Kalidasu Vamsidhar

Kalidasu Vamsidhar is an educator. With a BA in Mathematics, Economics and Statistics and then a BEd

Kalidasu Vamsidhar is an educator. With a BA in Mathematics, Economics and Statistics and then a BEd, he started his career twenty years ago, as a conventional teacher. Somewhere along the line, he felt an urge to engage children in transformative learning using Mathematics as a vehicle. He believes that mathematics gives the child a kind of thinking which can be used to solve any problem in any domain. It is necessary to love and enjoy this tool to become successful in any career and life. He started schoolofmathematics

Vamsidhar also has a strong social awareness and he has been working for the welfare of primitive tribals in areas of rural electrification, education and employment. He is a key associate in Center For Environmental Protection & Cultural Exchange (http://www.cepceindia.org/ )which conducts cultural exchange programs, has adopted nine villages in Nallamala forest area, runs schools under the ‘children of the forest’ programmes, and conducts various nature camps.

1. What has influenced your decision to take up teaching in this afterschool setting?

I was born and brought up in a small town named Golagamudi near Nellore. I did not have many opportunities when I came to cities and I started to teach and also take after school tuitions. I also wanted children to get something that I had missed when I was a student. So I gave lot of exposure and freedom to pursue other interests for my son too. Coming to my afterschool initiative, there is an empty space created by the modern satellite families, because of the parents pre-occupation with career or earning money. Their children are busy spending their after school hours in front of TV and computer games which are not useful for a child development or well being. At the same time, we cannot fault the parents because this is the reality of the society now. So, I would like to address the same to create quality after school hours.

2. What kind of teaching methods do you use to keep students interested in your classes?

In my class I am a just facilitator, I use inbound (in the class) and outbound (outside class) activities to initiate the learning process. I don’t teach my students, I ask few questions which will drive the child into learning process. I have designed a programme called Transformative Mathematics Programme (TMP) and trained hundreds of students over a decade.

3. Tell us more about your TMP.

This is a programme that is useful to the students in particular as well as society as a whole. A student gets a strong grounding in fundamentals and analytical thinking, and is able to apply classroom learning in life. This makes him/ her ready for the global competition (where rote learning does not help).

When a school implements TMP, they are able to use it seamlessly across slow learners, average students and gifted children – including those with learning difficulties. It introduces teachers to modern methods of experiential and activity based teaching, using inexpensive resources. Teachers generally become more enthusiastic about teaching and carry these ideas to other subjects also. Thereby the school can rise to international standards.

In a rural setting, this fun and enjoyable learning prevents dropouts and also creates interest in learning. I think this is a big challenge and need in today’s India – to prepare our children and youth for the opportunities available to them, and to let them reach their potential. This cannot happen with rote learning.

4. What do you see as the common lacunae in the school children’s thinking?

Most of our kids depend on informative learning, where thinking process is neglected. So most of the time, children do involuntary actions, rather than conscious thinking process. Here learning means, remembering and reproducing the same (you show me I will do million times). There is no concept like problem solving skills and mathematical or rational thinking process in our modern education. Most of the kids relay on rote learning process. To initiate thinking process, we need to address conscious learning, we need to design certain inbound and outbound activities which will invoke thinking process.

5. What is the role of humanities and languages in a child’s overall growth – why this focus on only mathematics?

This question has two parts- If, I look at the first part of the question, my observations are like this. Humanities and languages play major role in a child’s well rounded development. It also play major role in appreciating Mathematics and applying the same in life. For example: assume that, there are two volumes are stacked in a rack from left to right on a horizontal surface to floor. Thickness of each volume is 1centimeter excluding cover pages (all pages including) and thickness of each cover page is ¼ th of a centimetre. A book worm started borrowing from the first page of the volume one to the last page of the volume two (a hole made horizontal to the base of the shelf).

6. What is the length of the hole?

If you look at the question, over 95% of humans will trap in wrong answer because they don’t know how to convert a word (language) problem into pictorial representation. So, language plays major role in Mathematics.

7. Second part of the question about why focus on mathematics alone…

In fact it is not true. My focus is different; Transformative Mathematics Programme will allow the child to explore his or her life. We create opportunity to explore and enjoy applying math in life.

8. Are there any more people in your team or you operate alone?

I am associated with good team of teachers and parents across India and outside world. We share online in social networks like Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and LinkedIn. I have 18000 + followers on http://www.youtube.com/user/schoolofmathematics 1750 + followers on http://www.facebook.com/groups/schoolofmathematics1/ 180 followers on in.linkedin.com.groups?gid=3673418 http://www.flicker.com/phots/shoolofmathematics 76 followers for Outbound Learning Experience- http://www.facebook.com/groups/outboundlearningexperience/

9.How many children are enrolled in your classes?

I have trained thousands of students. I have given 150 + presentation in schools across India and outside India. I work with well known schools and offer these classes both for teachers and students.

10. What are your future plans?

Transform one lakh students learning process in next 3 years, to achieve the same, I need to train 10 000 teachers and I am in the process. For that, I have designed Transformative Mathematics Programme which will help the students to pro actively participate in learning process and teacher will become facilitator.

Now I am working in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Nort East, Bhutan and other areas also. I am building the network of teachers to work on this project. In the process only, I have created social groups in Facebook, Linkedin etc.

11. Any memorable moments as a teacher?

Once I was conducting a Transformative Mathematics Programme workshop in a remote tribal school ( Vatavarall palli, Nallamala Forest area), where 200 children were attending. I was given a challenge not to use modern teaching aids and still involve all 200 students in the workshop and create interest in Math. Then I choose outbound learning activity. I requested all the children to assemble in the ground and created twenty teams. Each team consisted of 10 students and each team had a leader and a coordinator. I requested all the teams to collect the small pebbles (stones) lying on the ground (Nallamala forest) and set a pattern of piles as follows 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, . ……………………… I set a goal to win: The team which makes the largest pattern with correct numbers will win. We have observed sudden shift in the 200 children. Children are busy with collecting pebbles and assembling in a pattern. We have observed the following amazing facts in children: 1. Team spirit 2. Team dynamics 3. Leader ship qualities 4. Competitive environment 5. Observation skills like Growing patterns 6. Edutainment 7. Problem solving skills 8. Applying math into life 9. Mathematical Appreciation

12. Moments of frustration?

When someone unethically accessing others intellect property (IP) and threatening that IP belongs to them. This is happening with me now.

13. How can we get competent people to choose teaching as a career?

We need to inspire the young generation to opt as teaching as profession. For that we need to address the current problems in teaching services, which will include remuneration of teachers, job safety and many more problems. We are all responsible for the same.

Contact:
Kalidas Vamsidhar Mathematician and Founder School of Mathematics
http://www.schoolofmathematics.in
schoolofmathematics@yahoo.com,
mob:+91 9866703785