1. Eureka Child Site Visit Report
On January 24, I visited AID India's office in Chennai, India. My aim was to meet with the Eureka
Child team and to check out some of the education initiatives in action. As soon as I arrived at the AID
India office, I headed off to visit a Eureka Model School and a Eureka SuperKidz center in
Kanchipuram district (about 80 km from Chennai). To give me company were Damu (Tamil Language
Content lead) and Vivek (Coordinator, Eureka Model Schools).
Eureka Model School: Wallodai Village, Kanchipuram District
First, we visited the Eureka Model School in Wallodai. The
Wallodai school was started about 5 years back, in the aftermath
of the 2004 Tsunami, with the support of Banca Sella group, an
Italian bank, which has an offshore center in Chennai.
The Eureka Model School is a primary school with about 120
kids from Grade 1-5. As the name suggests, this school is one of a
select few that have been designed and run by the Eureka Child
team so that they can serve as models for delivering low cost high
quality education. It has a lot of open space to allow for free play
and the class rooms are designed to be conducive to activity
Grade 1: Language learning
based learning. The class room walls were decked with various
activity, Children picking out a
age appropriate paintings (puzzles, concepts) and posters. There
letter
was a blackboard, but it didn't necessarily set the orientation of
the class. None of the class rooms had any desks or tables. The
kids, and even the teachers, were pretty comfortable sitting on the
floor. Apparently, the absence of desks/tables is intentional, as it
allows children to form small groups and engage in group
learning activities with ease. The activities themselves are really
quite interactive and play based. For instance, in Grade 1, the
teacher was teaching alphabets, a bunch of cards with various
alphabets would be laid out on the floor; a child would be called
upon at random and given a letter to pick out. Once the right card
was picked up, there would be a lot of clapping and cheering,
following which, another kid would go through the same. This Grade 1: Kids learning shapes
way the entire class was engaged in the activity and was having
fun at the same time. This is very different from a typical teacher
directed classroom environment where children are passive
participants. Other learning activities, such as, learning shapes,
numbers etc, were carried out in the same fashion. I also noticed
that most teachers were enjoying themselves and unleashing their
creativity in their classes! The Grade 2 teacher, Muthulakshmi,
showed us how she herself designed a picture card learning
activity to teach tamil words. She also would hand a newspaper to
the children and ask them to find a particular word or phrase in
the paper. John Holt might be smiling in appreciation! It was nice
Grade 1: Entire cheerful class w.
to see that even though they had a curriculum to follow, there
Teacher Parimalla

2. seemed to be enough room for flexibility and adaptation on how the learning was imparted. The kids in
Grade 3 were busy showing off their growing math and phonetics-based English speaking skills and
the kids in Grade 4 were excited to demonstrate to us a series of science experiments. To ensure that we
understood what was going on, they would not only demonstrate the experiments but then also explain
the concepts (such as, the Bernoulli's principle, air pressure changes etc). The girls in Grade 5 happily
demonstrated Yoga and and the boys showed off their newly acquired Silamban skills (a Tamil stick
fighting/dance form)! Their teacher mentioned that they are taught Yoga and Silamban once a week.
Education is free in the school. Most of the kids were from modest backgrounds, with parents working
in lower economic spectrum jobs such as, daily wage laborers, truck drivers etc. One could notice that
the kids, as they progressed through the grades were gaining in self confidence. Not surprisingly, these
kids often stand out in many state competitions and even recently got a high placing in a national
Design for Change contest. Even though there is a government (public) school in the area, the Eureka
school is in high demand! There is usually a waiting list and stiff competition for enrollment to the
school!
All in all, the program was very well rounded. The teaching methods were interactive and creative.
There was a lot of room for play and physical activities. Most importantly, the kids and the teachers
seem to be having loads of fun!
Grade 2: Kids using picture cards to Grade 2: Vivek against the
learn words backdrop a typically colorful
classroom wall
Grade 2: Solvng an addition Grade 2: Damu setting up a math
problem problem and inviting a kid to solve
it

