Model School In The Making – A Look At Ladakh’s Government School That Has Made Headlines

The power to provide the kind of education that will turn children and their futures brighter lies with that of a teacher. Teachers hold the ability to simplify seemingly complex topics or subjects and make them comprehensible enough for young kids to understand. Amending their teaching style as per a student’s needs and experiences is just as important.

Muhammad Ali is one such teacher who understands the role he plays and carries it out gracefully. The 43-year-old teacher’s journey has taken him places before acting as the head teacher at Government Middle School in Karith Shargole, a village in Kargil district in Ladakh.

Ali himself has been born and brought up in Chanchik within Kargil. His education has taken place in local government schools and later completed his graduation in Amar Singh College in Jammu. Following which he finished in Master’s in Environmental science, English, and Education whilst carrying out his responsibilities as a teacher in a local private school before being appointed as a government school- teacher in the year 2006.

10 more years of working as a teacher in schools all over Ladakh and Ali finally was assigned to be the Acting Head teacher at the Government Middle School in Karith. With his goals already set in his mind to not just make sure that students score well in their exams but also fare well in life. This would allow them to use everything they learned at the school practically in some way or the other in their lives as well. Learning shouldn’t be limited within the walls of a classroom and needs to have a use beyond those walls as well.

Along with this, we as parents, teachers and mentors shouldn’t stress children over the necessity of getting the top grades or scores. In which case, the students will only be burdened and not really learn anything being constantly worrying about getting good grades rather than learning anything from it. He adds, “After all, not every child can come first in class”.

But Ali’s hard work of over 5 years has fared him and the school too well to be noticed in the papers as well as on social media platforms with the school being considered a model school for a better quality of education for which he was awarded the National Teacher’s Award. This award brings to light Ali’s innovative teaching method having accommodated subject-specific classrooms for the students.

The village that is far and remote barely makes up for 500 residents with the internet connectivity around the vicinity of the school being little to nothing. When Ali initially came to the school to take up teaching, he noticed how irregular and common of basic problems the school had, problems such as the school’s walls not having been painted properly, floor matting being irregular. However, with a few more schools around them the enrollment levels were considerably high.

Amongst the students he noticed that with not a great learning experience, they were shy, not so confident and struggled in their academic scores especially when it came to reading and writing. The latter, ready and writing was thus what he focused on foremost to improve for the children. Teachers in the school were gathered together and a grade wise syllabus was constructed using Rapidex English Speaking Course Textbook. Starting from the lower grades, who were taught the basics of spoken English, the difficulty increased with each increasing grade. To help improve pronunciation, a simple 5- minute lesson everyday teaching basic phonetics was given during the morning assemblies for a period of two consecutive months.

Along with this, there would also be other learning activities such as short plays and even presentations to improve confidence among the students. With a whole of 41 students enrolled in the school, one class of the lot would carry out a presentation every day during assembly. With this method and there being several classes, students from each class had enough time to learn and practice for their respective class presentations. The presentations were based on a variety of topics with presentation having to be presented in either English or Urdu.

What is most interesting is that instead of there being classes as per grade, there are classes held as per subject. With there being 9 teachers and 10 classes for every subject, classes are held as per subjects with students going to the class for a specific subject.

Here, students of all levels of grade/proficiency are present which allows the ones in the lower grade to not only learn their own course level material but also that for a higher course level which is also referred to as teaching-learning material (TLM). Not only this, but higher-grade students can also refer to previous level’s lessons and revise in any case necessary.

With this and all the success and name the school has garnered, Ali only hopes to continue teaching and helping the students here further their learning.