Calcutta Rescue's teachers are improving month by month, thanks to an excellent two-year training course organized and funded by the UK charity Helga Todd Foundation. All teachers take part and for some it is the first official teacher training they have completed.
Seema Sapru, the principal of Heritage School in Kolkata, one of the most prestigious schools in West Bengal, has generously provided two of her teachers to train and support locally. Every two weeks, they visit the two Calcutta Rescue schools for two hours to go through the individual elements of the online course "Teach 2030" with the teachers, which was developed by the Commonwealth Education Trust, a UK-based non-profit organization.
Each month there is also a telephone exchange with the relevant people from the Helga Todd Foundation, who oversee the progress. Topics covered include "new thinking" in the classroom, lesson planning, online teaching, more active teaching and children's learning styles.
Calcutta Rescue's Head of Education Programs, Ananya Chatterjee, says the course, now in its second year, has led to significant improvements in teachers' performance in areas such as lesson planning, communication with students and classroom management.

"We are grateful for everything the Helga Todd Foundation has done for the training of Calcutta Rescue teachers." The course is also very popular with the teachers. "We like how interactive the sessions are. First, we are trained and then asked to contribute our own ideas and insights," says Priyanka, the head of School No. 10. Rajnandini, also from School No. 10, says: "I love how sensitively the trainers discuss the topics. I can feel my improvements when I teach my schoolchildren."