3. Eureka Superkidz Center: Tattampattu Village, Lathur Block, Kanchipuram
After visiting the Eureka School, we went on to Tattampattu village in the same district (~30 minutes
drive) to check out the Eureka Superkidz (ESK) center in that
village. As a background, there are about 550 Eureka
Superkidz Centers across Tamil Nadu, which conduct daily 3
hrs of reading, match and science classes for children. The
center in Tattampattu village had about 70 children, split into
two separate groups, Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-6. This ESK
center operated in the open grounds of the local government
(public) school, most of the children at the ESK study in the
same school during the day.
I spent most of my time with the children belonging to Grades Eureka Superkidz Grades 4-6
4-6 and taught by teacher, Priya. The class started with all the
children sitting in one big circle. Reading was the first skill the
teacher was focusing on. Once she finished the short common
lesson, she asked all the children to break themselves into
Terriyum (We Know) and Terriyad (We don't Know) groups for
reading. For each skill (reading, math and science), the teacher
maintains a meticulous record of where each child stands, in
their level of understanding. A skill chart is publicly displayed
and the children know where they stand. In this particular
class of about 40 children, about 8 children were lagging
behind the rest of the class in reading, they formed the
Terriyad group, and the teacher sat with them to pay special One of the Terriyum (We know)
attention to them and help them catch up. The rest of the class groups for Tamil reading
split themselves into 4 smaller groups of 7-8 kids each, each
group had a pre-assigned leader (probably the best kid in the
group). The teacher would hand over reading material (picture
cards, posters etc) to each of these groups and the group leader
would ensure that his/her group was in sync. Meanwhile the
teacher would spend about 20-30 minutes with the Terriyad
group. Typically, when the school year begins or when a new
skill is introduced, the number of kids in the Terriyad group is
high, but over time, more and more kids acquire the skill and
move over to the Terriyum group. The same process is
repeated for math, science and English. Even though the whole Teacher paying special attention to
process required constant regrouping and feeding of new the Terriyad (We don't know) group
material, it was surprisingly efficient; much credit is due to the
teacher who had pretty good command over the class and had ingrained the whole thing into the kids to
make a potentially chaotic process smooth. In this regard, teacher Priya was very impressive! She
deserved the Teacher of the Month award (which I had the privilege of giving her, later that day!).
Having visited the Eureka School earlier in the day a comparison was inevitable. While the Eureka
School is in itself a shining example of a low cost-high quality school (annual budget $12K), the ESK
is a classic example of an attempt to meet a critical learning needs at a large scale with even lower
amount of resources (operating costs are 10x less than a Eureka School and there is minimal

4. infrastructure). The classes are held in borrowed property – in this case, the open grounds of the local
government school! The classes are subject to the elements, a slight rain or drizzle, can cancel the class.
Since there is no physical building, all the teaching aids/materials necessarily fit in one bag, which the
teacher brings with her to class. This includes a makeshift blackboard, which is held in place by two
kids, while the rest solve math problems or demonstrate writing skills. While most teaching methods
were similar in both settings (activity and play based), the relatively higher teacher/student ratio and
grouping of 3 grades together, calls for more creative teaching methods, like breaking kids in
Terriyum/Terriyad groups, better teaching aids and monitoring etc.
The fact that the classes are providing real value to the kids is quite clear from observing them in action
and also from the fact that their low-income parents consider it
important enough to pay a regular fee to keep their kids enrolled
in these classes.
During a break from the class activities, I had a chance to interact
with the staff that supports the ESK center. I already mentioned
the teacher, Priya, who is a young lady from the same village.
This is her second job, she is also a part time teacher at the local
government school. Also present was the Super Teacher, Shalini,
who is responsible for 5 such ESK centers. Each day, she visits a
different ESK center. She is an experienced teacher who has been Solving a fractions problem on a
promoted. As a Super Teacher, her job is to visit her centers and makeshift black board
provide tips/suggestions to teachers, train them on new teaching
methods, as well as serve as a conduit for distributing new
resource material for the classes. Also present was Project
Manager, Anballagi, who manages about 25 ESK centers. Shalini
and other Super Teachers in the area, report into Anballagi. It was
heartening to see that the ESK initiative was giving such
individuals a meaningful opportunity to express their passion. It is
also evident dedicated field staff like Priya, Shalini and Anballagi,
are the key determinants of the success of the ESK program.
Without a quality effort by them, the innovative teaching
methods/materials developed by the State team will not have the
same impact. For instance, both Shalini and Anballagi, spend Priya receiving a well deserved
each day of the week traveling to different remote villages – Teacher of the Month Award
sometimes walking long distances (1-2 hrs each way from the
main road), to do their job! Since most classes end at 8PM, it is quite late by the time they get home.
The reason they continue work with the ESK program is because they enjoy their work and are inspired
by the change they see themselves creating. A key challenge for the Eureka Child State team is to keep
identifying the best field staff across its 500+ villages, train them effectively, and develop monitoring
techniques and teaching methods to make for efficient implementation.