Restarting the classes for 2014-2015

We are going to restart taking classes of our Aparijita Literacy Program form today. These classes will be a little different from regular classes. These will be more like a welcoming class. We arranged a group meeting to previously discuss what we will be doing in today’s class. We want to know and test how much our students can remember from the learning of the last year through fun activities. We divided the activities of our 1 hour classes as follows:

i) Welcoming Speech

ii) Displaying the short video in which we showcased briefly the activities we performed in last year. Also, we will show their personal photos of the function

iii) Fun Games: We have made some games with the basic alphabets, words and sentences. From there, the students will be asked which alphabet belongs to which group. They will also be asked to make sentences from the alphabets. We will also show them pictures of different things and ask them to name those things; to spell and to arrange either a word or a sentence from those. 

iv) Ending speech to thank and encourage them.

Struggle On The Way

After break gradually the number of student started to decrease. Day by day because of work pressure they failed to attain class because they had to go houses of some stuff in higher position after completing double shift duty. It was also the time when trusty board of AUW was preparing to come. For that purpose, within whole AUW all stuffs of every position were busy. As our students are responsible to keep every corner of AUW clean, they had to do the most important and tiring work. However, their absent was disappointing to us. With two or one student we were not happy and became board as teacher. None of our class plan and game plan in order to teach them through entertainment started not to work out.  We met them again and again. We informed them that they are having class and we are waiting in every class for them. All those seems went in vain. We started to complain and scream like child to our faculty advisers. We informed them about the absence of the students. It was a time when all of us were more or less disappoint. We all together tried our most to find out a way to get rid of that problem.

All of us including our one faculty adviser decided to met them officially and discuss about their problems so that we can have a clear idea about their obstacles. We thought they are having problem to attain class on their week end. For that reason, we also decided to shift our class time on Thursday from Friday and Saturday. We arranged a meeting. Our advisor Ms. Sharmistha Ghosh talked with them. She asked about their problems and very subtle way increased them to attain class regularly. In the meeting we observed that they are very interested but for their work they are not capable to attain class regularly. Their problems once again reminded us that it is not easy to reach our destination despite our dream and hope. We also had some fun in the meeting. It was mostly to knock their mind to push themselves to be educated. We finish our meeting with our students with great enthusiasm  and promise to be in the class . In the meeting we also informed them that we change our class schedule on Thursday rather that Friday and Saturday. We asked them whether it will be effective for them or not. They all agreed that class on Thursday will be easy to attain.

Our tension about our students’ absence reduced but did not vanished from our mind. We were still tensed about whether they will be able to come or not. With a confused mind we all went to class. A great surprise was waiting for all of us there. When we entered into our class, all our student apus were sitting in the class already. Their number were more than we expected. We got some new students who has recently joined AUW as a cleaner. Although it was a bit difficult to cope up with old and new students at once, we tutored them so that they can have the best teaching from us. It was a very exciting and amazing class with almost 25 students in two shifts. We as teachers were also very happy with all our students.

All Our Dreams Can Come True

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."~Walt Disney

Today I felt the reality of this quote. In every great work in the world has gone through different barriers before reaching its destination. It is also true for our program as well. We have completed 1 year of our dream program to teach the cleaning staff of AUW. Through this one year journey we have learned a lot of new things. When we were upset about the absence of our students in class, our enthusiastic professor Christian came forward and reminded us that it is easy to work in a fully organized program, but it takes courage to go handle a program both in its success and failures. We understand that it is not the end of the world. If we are facing some problems, we need to find out the solution as well. Once again, Ms. Sharmistha came forward to recover our anxiety about the future of our program. Now it seems that we can do a lot if we follow the correct guidance of our leader. Now we are full of enthusiasm and ready to bring a positive change in our second home AUW as well as in the society.

14th and 15th February

Not everytime our class plan works. For example, for todays class we were supposed to teach alphabets from ট-ন  according to our class plan but some students did not attend the previous classes. So we had to look back and teach from the beginning of consonant alphabets because we want to make sure that every single student is on the same track.

We continued with ট-ন alphabets with the students who attended the previous classes and passed both the test. We taught them ট-ন and showed them how to write those alphabets. We also showed them the similarities and differences with the letters they learned before so that they do not become confused by looking almost same type of letters. In this class, we also taught the students to write their own names. It was very interesting. Most of them somehow could write their name as they need to sign in their work place. We taught them how to write every letter of their names. Seeing the difference in their own writing of their name, they became very happy. We also showed them the letters in their names separately so that they can connect those with the letters they already knew.

31st January and 1st February

To check how much our students remember their learning we played a game with papers. We gave them some pieces of paper with alphabets, which we taught them before the break. Each piece of paper contained an alphabet. We told them to organize the alphabets in order. Some of them organized the alphabets within a short time but many of them could not organize them. The reason behind that was not practicing for a long time. For  their work pressure in job place and maintenance of family they could not manage time to read or write the alphabets they learned. They were hesitating for forgetting. However, as we always try to maintain a friendly relation with them, we helped those people who could not organize the alphabets so that they could remember. We tried to explain that it was not their fault so that they release from tension of forgetting. Then we asked them to practice writing of alphabets.

We made them read and write the alphabets several times for better memorizing. People who did very well in organizing the alphabets accordingly, we gave them a sheet including filing the gaps of vowel and consonant, organize the alphabets and marked known alphabets among the story.