School teacher uses loudspeakers to broadcast lessons to students

PUNE: Every morning, since the last 10 days, students living near Mahadeo temple in Badole village, located close to Akkalkot, are waking up to the voice of their teachers reciting poems from their textbooks or teaching lessons via the loud speaker at the temple.
Teachers of KP Gaikwad High School have converted around 60 lessons into audio files that are broadcast through the loud speakers of three temples in the area between 6am and 8am. Mayur Dantakale, a teacher, said, “The idea is to ensure that children do not lose touch with the learning environment.”
A local survey revealed that of 350-odd students from Std V to X studying in the school, only 80% had a smartphones while about 20% had no phones at all. This led Dantakale, a drawing teacher, to think of alternative modes.
When he saw the news about a teacher from North India using loudspeakers to teach, he realized that the idea could be replicated at his village. Soon, the entire team got to work. While the teachers understood that the loudspeaker lessons couldn’t replace the actual teaching-learning process, and may not even be successful in helping students understand their lessons, the aim has been to ensure that students have at least some semblance of education in their daily life.
“This endeavour requires teamwork. We have five teachers at the school, including headmaster Sunil Gumaste and coordinator Mahadeo Sonkar, and three non-teaching staff. The programme is being run on an experimental basis for Std V to VIII. We have about 60 lessons from languages and theory subjects converted to MP3 files, which are copied to a pen drive and played on the temple loudspeakers. The local mosques have also permitted us to use their loudspeakers,” said Dantakale.
He added that about 100 students living around the temples can hear these lessons. “We are not claiming that this initiative will be an amazing success. We just want students to know that schools will reopen soon and they must study. Secondly, many parents have said that they like the experiment. Students wake up early in villages and it is good for them if they hear stories and poems from their textbooks in the morning. Even if 10 students learn something from the initiative, we will consider it a success,” said Dantakale.
While online classes have started for Std IX and X, they are thinking of using the same medium for language subjects. “All of us go around the village talking to parents and students and, sometimes, our presence is enough for students to take self-study seriously. Their problems are very basic. They do not have pencils or notebooks and they tell us to get it for them. We do the needful during the next visit. Sometimes, they want to clear a doubt and we help them. Hence, our presence makes the biggest difference to their educational life,” added Dantakale.
(with inputs from Suryakant Asabe)