Give a poor child a chance at education by The Akanksha Foundation

In these unprecedented times, all Akanksha schools are adapting to the “new normal” and moving forward with 3 key strategies: Virtual and blended learning using technology and online platforms, focusing on social and emotional well-being of students and helping parents becoming co-educators. Laxmi Nagar Public School believes in undisrupted learning in the current situation which is why the school made most of the assistance provided by Akanksha. After researching on the virtual teaching-learning strategy, the school preferred WhatsApp for communication among teachers, Zoom App and Google Classroom for synchronous learning and Edmodo App was preferred for Learning Management System. The school also conducted a support class for students who required additional help with reading and writing once a week for an hour. Apart from learning, one live Circle Time Session and one live PE session is conducted every week on Zoom. The SEE program (part of Circle Time Sessions) and counselling space helps to create a safe space for students to express their emotions freely and build emotional awareness in students. There is also a Boys Group Sessions for Grade 7 to build leadership skills in young boys who sometimes display negative behaviour but actually have a lot of potential and are struggling in their crucial pre-adolescent stage, this program helps them to cope with the emotional challenges that come with being in this stage of adolescence. Apart from this, the school also conducted celebrations for Independence Day, National Sports Day, Ganesh Chaturthi, Teacher’s Day, Hindi Diwas and Gandhi Jayanti online. Students, parents and teachers from all grades came together virtually to celebrate. The celebrations allowed the school to detour from the seriousness of the ongoing situation and also allowed the students to perform, express their thoughts and creativity through dance, art, poems and songs. Parents meetings are also conducted monthly via Zoom and their attendance has also increased overtime to 69%. Various topics such as Nutrition and its importance, precautions to be taken for COVID-19 and a collaboration with Haqdarshak to create awareness on government welfare schemes for families have been covered in these meetings. The school has also formulated a team focusing on improving the school’s student attendance. The teamwork with SMC parents helps to follow up with students in regards to their attendance for online classes and assignment submissions. This is helping the school improve its students’ attendance across grades.

The life of Laxmi Nagar Mumbai Public School

Academic Achievement: As part of its initiative to track and analyse performance, the school has put in place a data driven tracker system with a comprehensive framework to analyse the academic achievement of students. The tracker allows to analyse a range of focus areas which include analysis of subject-wise performance of students, teaching methodologies and skills. A gradewise analysis is conducted to identify trends which is shared with all teachers.

Youth Development: The school conducts a range of extra-curricular classes for its students which includes Kathak, Violin classes, Yoga and singing. The school had participated in ‘Balak Utsav’ and performed a play on Shivaji Maharaj. The school won the first prize for their performance and a standing ovation from the judges and the audience. Under The Apprentice Project (TAP), students of Grades 5 and 6 have access to a range of clubs like dramatics, dance, art and music. Students get to choose one of the 8 interest clubs from the 4 verticals of Visual arts, Performance arts (Dance, Drama, Music, and Public Speaking), Sports (Ultimate Frisbee), or Technical arts (Coding and Electronics). The students choose to be part of the club based on their interests. TAP helps enable exposure and opportunities based on the student’s passion.

Community Engagement:The school had mothers participating in most of the events and meetings, the participation of fathers has always been low. Keeping this in mind, the school undertook an initiative and organized an event on Father’s Day to encourage father’s interest and also to strengthen their bond with their children. This was taken further and a cricket tournament is organized every month, post which the father’s meet over ‘chai-cutta’. These meetings are used as an opportunity for rapport building and to initiate informal discussions with the fathers. As a result, parent meetings has also witnessed the number of fathers’ participation increasing this quarter.

Program Update

The school implemented practices that allowed students to collaborate with each other. One such activity – Think, Share, Pair has been successful in getting the students to work in groups and also present their learnings to the rest of the class. This practice is used in almost every class and lessons are planned in a way that integrates and encourages collaboration. An example of this practice was seen when the Science teacher introduced a lesson on the importance of vitamins for our body. Students had to work in groups and present to the rest of the class their learnings in the form of skits.

Story from the field

Naheeda's story is an inspiration to everyone. She comes from a very difficult background and grew up in a very conservative family. With very little socio-emotional support and money, Naheeda has managed to create a successful livelihood for herself and her family. Naheeda is an Akanksha Alumni and has been a teacher since the past 10 years. Recently, she applied via School Leadership Academy and got selected as the Assistant School Leader at our Shindewadi Mumbai Public School.