A dozen female teachers from various government schools in different districts have had the virtuous task of preparing the Morning Prayer activities at schools across Tamil Nadu since 2018.
They belong to the group called Covai Women ICT which prepares topics for daily prayer sessions at all government schools by referring to the Thirukkural, proverbs, newspapers, and so on.
Their morning prayer materials are used by several government schools in the morning. Their efforts spare other teachers the effort to prepare content for the prayer sessions.
I Anita, a member of the Covai Women ICT, told The New Indian Express, "In June 2017, the school education department instructed that morning prayer activities should be conducted for 17 minutes on Monday and Friday but only for 10 minutes on the remaining days," Anita said.
The plan
"We planned to create content for morning prayer activities by coordinating with female educators. Our effort reduces the work burden of school headmasters and teachers and also saves time. We started to prepare the morning prayer activities by forming the Kovai Women ICT in 2018 with eight teachers," she said.
She stated that 11 teachers from government schools and one teacher from an aided school in various districts have been performing the task with the welfare of both the teacher and student communities in mind, without any expectation of reward.
Now, teachers prepare prayer material topics on Thirukkural, proverbs, morality and ethics in two lines, general knowledge, English words and meanings, moral short story, today's headlines in English and Tamil and so on.
The members said that every teacher in the group prepares materials except today's headlines a day before. After Anita approves the content is sent to other school teachers through several WhatsApp groups.
Meet the teachers
Around 5,000 teachers from across the state are part of the Whatsapp groups of the Kovai Women ICT, said another teacher, M Gomathi. She said that several teachers and headmasters use this material for morning prayer activities in schools.
"We have started an advertisement-free blog in the name covaiwomenict.blogspot.com in 2021. Apart from morning prayer activities, teachers upload content such as English handwriting practices, study materials for a scholarship examination, story books, and so on for students," she said.
Teacher G Palanimuthu who prepares today's headlines section told The New Indian Express she would spend at least two hours daily collecting the important news from the news media.
"As per the order, I select 10 important news items from categories such as world, nation, Tamil Nadu, education, sports, and so on a day early. After selection, it would go to proof checking and translation from Tamil to English. Finally, it would be added to the morning prayer activities report. This work gives much satisfaction," she said.
A secondary grade teacher R Ramkumar in Coimbatore district told TNIE, "Much information is in the Daily Morning Prayer Activities prepared by the Covai Women ICT and we use them daily. It is useful to students and our time is also saved in preparing morning prayer activities during busy morning hours."
