Anganwadi Teachers Training

Written by Deepali

One day, we received a mail from Sethu, another NGO if we could conduct a half day training session for Anganwadi teachers who were undergoing a course with them. Always eager to share the joy of reading books with anybody who works with children, we readily agreed.

Along with my colleague Krupa, I reached the venue, eager to meet all the twenty six anganwadi workers who would be nurturing young children into a new magical world of books. There were twenty six teachers in all, two from each taluka who were attending a core training course and our little segment on books and early literacy was one in the training module.

After we broke the ice with some library games, we distributed different types of storybooks to all the teachers for browsing. The excitement was visible as none of the participants  had seen such well developed story books for pre-schoolers. It was such a joy to see that excitement for books from adults. If an educator is excited about books and reading, that very same positive energy will flow to the children too. We discussed a number of points regarding books and reading. It was notable that all the teachers understood the importance of reading but many voiced concerns that they did not have access to these kinds of books and felt that the Government should provide child centric books to their Anganwadis. But Dr Nandita and me stressed on the point that they can always demand but in the meanwhile they can put to use the resources that they have in hand by using a bit of imagination and innovation.

I also did a story read aloud session for the teachers who were so excited listening to the story that they actually turned into little pre-schoolers laughing and giggling.

We viewed a couple of educational  films made by Pragat Shiksha Sansthan on picture reading and initiating discussions from the children during story reading thereby connecting the children to the story and had discussions.

This batch seemed very enthusiastic about their goal towards helping children to love books and reading. We left the session with a hopeful heart for all those pre-schoolers who will now benefit from these teachers and a tentative commitment that Bookworm must find a path to help and support the Anganwadis in Goa.