Workshop with teachers at Muktangan, Mumbai
The Kabir Project has been invited by Muktangan to facilitate a two-day workshop as part of their Diwali teacher training programme. It will include an introduction to Kabir, a screening of the film ‘Had-Anhad’, reflections by filmmaker Shabnam Virmani on her personal journey with Kabir, sharing of music from folk traditions of Malwa, Rajasthan and Kutch. Through all of this, there would be an attempt to link this exposure to the everyday lives of the teachers and the school they teach in. While Muktangan is involved with seven schools in Mumbai, the workshop will mainly address teachers of Globe Mills Passage School located in Elphinstone. It is hoped that such an interaction with teachers will inspire them to come up with inventive ways of bringing the ideas to their students. The brainstorming about possibilities in education will be facilitated by Chintan Girish Modi.
Muktangan is an NGO that seeks to provide quality, child-centred, inclusive education for the children from economically disadvantaged sections of society. The teachers in Muktangan are women and men from the community with a minimimum qualification of Std. X or XII. They undergo a 10-month pre-service training which includes English, theory of child development, philosophy and methodology of Muktangan. They are then absorbed within seven municipal schools and there is continuous in-service training.
The teacher trainings usually are need-based and focus on classroom practices, pedagogy, materials development, teacher skills etc. Muktangan also looks out for opportunities to broaden the horizon of the teachers by exposing them to a variety of perspectives on culture and society. It is in this regard that they were interested in collaborating with the Kabir Project.
