Dhruba Jyoti is an Arts graduate from Wadia College. He majored in Economics and Math. Went on to work as a journalist with the Times of India, covering sports. What got him into Bulls Eye was an article published in Pune Times. It had the 3 founders sitting on a metal staircase posing for a cute photograph. He thought that it would be nice to interact with these three fresh IIM passouts. Reminds me why are we not investing more in PR. We asked Dhuba what he thought was the best thing about Bulls Eye in his times. He remembers that you could stay overnight at Baskar’s pad to study. The first year, he joined the test series at Bulls Eye. Because his budget was only 1500. The test series was enough to catapult Dhruba into SIBM Pune. He wanted to give it a second shot. This time he paid 3500 more, and did the classroom course. Ended up getting calls from IIM Calcutta, Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode. He didn’t appear for the Indore and Kozhikode interviews, because SIBM was already good enough. Unfortunately could not make it, so went on to finish his MBA from SIBM. His first job after MBA was with Daikin Air Conditioning. Headed sales for Andhra Pradesh. Switched to selling loans for Citi Financial at Hyderabad. Spent 4 and a half years in the corporate world.
In 2005, he had to rush back to Rourkela and join the school because of a tragedy in the family. Things stabilized after a year. Asked himself, is it something that I want to do for longer? The answer was yes. He went on to stay another 12 years with the school. In these years, he has started 3 more schools. The idea is to have a sustainable growth plan. Being a 45 year old school, there is a good alumni network that Dhruba banks on. In almost all his schools, the principals are alumni of the school. He mirrors what we are doing at peepal tree, all 3 new schools are on rented premises. The biggest of the 3 new schools is at a small taluka place called Banai, about 60 kilometres from Rourkela on the Rourkela Bhubaneswar highway. There are about 400 students in this school.
Education is inherently political. Getting support from the ecosystem is important. In the Banai school, the game changer was a science exhibition. It made the local community realise that these kids are really good. Today the ecosystem is helping him get additional land. There is a possibility that the government school, which is lying student-less, will be handed over to their society. The school is upto 8th standard. A conscious decision. In fact, he really wanted to run it till 7th standard, but giving in to parental pressure he had to start class 8. Ninth and tenth grades require a different calibre of teachers, who are not available at the taluka level. There is a convent school that has gone up to 10 standard, but they are making do with part time teachers.
Dhruba’s schooling philosophy is based on: Ananda, Jigyasa and Sadhana. Ananda is happiness, which comes from having fun as you learn. Something which predominates our younger years. Jigyasa is curiosity, which is the foundation of the middle school. A teacher can use a child’s natural jigyasa to improve language skills. For example: Why don’t you ask me this question in English? Why don’t you complain in English? A teacher has to do her best to encourage students to speak with her in English. If not full English, tuta futa hi sahi. Finally, Sadhana is devotion, persistence. This is something which continues to adulthood.
An interesting example of Sadhna was given by Dhruba. Managing the mind is the biggest challenge. When he took over the operations of the school, he had a workshop with six of his senior teachers over two days. The 72 manhours that were spent were devoted to problem solving. Teachers came up with problems faced by the school. Dhurba claimed ignorance about solutions, being a newbie in the schools business. He emphasizes that his job was only to get the job done. And so teachers had come meditate about their own solutions to these problems. The key solution that emerged was a lesson plan. In 2007, Dhruba spent some time in the UK, where he visited some schools. He was surprised to find that his own schools’ lesson plans were quite similar to the UK plans. The intelligence is already residing inside all schools.
I asked Dhruva to talk about Indo English schools approach to language teaching. With a name like Indo English, I am sure they are doing a much better job in English teaching than we do. Teachers start by focusing on words. After a discussion of new words, there is a text with questions. This helps reinforce the use of these words. The big challenge is when students give up. It’s the task of a teacher to make the child get the feeling ‘I am succeeding.’ Encouragement is important aka the protagonist in Taare Zameen Par. Focus on ‘What are you good at?’ Most of the encouragement that the English teacher does is in Hindi or the mother tongue. Encouraging smiles don’t have a language, but words of praise do. Why waste your words of praise in a language that a student is not comfortable with!
Another issue that was discussed was the importance of systems. Systems keep the romanticism of entrepreneurship in check. Although romanticism helps breed a lot of good values, it can be heartbreaking when there are failures. A lot of time, we have friction because tasks are not organised well. The school system tries to grade the importance of issues. And teachers realise that most of these issues are really not so important. Of all the voices that a student listens to, the school’s voice has the most credibility. We can’t afford the school to have multiple voices. The system tries to build cohesiveness. Sabko sath lekar chalna hai. In the early days of the school, teachers used to spend a lot of time with weak students. Dhruba introduced a system where the weak students became part of 3 month test prep program. Students are judged on their test performance. And given regular feedback. He believes that like in his Bulls Eye Test Prep, what helps students in this program is the personal attention. In earlier days, there was only a flow, which could be random at times. Today there is a design to the flow.
