New syllabus: State trains 12K teachers

To ensure that government school teachers are equipped to deal with the new syllabus, 12,000 teachers are being trained in Tiruvannamalai and Cheyyar, said CEO V Jayakumar from the district education wing.

Speaking to DT Next, he said, “Currently teachers handling higher secondary classes are undergoing training in Tiruvannamalai and Cheyyar for two days on each subject following the government introducingnew syllabus.”

“After the training session, the teachers will be asked to send a five-minute video of them teaching ant topic from any subject of their choice. The videos will be scrutinised by a ten-member team and the best of them will be uploaded on social media,” Jayakumar added.

Stating that the team consisted current and retired headmasters and senior teachers, he said, “We will monitor the videos uploaded on social media to check how many likes and shares they get. The ones whose videos perform the best on social media will behonoured officially.”

He also said that sharing the videos on social media would allow the teachers’ skills to be exposed to wider audience. “There is a good chance for teachers to be known globally for their teaching skills. We hope this recognition pushes teachers to handle classes better in addition to getting to linked to teachers globally who can help them with pointers,” said Jayakumar.

Senior teachers who spoke to this reporter appreciated this move. A teacher requesting not to be named said, “This is a good way to use social media to help government teachers as we usually lack access to high end facilities unlike those in private schools.”

They also said the exercise was not hard as all the teachers had smart phones and all they have to do is to take a video while undertaking a teaching session during training.

Once training for higher secondary subjects ends, training will start for SSLC subjects and so on till teachers complete this exercise.