Students give valuable lessons in own classroom

New Delhi: At Teach India's orientation session last week at Modern School, Vasant Vihar , students of class XII took over as teacher volunteers to help children from the NGO, Katha.
The student-teacher ratio set a new standard. Each student was assigned a volunteer who would be with them for the next three months. The role of the student volunteers will be to help kids with studies and also become their friends as they go along.
Most student volunteers preferred to devote the first session chatting up their students , trying to know more about them. Some though adopted more innovative methods. Raghav asked his student to write about herself in English and then used the opportunity to correct her grammar and punctuation while Vaibhav Gupta chose to talk about Rajinder's school and what she liked and disliked about it. This gave him valuable insights into what she thought of her syllabus.
A few others got off to a start straight away. Manish Jain, decided to teach BODMAS to his student and gave him simple sums for practice. Even though it was only the first day of their interaction, many volunteers already seemed to have struck a bond with their students. Vaibhav said he would be in touch with Rajinder and monitor her progress even after the three-month term is over. '' For privileged students like me, it is an opportunity to give back to society and to know more about my country. We all have our dreams and I'm happy that by giving an hour a week, I'm helping someone else get closer to their dreams,'' says Vaibhav.
What is remarkable is that these student volunteers themselves are pretty busy. They are in their board year and many of them have coaching classes after school, but despite that they are determined to give an hour every week to their students. '' I don't think giving an hour a week will affect my studies,'' says Manish, before heading for his own coaching class at Naraina.
toireporter@timesgroup .com