this Saga never ends, we hope to see more ripples of joy and love spread in all directions....!

[evidyaloka]

“Great teaching requires incredible talent and dedication, strong intellectual ability and interpersonal skill, real discipline and empathy” ~ Bruce Rauner

Our young efficient teacher, Rajesh T. S., is one such exceptional volunteer teacher, who is the right combination of all these qualities. Evidyaloka is fortunate to have found Rajesh, an incredible addition and asset to our teaching community. He joined us in June 2017 to Ariyur Centre, in a very short time he has achieved the unthinkable!

His passion for teaching shines through his Online Classes and his Content Contributions. He has the ability to connect with students instantly, leaving the children longing for his next class. He motivates the children to develop self-learning techniques, encourages teamwork and gives the right guidance (Support and Appreciation); a perfect formula to win the hearts of young minds! Through the earned trust, he assigns just enough responsibilities and tasks to the children, in-turn the students perform their duties with little or no guidance. This mutual understanding makes the activities and classes interesting, furthermore, kids are graded for every task and points are accumulated. At the end of each term, students are rewarded! No wonder his classes went from 0% attendance to 100% in just a few months.

                                          The Star Students 

His sincere efforts on making unique Lesson Plans, keeping-in-mind “clarity” and “easiness” of content is laudable. He is keen on making his own lesson plans for his classes and generous enough to share the same with other teachers as well. He is famous for his very effective class engagement techniques and his inspiring end-of-class Thirukural stories. He conducts regular vocabulary challenges for kids in class, this has majorly triggered the learning skills in children.

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” ~ Mark Van Doren

His science activity, “Crop Production and Management” has encouraged even other classes to grow plants at school. This project was a very big hit among the children as they watched and learned to grow plants from seeds. This has transformed the school environment making it a beautiful example of how teaching with life-values can transform students positively.

His second project allowed the children to go around the village and interact with individuals, thereby creating an awareness among the people about the reasons and the impacts of Environment pollution and the importance of Environment protection.The students also taught the villagers about importance of “Cleanliness” and the effects on health. The Headmaster and Teachers of the school were proud seeing the active participation and involvement of the students.

Apart from being an inspiration to the children and teachers, he is very approachable and prompt in answering emails and messages. Personally impressed and inspired by Rajesh's passion, we nominated him for Best Debutant Teacher Award 2017 and we are glad that he was shortlisted as a finalist in a pool of hundreds of volunteer teachers.

“Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.” ~ Bill Gates

His recent trip to Ariyur school was a celebration! More than a teacher to our students, he is a valuable Mentor. This most popular, impact-creating eVidyaloka teacher is a “Hero” to the children. He has inspired them, ignited knowledge in them and imparted essential life skills. Most importantly, he is a great human being.

                     The Happy and Proud Students!

[evidyaloka]

Panel Discussion at RUBARU 2017-18

Rubaru 2017-18 brought industry leaders on one platform to initiate, encourage and impact the development sector to progress towards a empowered rural India. 

Following were the key takeaways of the panel discussion, focused on:

Enablers and Barriers in Nurturing Future Talent from Rural India

Panelists:

1. Jacob Ninan, Executive Trustee and CEO, Axis Bank Foundation

2. Ruby Chhabra, VP - Consulting & Transformation, LTI

3. Shalini Pillay, Office Managing Partner and Head of People, performance & culture, KPMG

4. K. Raghavendra, Global head of HRD, Infosys BPO

5. V. Ramkumar (moderator), Trustee & Board member, eVidyaloka Trust

1. The context and need of rural-urban engagement is significant. We have about 200 million young Indians from rural parts of the country who would come into mainstream workforce in the next 5-10 years. Unless they are educated and adequately skilled and made eligible to participate in the growth of the economy, we would have:

a) 200 million people who’s welfare would be a responsibility of the state, and can be a serious economic challenge if not brought into mainstreamb) A serious employment paradox: growing need for workforce but a huge pool of unskilled workforce, and the risk of a section of this workforce going wayward. Even a 1% of this population would be 2 million - quite a large number to deal with. It’s a serious risk to be dealt with urgently.

