Jashn-e-Taleem (Hoshangabad District Initiative)

The overarching objective of Jashn-e-taleem is to bring long-term change in quality of school education in Hoshangabad district. This is being brought into effect by engaging with schools (especially primary), teachers, education functionaries and also community.

The larger purpose of our intervention in the district is capacity development of teachers of government schools – both directly through strengthening of teacher education and teacher support institutions of the government; providing out-of-school support to children in government schools and community interaction and engagement around education.

Areas where we function have large Scheduled Tribe populations, families facing multiple displacements and landless labourers. Currently, we are actively present in Babai, Kesla and Hoshangabad blocks and intermittently working in the other four (Pipariya, Bankhedi, Sohagpur and Seoni Malwa) of Hoshangabad district.  The main thrusts of our engagement are:

• Learning support to students in and outside school: The core is to focus on the educational needs of children at risk. Children who are educationally marginalized and on the verge of being pushed out of the school system. A major cause of this push-out is their inability to master the basic reading-writing and numeracy skills. Hence, the engagement with these students aims to categorically address this situation and also take up other creative learning activities that help build confidence and articulation in these students.
• Support to schools and teachers and government school system linkages: Our aim is to create platforms of peer learning for teachers who are actively engaging in actual classroom teaching. The engagement with the teachers is on two levels: one, on issues related to the EVS, Language and Math textbooks that they use and how to make them more relevant and meaningful for children; two, to work towards building understanding and empathy for the educationally marginalized students with learning challenges and special needs. To achieve this we are working in tandem with the DIET and district and block education offices.
• Enhancing discourse on education in the community: Building community linkages with education through setting up of libraries and reading rooms in community spaces as well as in some government education spaces like schools or Jan Shiksha Kendras. Building on these library-cum-reading rooms, efforts are being made to bring on board the village community, especially youth, women and elders to learn about their traditional skill-based professions and practices, oral history etc. By documenting some of these an effort is being made to build a bridge between this knowledge base and teaching-learning processes in schools.