MUMBAI, India — Were it not for the voices of the children inside the Karmavir Bhaurao Patil English School here in one of this city’s former shanty villages, it would be easy to pass by the building and never know it was a school.
The school occupies the first floor of an apartment building where residents come and go. Only a locked metal grate separates the classrooms from the apartments.
Nothing in the area suggests you’re in a school zone. In fact, just across the street — at least on one recent rain-laden day — a bony white cow was feeding on a big trash heap. The area is so dirty the students are not allowed to go outside to play.
Recess, if you can call it that, is held inside the cramped classrooms, where students sit two or three each at bench-style desks. The student-teacher ratio at this school can be as high as 60- or 70-to-1. So it is understandable that the classes might get a little noisy.
One class, however, is a little bit noisier than the rest.
It’s not that the 6-year-olds inside this particular classroom are more unruly than their schoolmates. Rather, the children’s noisiness stems from the fact that they’re being engaged by a dynamic teacher duo that is a lot more kinetic when it comes to teachingthan their peers.
This class is led by Sudhanshu, a 21-year-old economics graduate from Bombay University, and Abhisek, a 26-year-old former software consultant with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and an MBA. They teach the second standard, which is basically the second-grade. (Indian students start their standards about a year or so sooner than American students start their grades.)
