The children at the TF Model school

Contributed by Isabelle Payen - a volunteer of Tomorrow's Foundation

Hi again! Here I wanted to talk about the children at the TF Model school. As I am mostly with the children from the PP2 class, they are the ones I know best, therefore the ones I will talk mostly about. Class I currently has 6 students, and all other students (the very young ones, between 1 and 3 years old) are in PP1.

There are currently 12 children in PP2. There would have been 14 but Arun and Neha Shaw (two cousins) were moved to a different school a few weeks ago as their parents wanted them to learn Hindi at school – while the Model School focuses on Bengali and English language lessons.

The children in PP2 are around 4-5 years old. Of course some are very well-behaved while some are quite unruly. Let me start with the very well-behaved ones. Trisha Ghosh and Sneha Kumari Gupta are two sweet little girls who are both very quiet and attentive, while also actively participating in the lesson. They are hard-working and know already many words in English. Arpita Dey is just as well-behaved and hard-working but sometimes finds it hard to understand instructions, which results in funny situations. For example, once I drew a picture in dotted lines to help her draw it, but she didn’t understand what she was meant to do with the dotted line and the result was that she reproduced the exact same drawing in a dotted line just next to it! Anyway the important thing is that she always tries very hard and doesn’t get put off or discouraged at all. Neha Hathi is another very attentive student; she is always very active and involved in the lessons, but she is also very talkative and can be very loud and noisy. She loves story telling and will be fully absorbed in the story being told. She will be the one standing, as close to the book as possible, listening to every single word, and then she will keep talking about the story she has heard and will answer every possible question about it – adding a lot of (sometimes invented!) details.

Then there are a few students who are also very sweet but not quite so attentive. One example is Brishaspati Sardar (who brother Laxman is in class I – he is very naughty himself); in the beginning of my placement she didn’t look too interested in lessons and looked quite absent; but it is to be noted that her behaviour has improved and she now looks more involved in lessons and participates more.

Lastly there is a group of particularly unruly boys… There are mainly 3 of them – Sunny Singh, Indrajit Shakelbolti and Vivek Patel. These 3 are always up to some serious mischief together. They love running around, shouting, playing, fighting, whenever they can, and don’t listen much. They can be quite hard to handle for the teachers. However, when they do calm down and show some interest in the class, or smile their big disarming smile, it is the most rewarding thing and they are instantly forgiven.

I personally believe that children need to be approved of in order to be motivated to try better next time or simply to pursue their efforts. Even if their work is not perfect, I try to encourage them and when they do get it right, I congratulate them. They appreciate the recognition of their efforts and it is good for their self-confidence. Also the unruly children always seem to be responding very well when affection is given to them – again I think that affection and encouragement, and not punishment, can really cure a child. This definitely seems to be working for Laxman Sardar.

At the Model school children are taught “civic sense”, but without being punished. Let me give an example. Soon after I started, a box of rubbers disappeared. The next day Brihaspati Sardar told Nupur that her brother Laxman had stolen them and brought them home. Nupur explained to him that it was not a good thing to do and that he should bring the rubbers back, which he did eventually. He seems better behaved nowadays – no such incident happened again. He is especially keen to be given any kind of responsibility, even for small things such as distributing pencils. Some teachers think that he might possess good leadership skills, which could be developed.

One other important thing that we focus on as part of  the “civic sense” teaching is to say “good morning” first thing in the morning, and “thank you” whenever given something; now children themselves remind others to say “good morning” if they forget to say it. We sometimes ask a child to distribute tiffins, making it into a sort of role-play. The child being given the tiffin has to say “thank you” and the child distributing must answer “you’re welcome”.

I must say that TF Model School is a promising one. Because there are few students per teacher, children receive a lot of individual attention. They also receive plenty of affection. I have noticed that a few students whose behaviour was fairly problematic seem to behave better now. I am convinced that it is the result of explaining to them why doing certain things is not good and what would be more appropriate, rather than scolding them and punishing them, making them feel eventually that they are bad children. There is also the case of Samir Sardar who wasn’t speaking at all when he first arrived and wasn’t interacting with other children. Eight months later, he was a lot more social and enjoyed playing with the other children and took interest in lessons. Now he is a very good student who is also very well-behaved as well as friendly and sociable. He is basically happier. Obviously the Model School worked well for Samir. I hope that the school will see many other students open up, flourish and become happy and responsible people, just like the promising children currently at the Model school.

With siblings Brihaspati and Laxman

Three very well-behaved students, Trisha, Arpita and Sneha

Samir Sardar, who made huge progress within the school

One of the teachers, Susmita