2. The most critical enablers for driving this growth that need to be nurtured were discussed at length. The key ones being:

a) Driving a high degree of consciousness for education. This also means driving adult / parent education and promoting the benefits of learningb) Active engagement with the Government to drive a policy level change that helps with a conducive environment of promoting voluntary teaching.c) Building a strong culture of corporate engagement to promote volunteerism. This would allow for addressing the 1.2 million teacher shortage and scale. Also develop a higher awareness amongst people who take career-breaks to adopt volunteer-teaching as an active avenue of social contribution.

3. The panel discussed about the key barriers that need to be urgently addressed:

a) Language / communication. A key challenge of employability still remains the need for English as a language skill. Promoting this as part of the rural education is key, At the same time, enhancing other skills that have domestic employability is also important to minimize migration.b) Ability to work remotely with rural workforce: while this may be perceived as a challenge, the reality is that it deserves to be attempted with seriousness. The NSIC program of eVidyaloka was an example of how children from urban and rural schools have worked together in short span of time to deliver project work in a remote but collaborative manner.c) Resources: Helping rural households to drive be able to promote self-help, facilitated by rural / micro lending will be key. This, coupled with education that allows them to be better skilled in continuing with traditional village based occupations (e.g Agriculture) and also with potential new opportunities (e.g Rural BPO) would both be critical.

4. The key here is to have corporate India actively participate in this uplift of future citizens in a formalized manner, with a rural-urban connect cause:

a) Active engagement with social initiatives that have a strong rural connect and education / skilling to build a sustainable legacy. Promote culture of engagement across the organization, not just by the CSR function or selective individuals. b) More importantly, driving CSR Policies that promote one or more of these three: rural engagement - quality education - technology enabled social programs

[evidyaloka]

[evidyaloka]

KARNATAKA FIELD VISIT

-Ashwini Avanthi, Karnataka Coordinator

In 2015 Commencement of KA school’s Hanumasagara was the first school to start in Koppal cluster.  Team members first visit to had a lot of expectation and started the day with the Hanumasagara GHPS.

Head Master, GHPS Hanumasagara headed discussion with evidyaloka team members and expressed his views to be proud  compared to other school that evidyaloka programme is running successfully and  the rate of admission

Interaction with students-

eVidyaloka students of 5th, 6th , 7th  grades shared their ambition for becoming professionals in various field. Students performed various cultural activities along with English skit and showed their skills on how the online classes are useful in developing their confidence to challenge the life. Students showed their interest in expanding evidyaloka programme to High school and want to be connected with their online teachers after completion of Higher Primary School.

 Class Assistance Meeting/ Discussion -

Hanumasagara, Thopalakatti,Miyapur,Harijanwada CA’s were present in the discussion. Mr.Vasanth headed the meeting. With the successful completion of two years in NBI cluster. Various techniques was discussed by KA, Coordinator. CA’s are willing to give more time in such kind of activities and expected to increase more online teachers in their centre.

Halagondanahalli and Hosadurga CA’s were virtually connected and shared their perspectives to start up few new more schools in their cluster.

Hanumasagara and Thopalakatti CA’s asked KA Coordinator to give them more opportunity to actively participant in various upcoming programme. Sri.Venkat, CEO of eVidyaloka opined that eVidyaloka will be explored and is expanding to reach out more isolated schools in KOPPAL District and facilitate students in online teaching.

 Parents Meeting-

Parents along with their sibling attended meeting. HM,Local Coordinator along with the eVidyaloka team members headed discussion on few objectives to know more about the parents perception on education.

Most of the parents do not know reading and writing and hence the children are first generation learners. But parents do understand the importance of education, and they dream with better education their children will be able to get good jobs. They have different aims like doctor, teacher, engineer, army officer etc. This shows the enthusiasm among these parents is very high, it's just the lack of resources due to which they are unable to get what they deserve. They really appreciated evidyaloka's work.  Their joy reclaimed when they are happily willing to send their kids to school.

 We interviewed few parents and here is some glimpse of that:

Participant 2- Earlier every day he was forcing the child to go for school. Now child wakes up early and she orders him to get ready soon and reach school on time. Online teaching helping the student to speak more English words which is making parents to feel proud in village.

Participant 1- His son comes back home and shares the lesson taught by Online teacher which is making other neighbour children listen more about the new things.

Participant 3- In TV how can a teacher be connected had a question in the mind. HM made to attend one class along with the students, after watching the class she was amazed to see the English class where the teacher replied looked at her and asked few questions on the village.

