New Delhi, 23 March 2022: Travelling all the way from Lucknow to the nation’s capital, a dozen tiny tots from Kindergarten to Grade 2 interacted with the media at the Press Club of India here on Wednesday.
Their demand: 100% literacy for all of India’s children. The little ambassadors from Lucknow read the day’s newspapers with fluency in both English and Hindi. They also demonstrated their one-grade-up mathematical skills, leaving the witnesses awestruck.
At the press meet Dr. Sunita Gandhi, a well-known educationist and innovator, who is a Ph.D. in Physics from Cambridge University, UK; and is a former Economist, The World Bank, USA shared details of a unique learning programme she has created that helped the children in improving their Foundational and Numeracy (FLN) skills
Dr. Gandhi said, “These kids have learned these foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) skills in just 30-hours over three months, and then they practised for fluency. This is while the schools nationwide are trying to close the two-year learning loss. To acquire these skills rapidly, the children have used the reverse methodology of Global Dream Toolkits and a paired learning process of Accelerating Learning for All or ALfA.”
Details of Global Dream Accelerating Learning for All (ALfA) a disruptive – fast track educational pedagogy were shared with the media by Dr. Gandhi. “Global Dream Accelerating Learning for All (ALfA) is dramatically different. We do not teach the alphabet. We go straight to words. Children decode by themselves. Teachers do not teach or tell they act as enablers.” Dr. Gandhi explained.
Dr. Sunita added, “ALfA pedagogy came out of working with children in the slums and government schools. It was recently implemented in budget private schools such as City International School(CIS), a CBSE K12 school in Lucknow which was started by me for doing research work in education. CIS is teaching 34 Covid orphans for free and many of its children are on full free ship or discounts. Its students are excelling in all domains and many are getting admissions in international universities.”
Former Chief Secretary Uttar Pradesh, Alok Ranjan, in a statement said: “When I was coming down the children’s school – CIS’s corridor, I went to the various classrooms and talked to these children and made them read, and they were reading as fluently as they are reading in front of you, almost all of them. So that is remarkable.”
Dr. Sunita Gandhi, who has created the disruptive learning pedagogy said further, “The main problem in education has been that of speed. When children learn rapidly, India can become literate in months, not years. We need to begin now. One more year without rapid gains can be disastrous. The good news is we have the National Achievement Survey coming up in March 2023, and we can showcase dramatic results using Global Dream.”
To the question, how will the same teachers deliver a new result, Dr. Gandhi said, “When teachers witness rapid growth, they are encouraged. Their beliefs change. Instead of training teachers as in the past, we can now try learning while doing. ALfA prompts are a crash course teachers have never had, and urgently need.”
Menka Sharma, a teacher using these disruptive methods said, “Global Dream has made our job far easier, and learning by the children more effective. We can never go back to the tedious methods of the past.”
The children were accompanied by their parents. Kanika Jain, mother of 5-year-old Ridhima said, “This is working like magic. Children learn and understand many times more. Wish all children in India can learn this way, and my child can be an ambassador for change.”
GLOBAL DREAM DISRUPTIVE LITERACY
Global Dream Disruptive FLN is a movement for a literate world, to fulfil the SDG 4 goals of quality education and universal education for all primary aged children. India’s New Education Policy accords the highest importance to foundational literacy and numeracy skills for all children. NIPUN Bharat scheme of the Ministry of Education has further elaborated these goals for Balvatika up to Grade 3 and aims to accomplish universal FLN for these grades by 2026/27.
Global Dream Accelerating Learning for All (ALfA) is a revolutionary new pedagogy that relies upon children working with each other. The teacher is an enabler who prepares the environment and motivates all children.
DEVI SANSTHAN
DEVI—Dignity, Education, Vision International is an educational non-profit that is promoting literacy and education opportunities for children across India and internationally through partnerships with governments and institutions. It has a Global Disruptive Literacy Advisory Committee with members from across the world. ALfA methods are being implemented in the US and in many countries across the developing world.