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| Edited By: Puja Pednekar |Source: DNA |Updated: Feb 27, 2011, 11:18 PM IST
Teachers from the UK were in town to learn the art of handling a large classroom from Indian teachers. Puzzled by Indian school teachers’ ability to teach more than 50 students in one class, educators from UK visited Mumbai schools, to learn from the teachers, how to control the students.
Nearly 35 teachers from the UK have visited the state to learn more about the Indian classrooms. In Mumbai, they visited Children’s Acdemy School, Malad and Podar International School, Santa Cruz, among others.
“While in the UK, we have not more than 10 students per class but the teachers still find it difficult to manage. We were surprised to hear that in India, classrooms are flooded with students and teachers are capable of masterfully handling it. We have come here to understand the context, communities and capabilities of the teachers. We will take this information back to our colleagues,” said Janet Gallie, from Noncledra School.
The educators were in awe of the inherited values like respect for teachers, reverence for education and a sense of fraternity in the classroom-summarised in quotations on walls. It brought out the contrast in student cultures. “We have much to learn from Indian students,” added Gallie.
“We will begin, in a simple way, by getting both sets of students to exchange their photographs and simple lines of introduction. We will also exchange plans, with teachers swapping notes on methods,” said Louis Williams, St Just School.
This cultural interaction is borne out of Global School Partnerships (GSP) and Connecting Classrooms. The common goal, of both projects, is to nurture an intimate understanding of other cultures, social and educational systems through direct interaction. Both projects aspire to eventually create a global curriculum. Connecting Classrooms is a British Council-sponsored educational programme.
“The high standards of achievement of Indian schools challenge all that we have been doing back home,” said Williams, praising the progress made despite inadequate infrastructure and high student-to-teacher ratio.