Participant 8- We missed the opportunities in life but whole heartily wish all the children should read well and go to good job none other than the coolie work which they are doing. Her daughter is happily explains English words to her younger brother.

Students class information and other related details forwarded in Text/Bulk messages, do parents can read and know about the students learning in the class?

Participants- In chorus ‘YES” they will make their neighbours or the elder siblings to read and inform them.

Insights from the field

These kind of field visits provides ample amount of information about the functioning of schools. It gives the actual picture of the classroom structure where the student learning is happening.   After meeting school management committee, head master, parents and other stakeholders we got to understand the challenges from different perspectives. In future we would like to work on overcoming the challenges. We Parents aspiration for their children was the most motivating and inspiring factor which retains them back to the school.

[evidyaloka]

Field Vist to West Bengal and Jharkhand

Dates:

-          26th and 27th of December 2016

Places Visited:

-          Purulia, West Bengal

-          Giridih, Jharkhand

-          Deogarh, Jharkhand

People Met:

-          Shri. Debashish Panda, and Biren Khan of CESR, Purulia, West Bengal

-          Shri. Chakraborthy, HM of Govt. School, Jabrra  Village, Purulia

-          Shri Akbar Ansari, Community leader, Chargali Village, Purulia

-          Shri Umesh Tiwari and Shri Diwakar Jha of SPS, Giridih, Jharkhand

-          Shri. Shiv Banerjee, District Information Officer, NIC, Giridih, Jharkhand

-          Shri. Murari Choudary, Smt. Madhu of NEEDS, Deogarh, Jharkhand

-          Shri. Aditya Misra, Additional District Collector, Deogarh

Trip Summary:

Purulia:

-          Visit of 3 potential new schools in Purulia cluster

-          The inspirational story of Akbar Ansari, local farmer and a passionate individual, who has committed himself to make quality education a reality for the children of Chargali village.

-          Discussion about plan for 17-18 for Purulia cluster and how CESR and eVidyaloka scale up and sustain operationally and financially. Target of 15 schools in Purulia cluster

-          Discussion of various local social issues with CESR, around Child line, Tribals of Ayodhya Hills, the Deaf and Dumb school

Giridih:

-          Discussion about overcoming operational issues in 3 KGBV schools in Giridih with NIC, Giridih along with SPS and arrived at action plan for Term 3 of 16-17

-          Discuss scale up plan in Giridih cluster with SPS, for 17-18 and shortlisted 20+ potentials schools with a mix of KGBV and Upper Primary schools.

-          Discussed strategy with SPS, for building partner capacity to manage eVidyaloka remote delivery, alongside financial sustainability plans

Deogarh:

-          Discussion with NEEDS on their programs and how eVidyaloka NEEDS partnership can evolve

-          Discussion with District Collector regarding Online classes in KGBV schools and Govt investment of Digital Classroom in additional 5 schools, alongside 7 KGBVs

Key Insights:

-          Partners are excited about eVidyaloka program and show keen interest and enthusiasm, to develop local capability and financial capacity

-          District administration is highly appreciative and supportive of efforts from programs like eVidyaloka in such remote locations

-          Children demonstrate huge potential when provided with equal opportunity to quality education and advanced technology usage

-          Local communities are highly aspirational and willing to extend any level of support, to make well meaning programs work for them

-          Train travel, local food and love of people are some unique and priceless experiences to carry back from rural India

  EMu9OHPr:\�A

[evidyaloka]

Sharing Knowledge with children

Jyothi Iyer,a volunteer shares her experience of teaching with eVidyaloka for the academic year 2016-’17, kids of 8th grade of Sonbad center, Giridih district, Jharkhand. 

 I am Jyothi Iyer.I live in Dubai, I am a housewife but I am proud to say that I am now a Volunteer Teacher for Science, Grade 8, Sonbad- Moti students, a Very Big Thank You to all at eVidyaloka. 

 It all started one morning when I kept searching in Google for free education at village schools India and finally came across this wonderful organisation called EVIDYALOKA.  I was so fascinated with the concept of how technology is being used to educate children in remote areas that I couldn't stop myself from sharing my profile and logging in for volunteering. Within a week I could announce to my husband and my family that I am now a teacher in a village school in Jharkhand.

