Back in Action!

Apologies to everyone who's been following this blog. I've been very much at work, but haven't gotten around to writing about it.

Last time, I was in Hyderabad for just three and a half days. Though a fair amount of work got done, there wasn't enough time to get to know the people well enough. This time round, I spent about three weeks in Hyderabad, and felt nice to be surrounded by some wonderful people at my workplace.

Sushma and I were to write a proposal to potential funders willing to support Spark India's proposed Teacher Resource Centre. Since Sushma and I had little experience of proposal writing, it took us quite a while to get started. Eventually we realised it would be best to put down all the points that we thought were essential, and then direct our attention to matters like structure and organisation. Once we put down all the points and gave it some kind of structure, it was passed on to Sheel and Usha who are the decision makers at Spark. Sushma and I got some feedback and comments on our work, and we started redoing the whole thing. Since both of us are new to the place, we don't know much about the history and track record of the organisation, some of which had to be highlighted to attract funders. Putting all of that in, and listing out aims and objectives, plan of action, expected outcomes, etc. made it look a lot better and more professional. That was a good learning experience.

Besides that, I was given some proofreading work. The Telegraph has published a directory of schools, and Spark is planning to contact many of them. The school addresses were put onto the Spark database, but the data entry person had made a huge number of spelling errors. I was asked to proofread them against the original.

I've also been involved with Teacher Plus, a magazine that Spark publishes. It is mainly aimed at school teachers, but is also of interest to parents, researchers and other people who take a keen interest in education. Though the magazine is great, it has been lagging behind because of poor marketing and publicity. I spoke to Mr Tapas Ray who co-ordinates the contact programme of the distance mode Post Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of English at EFL University in Hyderabad. We were able to get permission to distribute complimentary copies of Teacher Plus to 182 students who are in Hyderabad to do the course, and they are from several different parts of the country. We got a good response, and we hope some subscription forms will soon knock at the office. We also visited Aurobindo Montessori School and met the Principal to tell her about Teacher Plus, and gave her some copies to look at.

With Teacher Plus, I also got the wonderful opportunity to get back to writing in a serious way. The person who was to do the cover story for the August issue turned in something that the editing team was not happy with, so they had asked her to redo it. The writer had some other commitments, so she said she wouldn’t be able to do it. Since the cover story was on libraries, I jumped at the idea of taking it up. I had little time on hand and few contacts, so it was a little difficult. But Shalini and Nirmala at Spark were a big help. I fixed up an appointment with Omana Hirantara who runs a learning centre called Kaleidoscope at Begumpet. It’s an interesting place. Apart from the children’s library, they offer a host of other services, one of which is the after school programme. Kids who sign up for this walk into Kaleidoscope after school. They can wash up, change and have a snack; after which, they can sit and read books they like, play with the other children, or look forward to games and educational software. I also had a chat with Radhika Kundalia who runs Akshara, a library in Mumbai. Radhika not only stocks books for children, but also an entire section for parents who have children with autism. Doing the cover story was a lovely experience. It gave me the time and space to think about libraries in a more reflective manner. I learnt how school libraries function, the kind of problems that emerge there, and why it is important to encourage alternative spaces for children. The happiest part was writing the boxes on ‘Caring for Books’ and ‘Do’s and Don’ts for Libraries’. I also found a fun book called ‘I love books’ published by Tulika. It is well-written and beautifully illustrated, a helpful aid for people trying to encourage kids to read.

Here comes the sad part. Though of omitting this, but no, I want to talk about this. There was some unpleasantness at work. I was given a number of things to do, all of which I did. And I sat and waited and waited for a response, which just didn’t come a number of times. My attempt to cope with this was to either look for some diversion or try to find something exciting to do. Now I respect and value my work, and it was difficult to see that things I did were not being taken seriously. At last I lost my patience, and I had to articulate all the disappointment and anger I had felt. It was not well taken at first, but eventually it got sorted out. I also feel happy about the fact that I found many friends at work, with whom I could share my feelings whenever things got bad.