Teacher Training, exposure and creative learning opportunities have been at the heart of Bookworm activities since inception.
Our friends and colleagues at Sethu work with a similar vision, recognising that refreshing teachers and nurturing them is a significant way to enrich the learning practices on the ground.
I have been supporting Gyandeep , the Preschool Education Course that Sethu offers for over 6 years now.
Every year I am heartened and pleased by the profile of the group. Never too large, never too imbalanced. There is always a mix of young, fresh graduates and not so young experienced teachers. There is a mix of in service and pre service teachers. There is a mix of people who always knew they wanted to work in a preschool environment and those who are shifting mid career, but they have always been female!
This year thanks to the vision and graciousness of Anjali Nunes and Nandita de Souza at Sethu, I am able to do the sessions at Bookworm. This, we feel is a rich opportunity to expose teachers to a stimulating learning environment, to have easy and ready access to all the pre school material we house at BW and to learn and be stimulated from the wider Bookworm team.
It is happening and in design the components I am meant to do are being introduced to the medium of the story. The teachers are experiencing story time at BW, as children must, but in that process they are being exposed to the principles of Early Literacy in a holistic way.
Talk, sensory experience, early writing, expression and drawing, listening, doing, thinking, creating , sharing, collaboration and joyfulness all come together when the purpose is clear. enabling children to love books – this requires literacy skills and the ways, approaches, methods and practices become clear.
We look forward to 9 more preschool educators spreading the vision and we thank Sethu for this opportunity.