 I still remember my first class. Back then I taught Grade 7 Science when I started. The class was full and the children were all excited to see me, well, I was equally excited too. :) I asked each of them their hobbies n interests and I remember one student, a girl named Geeta in the class who danced so well...now my Grade 8 class is very talented too...i have a student, Shyamsundar who writes hindi 'Shayaris' and two girls that dance well. I really wish the school could have an annual get together so the kids could showcase their talent. My class assistant, Rahulji has been very cooperative and co-ordinator Amar too.

 My experience with eVidyaloka has been simply great so far and each class is a learning experience.I not only teach the children but I have been learning a lot too in turn. 

 Finally I wish to thank everyone at eVidyaloka for having given me an opportunity to share my knowledge with the children. I am very proud and happy to be a part of this family.

[evidyaloka]

A drop in the ocean

Abinay Sali,student at XLRI a teacher volunteer at eVidyaloka took time out of his vacation to visit his students at Laxmipuram school, Andhra Pradesh. 

Here he pens down his experience which is a motivator for all of us at eVidyaloka.

The school of Laxmipuram has a pretty small batch as opposed to some of the bigger batches of E-vidyaloka. The village is accessible from Vijayawada region, the working capital of Andhra Pradesh. So there weren’t big puzzles about reaching the village there. It was an easy drive. I managed to get there with my Dad. The kids were excited and I was expecting to take a class for my 7th standard students but everyone in the high school turned up. The 6th, 7th and 8th grade kids turned up to my class. I have this tendency of asking kids about what they aspire to become in life, so I did it with the 6th and 8th kids. What to do? I know my kids well, didn’t feel like asking them again. The reason I do this is because I believe when you state an aspirational goal you would believe in it and reinforce that the goal is achievable. I have read somewhere, “An unsaid goal is a wish” The reason we teach kids fairy tales is because all the stories tell them that dragons can be defeated.

After getting to know the kids of the other classes. I had the dilemma of what to teach? Since the lowest grade among the audience was 6th grade I decided to pick up a 6th grade lesson for the day. I gave the kids the choice of the subject, they asked me to teach English. I managed to pick one lesson and taught them for about 40 minutes. As I teach science for the 7th grade, I thought something related to science would be better and fall in line with what I am doing for the term. Again I would have loved to teach a poem or a problem given my love for literature or math but we have to choose something at the end of the day. The topic was about growing trees and the benefits it has got. I keep my classes interactive to the extent I can. And what was astonishing is the fact that the 8th standard kids have exceeded my expectations and are quite good at science. While the subject was English, it had a lot to do with science. The breathing vs photosynthesis had quite a bit of discussion, then there was a good question asked by someone about the co-existence of trees. I talked about stuff like survival of the fittest, co-existence and the shared value in which nature dwells on. It felt good to talk about a topic like growing trees since I personally love nature. The teachers who teach them have done a good job especially the ones at eVidyaloka. 6th students are slightly uncomfortable, the 7th are slightly comfortable and the 8th kids rocked, so the teachers who teach them and taught them seem to have broken the barriers with them. I too wish to get my 7th kids to the level of the 8th kids if not better in terms of their social capabilities and confidence in life.

At college, a month ago some very close friends of mine did a case study on e-vidyaloka model and they got to talk to Venkat. I don’t know if they shared the feedback of the case study or the original case-PPT with the organization but having witnessed the critical analysis of the organization added to the 3-month stint with the organization I thought I knew quite a bit about the pros and cons of e-vidyaloka. But the visit did teach certain things, there is a lot to learn and a lot to do. There is good support system at eVidyaloka but resources are always limited and they constrain the growth, the only resource that can overcome any shortcoming is the human brain. How I wish these kids get a weekly personality development class over skype! I write or speak what I feel, I personally hate being diplomatic, the kids are struggling with low morale and social capabilities. How do we bridge this? Time will only tell! Taking pics with kids and posing as if I have saved the earth from drowning is not my way of doing things. The reason I decided to write this is to appeal to the readers that there is lot to do. Yes we can say it the Mother Teresa way, “What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop” but the target is the ocean until its last drop! Analogies speak of the impossible, vision speaks of something that is possible. Every single kid in this country deserves love, caring, inspiration and education. I feel uncomfortable when some of my teachers complain about the discipline or the shortage of resources or erratic nature of connectivity. Yes, there would be issues. In my class I give my kids 100% chance to speak up and mischief is encouraged, what is childhood for? Reading Brownian motion and solving 4th

