Teacher Education

Teachers are at the heart of any meaningful education. VBVT’s teacher education begins with the belief that teachers are not mere transmitters of content, but thoughtful practitioners who shape how children experience learning.

Teacher education has been part of Vidyodaya’s work almost from the beginning. Since 1997, VBVT has run a Two-Year Para Elementary Teacher Education Programme, training 71 young people from the community across six cohorts.

The need for this came directly from the community. Many had seen what happens when Adivasi teachers go through standard, mainstream training: they often end up teaching just like any other teacher, and the value of being from the community gets lost along the way. As one parent put it: “Our people have knowledge accumulated over generations, they are intelligent, wise, but we don’t take it forward… A teacher has to know all aspects of taking the child forward… These teachers must be Adivasis, and then we can see the change.”

Today, of those 71 trainees, 31 (nearly 44%) work within VBVT itself, as teachers, hostel staff, accountants, education coordinators and village facilitators. A further 7 work elsewhere within the wider Adivasi Munnetra Sangam network. Many others have gone on to build their own livelihoods, carrying what they learned into work of their own choosing.

The focus is on helping teachers observe children closely, reflect on their own practice, and engage with education as a living, evolving process rooted in context. The emphasis is not on quick techniques, but on deepening understanding: of children, of community realities, and of education as a responsibility that carries cultural and ethical significance.

This shapes what kind of teacher VBVT tries to nurture, as much as how. Teachers are encouraged to see themselves not as preachers delivering content, but as people who share in the lives of the children they teach. The aim has never been to bring in a new culture, but to strengthen the culture children already carry with them.