Rajeeva Gowda
Grant Period: Over one year and six months
Rajeev is a teacher who wears many hats. Unlike others who limit themselves to the school and are less exposed to the field of arts, Rajeev has been pursuing his passion for photography and writing very diligently. Serving as Headmaster at the Kuvempu Centenary Higher Primary School in Chikkaballapur District, he and his colleagues are constantly working towards upgrading the facilities of the school by reaching out to the government and individual donors for support and funds. At a personal level he has kept himself updated of regional literature and theatre. He regularly contributes on various topics to Sudha and Mayura, both popular Kannada magazines. Given his interest in astronomy he has conducted several sky gazing sessions at night in the school. His experience in translating P.K.Srinivasan’s book on mathematics from English to Kannada has been the trigger for his current project for which he received a grant from IFA.
He feels that the primary reason children find it difficult to understand mathematics is because of the verbose and alien language that is used in the math textbooks. Given this, he started working with children to break down the text to more realistic examples from their everyday life, keeping it conversational while discussing a problem statement. This exercise has resulted in children being more participative in the learning process. Encouraged by this, under this project, he plans to work with children in creating their own version of an integrated math and language workbook aiding their curricular learning. Students will draw from their everyday experiences in constructing problem statements while other subject teachers will also contribute to the texts making it more inclusive. Rajeev will invite illustrators to conduct sessions for children to help them create story boards for the book. By the end of the nine months all grades from four to seven will have a workbook to share with other cluster schools in the region.
This grant was made possible with support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore.