I am Sirjana Paija and I have been teaching in Adarsha Secondary School for seven years. I have completed my Bachelors of Education in English. When I joined school as an English teacher, most of the teachers followed traditional lecture method while teaching our students. While teaching students in the classroom, we did not even consider whether they understood the content but what we emphasized is to finish the course on time. We focused on high performing students only and the low performing ones were always backward. We did not use any type of teaching materials except textbook. At that time, the learning outcome of class 6 English was just 54.
As LEARN has been started providing trainings to us for 3 years, along with the teachers of 10 schools of Adarsha Secondary School Resource Center, there has been a drastic change in teaching learning strategies in our school. We were trained on development and use of child centered teaching materials, child friendly teaching learning strategies, and different subject specific contents. Those trainings enable us switching our teaching strategies from traditional lecture method to innovative child friendly methods. Now, we teach considering the individual differences of students. Some are good at sports where some like music. So we support them foster their capabilities as well. After LEARN started supporting us, we also started planning our lessons before we enter the classroom, using teaching materials, engaging students in different activities and encouraging them to actively participate in classroom and co-curricular activities. We also managed our classrooms in child friendly way and our classrooms are full of resourceful teaching materials. As a result, learning outcome has been increasing. For example, the learning outcome of English of 6th grade is now 64.
LEARN has appointed me as a lead teacher which creates me a lot of opportunities in learning innovative techniques. I have been receiving exposure from highly qualified trainers from LEARN frequently. LEARN changes the future of me as well as my students. I am very happy to be a part of it and assure to learn more and take more to my classroom.
(January-2018)