We digressed into the use of technology in classrooms. Mobiles are ok, if managed well. Dhruba has actually seen reading skills improve because of social media. Unfortunately, vocabulary, grammar and spelling have not. The good part about reading WhatsApp messages is that the reading is voluntary, and so you tend to pay attention. The negatives of social media are typically in the form of cyber bullying. He has an article on this topic on his Facebook page, must go through it sometime. Students in his school are mostly first generation English learners. Most come from the trading community in the town. Very conservative. So most students don’t end up with fancy phones in the first place. This reduces the intensity of the problem, compared to metros.
Dhruba believes that there are 3 types of students. The good. The slow and steady. And the shirkers. How should teachers handle shirkers, the slow learners who don’t want to learn. Dhurba’s philosophy was simple. Jis se jitna hota hai, utna hi karna hai. Anand Ji wanted to know what they do with shirkers at Indo English? Dhruba counter questioned Anand ji. ‘I am sure you had such people at Tata motors also. What did you do with them?’ Anand Ji thought about it and he remembered the case of an operator who had been almost sacked 20 times. This guy was then send to Anandji’s team. He was an electrician, who didn’t like wiring. Anandji changed the work that was assigned to him. This guy went on to become a great logistics and material planner. And Anand Ji shared proudly, that this operator survived the 10 years that have passed since Anand ji’s retirement – and has recently finally retired. Moral of the story: if you can’t change the person, change the work.
Pooja wanted more info about slow learners. Dhruba believes that not everyone can get 100/100. To each his own. A teacher should remember that it’s OK to get passing marks – or what Dhruba labels as the base minimum.
Nishi’s concern was about the special child in her class. She wanted to know what can be done to improve her writing skills. Dhruba advised to break down the alphabet into straight lines and curves. Simplicity is the essence of learning.
Komal’s query was about the Dream Girls and Dream Boys of her class. People who can’t concentrate. Dhruba’s counter question: Is it important to focus? Why are they not focusing? Why are you not looking at the board? He believes that most problems in the classroom emanate from two to three children. Spend time with these kids. They could be having problems at home, which are affecting their classroom performance.
Nisha’s question was about spellings. And also about the fact that some of our kids seem to have given up. Dhruba felt that Nisha’s strategy of using phonics, to work on spellings is a satisfactory one. Encouragement of course will help. Her next question was about the hyperactive kids of Jr KG. She answered the question herself by saying that if I make them run, first thing in the morning, then the disturbance factor comes down. My own idea is we can try out doing our activities in the morning, and let them reflect later through the day. If you start the school with fun, you will end it with fun.
Jayshree has just started teaching. And she finds that her bias sometimes comes into play. She has favourites in class. She wanted to know how she can avoid this. The first step is an awareness. identify students that you are not comfortable with, and spend more time with them. Smile at them.
Amruta’s question was about his experience with peers during his bullseye days. Jealousy. Pride. Ego. He believes that benchmarking and this competitive spirit helped improve his scores. What also helped was the personal attention. Baskar and Hari would sit down and discuss where he was going wrong. Areas of focus. Tactical ways to avoid getting stuck in a question.
Sakshi’s question was: Why is it that you are not looking at expanding up to 10 standard? First, is the two acres and associated infra to get affiliation of CBSE or ICSE boards. Currently the Bomai school is on one fourth of an acre, with another one fourth of acre of government land being accessible. Dhruva believes that by the time a kid reaches grade 8, he is on the right track, so even if she shifts schools later on, she will still end up being an achiever. He quoted an interesting study by Harvard, which says that a good kindergarten teacher can impact adults’ earnings by up to 20%. Good systems can also help make the mediocre do well. He believes that a school upto 4th grade will also do an equally good job. Government school structures are based on very sound principles, and it should be perfectly ok to copy them.
Notes on the student session
Had asked Dhruba to come prepared to teach. Did a P4C session on the theme of helping and fear. The fear he talked about was the fear of mistakes. This is something which is absent in the kindergarten but starts in the primary. When he was talking with teachers, he reinforced the same. How often do we criticize, and how little do we help!
We started the discussion on fear. Dhruva asked students: What are you afraid of? The answers revolved around ghosts – and teachers! We went on to find out why students are scared of teachers. Because teachers shout at them. Why do teachers shout at you? Because we don’t do homework. So do your homework! I wish it were so simple! The next issue for discussion was about helping.
Should you help others?
Yes.
And how do you help? Can you tell me what is it exactly that you do to help others.
When my friends are absent, I help them with homework.
How do you help teachers?
We rub the board. We get books for the teachers. We get chairs. We get markers. We sometimes even help in board writing.
If a friend is doing badmashi, can you help the teacher?
Maybe by telling our friend not to do it.
How can the teacher help you?
By helping us learn. By helping us read. By correcting our mistakes. By helping us in our gardening projects in school.
We still had some time remaining. So we did math. Dhruba handed over the class to Anand Ji, who gave addition problems to all students. With a little bit of nudging, all students got their sums right. Then we did an activity. Students and teachers made paper planes. We had great fun flying planes around. And later on, Dhruba asked us: Have you studied shapes? What shapes did you see when you made these planes? Did you use a lot of triangles in making them? Students can only be interested if they know: ‘What’s in it for me?’ Applications create interest, not theory.