Two lakh teachers set to be trained

Chennai: After introducing new syllabus for classes 1, 6, 9 and 11, the school education department plans to train around two lakh teachers from government, government aided and private schools under revised syllabus in the current academic year.

The department plans to train teachers from government and government-aided schools in the first phase. The teachers from private schools will be trained separately, sources added.

Along with the power point presentation and training sessions, the teachers also will be provided with Teachers Resource Book which will act as a guide for teachers in taking the lessons.

One big challenge for trainers would be removing the misconceptions and apprehensions about the new textbooks.

“Many teachers are feeling the new books are voluminous.  It is only the perception. In reality, the number of chapters and size of lessons has increased only slightly, but we have added several new features like infoboxes, examples for conceptual understanding, evaluation and problem solving,” a subject expert who is involved in the training told this paper.

The state-level training for teacher trainers has begun last week. State level resource persons for subjects including maths, English, zoology and botany were already been trained. The training for Physics and Chemistry is currently going on.

From each district, three teachers are being trained and they, in turn, train the teachers at the district level.

“We are adopting a holistic approach in training. Along with the power point presentation and teachers manual, we are also giving a DVD containing 38 videos explaining several key topics in the physics subject,” said Rita John, head, Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Madras and also domain expert for physics subject.

“The training will cover various aspects including how to introduce the new topics to students and develop their interest in the relevant topics. The topics were rearranged in the books to develop sequential thinking and the teachers will be explained about it,” she added.

Apart from enlightening the teachers, the training also is expected to be a confidence-building exercise for them.

For the first time, teachers from private schools also will be trained under the new syllabus.