Suresh's Alumni Grant Activity 2016:
A Lecture Presentation
When: December 18 – 19’ 20016.
Where: At Dr. D.D. Pant Memorial Children's Science Exploratory and Government Girls Inter College, Berinag (Uttarakhand), India.
For Whom: Students,
teachers (from four different schools) and community members from a highly underserved
population in and around a small town Berinag, Uttrakhand, India.
Summary of the proposed project: - I have utilized my alumni grant 2016 to educate students, teachers and
community members from a highly underserved population in and around a small
town Berinag, Uttrakhand, India through a workshop and a lecture presentation
during December 18-19’ 2016. Workshop and lecture presentation were based on my alumni grant activities in the past and my Fulbright Distinguished
Awards in Teaching Program experience in the United States. Proposed workshop was a first-hand experience to the students and teachers by involving them
into hand-on activities using low cost pedagogical tools based on games and
models. Moreover, it helped them to expose to the experiential learning
opportunities.
The workshop helped me to promote involvement of girls in educational activities in such rural areas as it comprized 60% girls and 40% boys, along with the teachers, from different schools in Berinag.
The lecture
presentation was a dissemination of my Fulbright capstone project, described outcomes
of the current workshop and helped propagating outcomes of all alumni grant
activities that I have organized till now.
The objectives of the activity: -
The four-fold purpose of my alumni grant is
(i) To draw the attention of the students, teachers and community members from the rural areas towards the use and popularization of games and models as low cost pedagogical tools in teaching by disseminating my capstone project and related activities,
(ii) To educate students, teachers and community from a highly underserved population through experiential
learning opportunities by exposing
them to ‘learning by doing’ activities
using games and model first hand,
(iii) to bring girls into the forefront of educational activities in the community by ensuring higher involvement of girls through the grant activity, and to motivate educational leaders to invest (not for profit) in such educational activities within and outside the community. 
A description of the
need for the project and any activities I have already implemented to address
this need: - The students in the demographics such as Berinag, Uttrakhand,
India, particularly those from Government schools (target population of my
alumni grant), does not have resources such as funds, tools and other supporting
learning material.
These schools and students are segregated by most of the profit
based corporations and organizations as the students in these schools are not
capable of affording expensive tools and models. The willing non-profit
organizations hardly able to reach to such rural areas, which automatically
deprives these students from the new and differentiated learning opportunities
available.
There is a strong need to educate students, teachers and the community
in such areas about alternative resources of developing low cost teaching-learning
tools by using surrounding material. This project will encourage them to use
low cost models and games, available in their surroundings, for teaching
-learning purposes and thereby will make them self-resourced.
Workshop and
lecture of the project would also help them to make their knowledge concrete
and experience based.
My alumni grant activities organized in the past (2013, 2015) were
focused on training the trainers (teachers) from Delhi and NCR (National
capital Regions), which were highly successful. Teachers benefitted from those
activities use models and lesson plans, that they were able to develop during
these alumni grant activities, in their schools.
Acknowledgements: The U.S. Department of State & EPSO, Texas A&M University.