order differential equation? Yes we have our constraints, who doesn’t? Internet would constrain us, discipline would constrain us, resources would constrain us and yes, our personal life would constrain us. At the end of the day every constraint is the cause of creativity, if we feel constrained we aren’t trying to solve things creatively. No, you don’t do things to inspire! You do things to solve the problem. If people get inspired and join you in the process, it has to just be seen as a catalyst (hehe, I am a science teacher after all) to solve the problem. The journey to Laxmipuram was a physical visit? I don’t know! There is this collective journey a set of people have been in for some time this journey was a sub-subset of it. The journey is to solve the educational inequality of the world and eVidyaloka is one of the vehicles in the process.

[evidyaloka]

Independence day celebrations with eVidyaloka kids

Meenakshi Subramani one of our volunteers from Bengaluru decided to visit her kids at Semmambadi school, Tamil nadu this independence day and was overwhelmed by the love poured in by the school authorities as well as kids. Here is a brief write up as said by Meenakshi about her visit to her kids.

“It was this weekend I realized that there is more to life than money, dress, success in career. A small help extended with love reaped so much happiness and joy which even a million bucks would not have given. I volunteer to help students who are deprived of the facilities we are blessed with. I did with all the sincerity and love. I was humbled and overwhelmed when the panchayat president and school HM of a school i volunteered to teach honored me as special guest this weekend. Students took care of me for the entire day. They made laugh , cry and entertained me. I was on cloud nine and the kind of love I was receiving swept me off. For the love I had showed during teaching I received so much love that it will make me fulfilled for my entire life. Mother theresa has said 'Its not about how much we give but how much love we put into giving'. I don’t have millions, I don’t earn in lakhs but with whatever time and money I have I put my heart in to help these young kids somehow. And they flooded me with love for a lifetime.This also made me realise Money will never buy such love. This has only made me strong and to love them more and to work hard to help more in need. Every small drop is important to make an ocean. So i shall contribute my part in the future too. I have a loving partner and two adorable kids, without whom I wouldn’t have been able to pursue my dreams. And I will always do it for the love of my mom and dad who guide me even thou they are not physically around me

[evidyaloka]

Visit to Rolupadi --- an interesting experience

Rolupadi is a village located in Tiruvuru tehsil, Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh state.

Dhatri Vinajmuri The 7th Science teacher of Rolupadi school recently visited the school to interact with the kids she was teaching all this while through skype.

Her experience as narrated by Dhatri goes like this:

“My journey with eVidyaloka started as an accident. Suddenly I found myself doing what I’ve been doing all these years in a very different way. My interaction with students at Rolupadi has been amazing from day one. Got an opportunity to meet my children in person… would never let it go. I was there at Rolupadi on the 6th of August at 9.15 in the morning. The children were all excited to see me in flesh and blood….the staff were waiting and very inviting. It was a surprise for the kids.The brief  chat that I had with the staff had given me an insight into what they expect from us and how can we be of help to them…together helping the kids. The teachers are keen to implement new techniques and methods of teaching within their minimal resources. They are willing to learn from eVidyaloka volunteers if they can be helped on new teaching techniques. They are truly grateful to eVidyaloka for the classes as well as the books that have been provided.The teachers are keen to talk to us, discuss and divide the lessons between the local teacher and eVidyaloka volunteers. The school runs on very minimum resources like six class rooms for eight classes…two of which are always conducted outdoors. It has been suggested that we conduct the classes showing more videos for the practical part of the concepts since these cannot be handled at their end. The focus of the discussion was Science as that is what I handle.The most satisfying part of the visit was my interaction with kids….they are full of questions. There is an urge to learn…motivational factors are far and few. Their questions ranged from when I came from Bombay (where I live) to satellites launched by ISRO and NASA. They are well informed by their teachers about the achievements in the fields of science and technology….but they need to see a few videos to know better.   We may take the opportunity to show them these during our sessions (understand… we have time constraints).  It has been a motivational day for both the students and me as well.Took leave of them around 12noon with a promise to return back.”

[evidyaloka]

Sharing Knowledge Building India

Priya Aditya,a volunteer shares her experience of teaching with eVidyaloka for the academic year 2015-’16, kids of 7th grade of Baad center, Dharwad district, Karnataka. The journey continues into the year 2016-17 with a new lot of kids at our Baad center.

