Teacher Training

Asha conducts rigorous test and interviews before hiring our teachers. Most of them have a Bachelors and even Masters degree and about half of them have BEd or DTEd degrees. But teacher training is still a fundamental need for us as an organization for a variety of reasons.

The rote learning in the education systems that the teachers have gone through, haven't really equipped them with the depth of understanding that can enable them to bring such understanding in the students. For instance most teachers (even Masters in Maths) are not able to prove even basic formulae (like area of a triangle is ½bh or sum of angles in a triangle in 180o). This is also especially true about teaching theory itself.

As we are working in rural areas, most of the teachers we hire do not have good English or Computer Science skills.

The things we teach especially in Computer Science and the tools we use to teach all subjects are rapidly evolving. Constant upskilling is required for teachers to keep with the new technologies and tools.

Here are the things Asha Chennai is doing in terms of teacher training.

RightStart

This is a five day residential training program we hold during the summer holidays in May for all our teachers to provide them the “right start” for the academic year. This is our oldest teacher training initiative and IIT Madras has supported us by hosting the event in their campus since 2003! Set amidst the deers and grand banyan trees, teachers also get to enjoy themselves.

Till a few years back, the primary focus of RightStart was to teach the teachers basic techniques for teaching Maths, English and Science. However in recent years, the primary focus of RightStart has evolved to teach the teachers good teaching techniques that apply for all subjects. For example in RightStart 2026 we had training on topics such as,

  • Asking open ended questions to improve critical thinking in students.
  • Multi-disciplinary approach to teaching.
  • How to employ questioning in a classroom?

In addition to training the teachers, RightStart also brings all Asha Chennai’s teachers together and helps us build a shared vision as an organization.

RightStart - CS

In December every year we have a shorter, three-day training program for Computer Science in Thiruvallur. All our Computer Teachers, RTC teachers and the trainers come together for this training session. The focus of this is to expose our teachers to all the varied aspects of our Computer Science curriculum, especially the areas where new developments are taking place. We also train them on general aspects of computer science like algorithms, how AI works etc. This training is held towards the end of Term II in Tamilnadu. As this is about CS, our teachers from UP/Maharashtra as well as other teachers from partner organisations of Asha for Education attend this training.

Maths-English-Science Training in Sept/Oct

We have a top up training around the end of Term I and beginning of Term II. This has been focussed on training in Maths, Science and English. Till last year this was done by the same external trainers who do the training at RightStart. This year we changed it to training with our own trainers who work on various content teams. We expect this change to persist for the next few years. Trainers from our projects travel to the other projects and train them to use the contents our own teachers have created as part of the MESL Activities and Lesson Plans.

Ongoing Training by Senior Teachers

Our own senior teachers and teachers with good technical knowledge train new teachers and those who need to improve their technical skills in various aspects of our CS curriculum like Scratch programming, Physical programming, various RTC courses etc. This training happens through the year. This is in addition to the training that happens at the beginning and end of the term for all teachers. Note that some of these senior teachers also participate in the development of the courses themselves and thus most knowledgeable in their contents. Occasionally volunteers and our software developers also participate in this.

English Training by Volunteers

Most teachers we work with have a need to improve their English skills. We give these teachers an assignment a month. Volunteers from all over the world engage with them for one hour every week to discuss the assignment and also provide them a space when the medium of communication is English. Sometimes the volunteers are also not comfortable in Tamil or Hindi which sets up a good immersive environment for teachers to practice and learn English.

Monthly Meeting at Projects

The monthly meetings at our projects also serve as spaces for internal training. In each monthly meeting, a set of teachers prepare and share something with the rest of the teachers. This may be one of the packages of Asha Kanini, or a Science experiment or a classroom activity that worked well for them or even how to make nice paper roses!

In recent times, we have asked the teachers in each project to prepare on one topic related to teaching theory and conduct a participatory training session to make teachers thing consciously about that topic. These are topics such as,

  • How to deal with children with learning challenges?
  • What is spiral and block curriculum? When is one more suitable than the other. How do we employ it in our own curriculum?
  • How does the curriculum, lesson plans and assessments relate to each other?