We Need More Perfectness

Usha Madam has particular phrases that she loves. My favorite of her phrases is:

"We need more perfectness."

The meaning of the phrase is (usually) that we, the Rainbow School team, are working on a plan to fix something.

Usha Madam conducted an interview for a journalist, and this was one of her follow up quotes:

"Before was no school, now the children and parents have good ideas about education. What changed is they understand the loss of [the] education. And, what the children love now is the [types of] respect they have in their community and what they can give their society now that they have education. They can realize their destiny with education.

"If they have a choice of one chocolate or education, before they would choose chocolate. Now, they would choose education."

How brilliant is that!

Usha has left for her new post at the Madhapur Mandal School, about 2 miles away. We will still see her often. I'm not worried, the rest of the team is pulling together. We are so lucky to have such a deep pool of talent in our teachers!

I called the senior teacher, Ashok, on Friday and he said:

"We need more perfectness in our exam results."

Ashok is on the right.

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MobilesForGood: EDU

Together with the students, parents, and teaching team, we did it. Ten years of the Rainbow Primary School. Our school is a government-funded, local-language (Telugu) school that serves 230 children every day absolutely free. We celebrated by opening an after-school center last month with the best education NGO in the world, Pratham. For the past five years, I've worked on research projects and helped NGOs that have an interest in developing mobile tools for learning. Globally, there are three populations of students that need to close the education gap. 1. 52 million children globally not in school at all. Most are out of school for one or more of these reasons: conflict/no public services (fragile state), lack of legal papers, migrants, or they are female. Migration is a big issue in our area around the Rainbow School. 2. 200 million children globally are in school, but suffer from poor in-class teaching. These students cannot read at grade level. The most common reason

Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation

While all is very well at the Rainbow School, I'll pause to highlight a "sister organization" supporting budget private schools in India. Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation have an annual symposium in Hyderabad, called "Enterprising Schools." Buddies of mine from here in Palo Alto, the Hewlett Foundation and IDEO, are heading out there next week. More info is on www.enterprisingschools.com My IDEO fellas organized a whole list of very low-cost teaching aide ideas to present at the symposium. Ideas like using old newpapers to teach literacy. They put the list up on the website under "STEAL THIS IDEA" - click here for the list! (in pdf form) BEST WISHES for a successful symposium, I miss you all in Hyderabad!

On Monday, August 18, I was so happy to return to see the Rainbow School. The teachers have made a plan to shift from Telugu to English medium. My friend at Pratham, one of the largest education NGOs -- serving 5 million children in South Asia and Africa -- agreed to help my teachers. My co-partner, Kalpana, is taking the lead on a facilities upgrade. She will oversee an upgrade to the preschool and main building. Kalpana and I have found donors in India and the United States. The children were sharp, completely up on their marks. The teachers were creative, driven, relentless. More to come!

Rainbow Primary School

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