Evidyaloka came to me out of the blue, while I was browsing online if there was a way to teach sitting at home. It was incredible, it was possible! A few of my nobler friends were looking for volunteers to fly out of town and help in teaching rural students. Since I was not yet prepared to do that, evidyaloka suited me just fine. I got a chance to converse in Kannada, since living in Singapore (and these days probably even living in Karnataka/ India), I rarely get a chance to speak Kannada.

I just needed to fill out some details and register, there was a friendly Skype call from Evidyaloka, very diplomatically checking out the credentials of volunteers (required of course!) and we were on. Tutorials for onboarding the teachers were available online, which I went through.

Class 7 of Baad, Dharwad were an intelligent lot. On Day 1 they surprised me with their basic English language skills, when they greeted me with “I am fine, thank you Madam, how are you?” While some of them had trouble reading out the letters, some were already well versed with simple words. They enjoyed the challenges I threw at them, whether to describe a picture or to write about their weekend in English. The improvement shown by students who couldn’t even recognize the letters was quite satisfying. I also noted that my Kannada had improved, when they translated carrot to ‘Gajjara’ and so on. Listening to their Dharwad dialect was also quite interesting for me, a Mysorean.

In the guise of teaching English, I even added a bit of manners and hygiene in some lessons, which I hope they remember. But seldom have I seen a group of students better behaved and polite than this batch. I hope the future batches are just as good!

Upon learning that they had no access to English books apart from their text books, I collected and dispatched a carton of pre-loved story books of well known publishers, lovingly packed by my daughter and her friend. Whether the students benefitted from these books, I hope to find out soon.

A little shove from me has moved some of my friends in India and Singapore too, to join evidyaloka.  I only hope I have not just taught but also inspired my students to learn more. My efforts are just a drop in the ocean, our country needs many more teachers to inspire these highly intelligent, knowledge-thirsty and sometimes lost kids.

[evidyaloka]

The joy of teaching

Hello all, This time we bring before you a life story by our Topslip( a center tucked away in the greenery of the annamalai mountain ranges in the western ghats) teacher Chandra Sivakumar on how her motivation to join eVidyaloka,how she joined and her first class experience.

It was early July 2015, I did something in a fit of emotion. Yes, quit  teaching , Without informing or discussing with anyone submitted my resignation letter and applied for leave for the notice period.   Cleaned up my house,cupboards, caught up with all friends and relatives who were all surprised at my decision. Tired of same old dialogue 'Chandra you are definitely going to regret your decision" and so on. Two months passed,  I  began getting bored ,missing students with whom I had spent more than 25 years.Started becoming restless. Husband and son  became  worried that I may start looking for a job , which would mean losing all their comforts at home. That made them come with the idea of me doing  some social work. One led to the other and I finally I found myself registering with evidyaloka. Then I was contacted by Gayathri Ramesh. Things did not start with the good note. Whenever, she contacted me I had problems with my skype connections and then the call was transferred to Rini Jose. Same story repeated but finally they decided to take a chance with me.Thanks Gayathri and Rini for the trust you had reposed on me. In the last week of September Swapna,  coordinator of my centre  TOPSLIP, called me. A warm friendly chat with her  led to an  instant rapport . However I, have to shamelesssly accept , did not know where Topslip was.first, humbling experience. Whatever, may be the initial hiccups I started with an auspicious note. My classes began  on my birthday. The joy I had in teaching them to introduce themselves, describe their class, their family, Pongal  and Republic day celebrations and their goals cannot be explained in words.I learnt all about yanai pongal. Another, humbling  experience. I did not know such a festival existed  until then. Interestingly, three of them wanted to become teachers and one a collector. Ramya's interest in English, Tinu's attentiveness, Chitra's sincerity , Archna's  enthusiasm and Guna's sincerity and industrious nature  all made me look forward for Mondays and Wednesdays. By the end of the session I  learnt all about Topslip. I began to envy them when they narrated their long treks from their village to schoolt', their experience of spotting tigers and elephants and proudly telling me about the pleasant weather that they were experiencing at a time when it was scorching hot in Hyderabad. However, everything was not hunky dory. Regular power cuts, internet problems, absenteeism were all disappointments. Perhaps one has to take all these things in its  stride and keep moving on and  my journey with evidyaloka will continue.