Article | eVidyaloka

Priya Aditya,a volunteer shares her experience of teaching with eVidyaloka for the academic year 2015-’16, kids of 7th grade of Baad center, Dharwad district, Karnataka. The journey continues into the year 2016-17 with a new lot of kids at our Baad center.

Evidyaloka came to me out of the blue, while I was browsing online if there was a way to teach sitting at home. It was incredible, it was possible! A few of my nobler friends were looking for volunteers to fly out of town and help in teaching rural students. Since I was not yet prepared to do that, evidyaloka suited me just fine. I got a chance to converse in Kannada, since living in Singapore (and these days probably even living in Karnataka/ India), I rarely get a chance to speak Kannada.

I just needed to fill out some details and register, there was a friendly Skype call from Evidyaloka, very diplomatically checking out the credentials of volunteers (required of course!) and we were on. Tutorials for onboarding the teachers were available online, which I went through.

Class 7 of Baad, Dharwad were an intelligent lot. On Day 1 they surprised me with their basic English language skills, when they greeted me with “I am fine, thank you Madam, how are you?” While some of them had trouble reading out the letters, some were already well versed with simple words. They enjoyed the challenges I threw at them, whether to describe a picture or to write about their weekend in English. The improvement shown by students who couldn’t even recognize the letters was quite satisfying. I also noted that my Kannada had improved, when they translated carrot to ‘Gajjara’ and so on. Listening to their Dharwad dialect was also quite interesting for me, a Mysorean.

In the guise of teaching English, I even added a bit of manners and hygiene in some lessons, which I hope they remember. But seldom have I seen a group of students better behaved and polite than this batch. I hope the future batches are just as good!

Upon learning that they had no access to English books apart from their text books, I collected and dispatched a carton of pre-loved story books of well known publishers, lovingly packed by my daughter and her friend. Whether the students benefitted from these books, I hope to find out soon.

A little shove from me has moved some of my friends in India and Singapore too, to join evidyaloka. I only hope I have not just taught but also inspired my students to learn more. My efforts are just a drop in the ocean, our country needs many more teachers to inspire these highly intelligent, knowledge-thirsty and sometimes lost kids.