Tour Report of Rabindranath Pal Institute, Hotar

Lily Foundation Education Centre for Women, Rabindranath Pal Institute, Marjada was visited by Mr. Kalyan Kumar Mukherjee, Mrs. Keya Mukherjee, Ms. Sharmila Basu, Subir Mitra & Amit Saha Roy on 21.6.08.

Following points were discussed at the meeting.

1. Formation of committee to administer the centre: It has been decided in the agreement concluded between Lily Foundation & Sarada Ramkrishna (S-O-M) Sevashram that a 5 member committee which take care of the administration of the centre. Representation of Lily & Sevashram in the committee has been already decided to be in the ratio of 3:2. On behalf of Lily Ms. Keya Mukherjee, Ms. Sharmila Basu & Subir Mitra will be members of the committee & Br. Sandhya Maa & Mr. Akshay Kumar Sinha will represent the Sevashram. In a one to one meeting between Br. Sandhya Maa & Mr. Kalyan Mukherjee it has been agreed upon that all decisions concerning the Institute has to be vetoed first by the committee, then only Lily administration will take up the matter for further consideration.

2. Discussion with Head Teacher of the Institute Mr. Bishnu Pada Pal: The following points were discussed at length with Mr. Bishnu Pada Pal.

2.1 Mr. Pal informed that initially they started the class with a strength of 60 students.In the month of May they have admitted 60 more .He has formed groups of 20 but now he is facing difficulty in imparting training to them properly.

2.2 Ms. Keya Mukherjee suggested to increase the batch strength from 20 students to 30 for theory classes so that Mr. Pal eventually has to take 4 theory classes in a week instead of 6 at present. The purpose behind this as Ms. Mukherjee explained is to offload Mr. Pal & make him available to tutor the practical classes also. This is necessary because there has to be a certain degree of correlation between theory & practice in computer training & this can be achieved only when Mr. Bishnu Pada Pal plays the role of instructor in lab also.To achieve this 5 more chaires to be added in the classroom.

2.3 She also suggested that instead of putting 20 students on 4 machines put 2students per machine for one hour so that each student get ½ hr practice time,and everybody gets proper attention .She also emphasized that it is required to keep all 4 machines up .

2.4 Further more evaluation of the progress of the students is also important. For this as decided earlier a two semester programme was agreed upon. The first semester will be conducted by Lily but in the second semester Ms. Mukherjee requested Mr. Pal to ensure that an external examiner visits the institute & monitors the examination. The external examiner can set the question paper, correct them & award marks to the students. He/She also has to sign in the first year certificate. So Ms. Mukherjee stressed on the fact that the external examiner must be one who will firstly belong to a reputed institute & secondly must not hesitate to disclose his/her identity.

2.5 Another important point which was taken up in the discussion is that in future if any instructor is appointed in the institute he/she must be equally capable to teach both theory & practical.

2.6 The appointment of Ms. Purnima Mondal in the leave vacancy of Ms. Rinku Biswas was approved by Mr. Kalyan Mukherjee.

2.7 Ms. Keya Mukherjee expressed the need to reorient the syllabus a little so that Ms-Word Tools are stressed upon more in the first semester along with a brief outline of computer fundamentals.

She discussed the syllabus with Sri Pal in detail.

2.8 Mr. Kalyan Mukherjee emphasized on the fact that with increased student strength it has to be ensured that 4 machines are always in order. The administrator Ms. Sharmila Basu was instructed to look into this.

2.9 Mr. Mukherjee also stressed upon the fact that the centre needs to remain open for a more longer duration than what it is at present. He requested Mr. Pal to devote one additional day for the institute. But when Mr. Pal expressed his inability Ms. Mukherjee suggested that the computer can be opened one hour earlier than when it is being opened now & closed one hour later than the usual timings in Saturdays & Sundays. This was agreed upon.

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3. Discussion with Mr. Sivaram Halder: During discussion with Mr. Halder Ms. Keya Mukherjee stressed upon the fact that students must learn to be conversant in English because English is the language of communication & knowledge in English has became absolutely necessary these days to secure a decent job in the industry. The course curriculum that Mr. Halder has designed is for 6 months duration which starts from vowels, parts of speech then goes to teach prepositions, conjunctions, active & passive voice, narration & finally concludes with letter, précis writing, comprehension & paragraoh writing. Ms. Mukherjee asked Mr. Halder to recast the syllabus all over again. She stressed more on composition writing instead of improving their grammatical knowledge. She also told Mr. Halder to insist the students to communicate among themselves in English. She told that the students will initially fear to speak English because they will think every now & then that they are speaking wrong English but persistent efforts on their part will eventually help them to overcome their fear & gradually they will be able to master the act.
4. To strengthen the writing skills of the students Ms. Mukherjee suggested that the students should read articles from newspapers of their interest & try to write on their own in one page what they have understood after reading the news item. The task of Mr. Halder will be to correct the copies of each & every student & make them aware of the mistakes they have made. To help in this job Ms. Mukherjee asked us to purchase 2 to 3 English newspapers every Saturday & Sunday. To assist the students in understanding the passage dictionaries (English to Bengali & Bengali to English) also need to be at their disposal. Necessary instructions have been given to Mr. B. P. Pal to purchase the said items.

(Amit Saha Roy)