Teacher's Training Workshops and Curriculum Drama: A New Initiative

In 2014 in April – May, Umang embarked on a new initiative- probably for the first time in the country, that of introducing Curriculum Drama. This is part of our effort to promote Process Drama or drama in Education methodology (DIE) in schools for both children and teachers.

To make education more interactive, fun and experiential we have introduced class room modules where our experts teach a lesson which is part of the curriculum, to students of a particular class, using Process Drama conventions and methods. This is an extremely participatory method where the questions and answers to problems in the lessons are drawn from the students themselves and taught in a playful manner using theatre games and improvisations. Situations are created that are close to their experience of life and they are provoked to think of the questions and their solutions themselves. This method allows the lesson to be imbibed much better and promotes better understanding and assimilation of concepts and events around them. These classes were held in 10 schools of East Delhi in the presence of subject teachers to get their feedback on the lesson content handled and the efficacy of its methodology. And the feedback was extremely positive from both teachers and students. The workshops were conducted by Dipendra Rawat and Kirandeep Sharma, both experienced TIE/DIE experts.

This was however only the introductory phase for this module. Our main aim is to reach out to maximum number of school teachers and share this methodology so that they can use this technique for making their class room teaching more interactive and meaningful for children and themselves. As a pilot project Umang conducted a 5 day teacher training workshop at Lady Irwin School in 2015, to a very satisfactory outcome.

In 2016 we worked in collaboration with NCERT to evolve a Teacher Training module for Language teaching in the Middle Schools. This 6 day module was tried out with 40 teachers of Navodaya schools from all over India, organized by NCERT, and the feedback has been very positive. We have subsequently evolved modules for Social Science teachers and for Gender Sensitization and have conducted some workshops in CCRT and private schools. We will be conducting more Teacher Training Workshops round the year, for different groups of teachers, led by experts specifically trained and experienced in employing these creative, theatre linked methods and strategies.

The workshops we offer based on these modules are:

• Workshops with school children in class room situations to handle lessons from their text books.
• Workshops with Language and Social Science in service School teachers in schools or with a mixed group. These can be designed to suit the time availability of teachers.
• Workshops with Teacher trainees in DIETs or B Ed.
• Workshops with Arts / Theatre teachers who can then facilitate this process within their schools.
• Gender sensitization workshops for all of the above.

Umang also undertakes monitoring, mentoring and follow up workshops with teachers attempting these methodologies in their classroom teaching so that they can gain confidence in handling the complexities and creative possibilities of this methodology for most lessons and it can become an integral part of their process and not a one off attempt.