In November, I got an email from my manager about “Education Diaries,” a program for a week where we would explore different methods of Alternative Education in schools.
This was the first time I had heard of the term “Alternative education,” and my mind automatically imagined a school where teachers use innovative pedagogy in the classrooms. But my experience pushed my thoughts on “What education could look like” beyond my imagination.
Once we reached there, we had a day of orientation, and we shared the questions we were seeking answers to and what we hoped this exposure would help us see on education that might be missing. We were brainstorming on how to get the most out of our visits to these alternate spaces. No amount of brainstorming, discussion, or reflection prepared us for what we saw.
Students ran schools, there were schools that kept students’ curiosity, safety, and experience at the center of everything they did. There were experiences that made me look at simple things like “Play” differently.
We also got a chance to examine the concept of “UNSCHOOLING.” It is safe to say my brain melted and remodeled after each day, and we returned to a set of equally mind-blown people keen to share different things we observed. An experience that blew my mind was examining the concept of “UNSCHOOLING.”
At 6.30 am, with sleepy eyes, we left for a remote village close to the Karnataka-Tamilnadu border. We entered a home surrounded by trees, a tap made of plastic bottles, a tank with tiny fishes in it, and a huge dome. Here we met members of the Aarohi community, a community that believes in Unschooling. My mind automatically went, “Yeah, right, education without schools? Everything must be absolutely chaotic. How is it even possible”.
We were introduced to children who chose to stay in the home we visited and study there. We were given an opportunity to be a part of their ‘Planning Circles,’ where they made learning plans for the month and broke them down into tasks for each day.
A little girl sat there, confident about every word she said. We huddled around her, curious about what she wanted to learn. “Maybe addition? Or photosynthesis?” my brain thought. But I was brought back to reality as she shared her monthly calendar with drawings.
She then said, “This month, I want to focus on building contraptions and posting better videos about it on youtube.”
I was frantically googling what contraptions were.
I then heard her say, “I also want to learn some tricks on my trampoline, improve my bird-watching skills- for this, I want to read books on seasonal birds we see here, make drawings of the birds I see, and then look for them in books.”
-This was my “aha” moment. Why was the child learning all this? – Well, because she wants to.
Here was a 10 yr old student who planned what she wanted to study, how she wanted to study, and what progress she wanted to see in each skill she’s studying. Isn’t this what education should be about?
With each day of exploration, I was left with pages and pages of notes and more questions than answers. But towards the end of the week, upon further reflection and many conversations with fellow explorers, I realized at the core of it all the experiences we went through, something common was,
1)Children being at the center of it everything,
2)Prioritizing students’ well-being over any curriculum
3)Giving students a space to choose the method of learning which is relevant to them,
4)Imparting education that prepares them for their future.
As I returned, prepared to dive into all the work piled up from the previous week, I thought, “This may not be the reality for most of the students now, but isn’t this what every educator should strive towards?” and this gave me the energy to look at the pending tasks from the piled up work.
INVOLVE 