The Times They Are A-changin

Driving back into Nongkrem is always a surreal experience. The meat still hangs from hooks inside the open fronted tin roofed shop fronts, four year olds walk hand-in-hand in the middle of the road taking themselves to school and then there is the most surprising element of all - 75% of the schools are using cutting edge technology in LbQ on over 130 devices. 

Now in it's fourth year, it was a pleasure to show Andy around the schools. What we witnessed was pleasing, confusing and frustrating. Most of all though, pleasing. Each school had it's own strengths and areas for development- I like that. It shows that they have been able to grow with the project organically. They have put their own stamp on it. I always say a strength with LbQ is that there are countless ways on how you use and implement it. Some schools will make incredible use of it purely through an intervention and tutoring structure and others will have it as their in-class teaching tool. There were examples of staff meticulously using the data to then intervene 1:1 with students at their desk - whizzing around like the mosquitos that I'll be glad to see the back of. One school had taken it upon themselves to use the platform to then create question sets for social science lessons - that screams that they value the pedagogical approach of LbQ and what it offers you as a class teacher. Then, similar to work I have been involved with in Derby, there were 'Yesss!' moments watching teachers use the question set to model in a gradual release approach. 

None of this may sound very impressive - but as I repeatedly told Andy (with a smile), "Ahhh! This is good! In our first and second year, the teachers used to just walk out and leave the class."

That is progress. It was never a goal to change teaching culture in these Khasi Hills but you know what? There are more than green shoots to suggest it is doing. As I mentioned a couple of years back, this area of India has a unexplained adoration of Bob Dylan and so I will end with this: 'The Times they are a-changin'.