Hello Everyone. Today I come to you as the facilitator of the learning center at Sambhaavnaa,
and also as a mother of our 10 year old daughter.
And we as parents know, life changes dramatically once you have a child.
And one of the things we start thinking about is education - education of our children.
So, when my daughter was reaching school age, I also started looking at schools.
And actually, before looking at schools, I started looking at this - the school bags.
Quite heavy, right? Have you ever tried to lift one bag. It can build muscles.
I realised that whatever the school does, it will definitely build muscles for my daughter. She will become stronger.
But it still kind of bothered me. These bags bothered me.
They made me realise that they have the knowledge that this child would get in one year. 11 00:01:27,010 --> 00:0 1:34,010 All the books and notebooks that are in the bag will have to be transferred to their minds in one year.
All that was written on the white board or blackboard in one year
will be transferred in their beautiful handwritings in their notebooks in this bag, and it will transform somehow in a way that it be in their brain.
Another things that would happen in one year - every teacher would take classes, 6 to 8
classes, depending on the schools they are going to, and if you exclude the vacation,
probably they would be teaching for 200 days, teaching 6-8 hours for 200 days and keeping
this class size, class size of about 40 kids - teaching them, keeping their attention intact
for the whole day, day-after-day. And whatever they are writing on the blackboard, all this
knowledge transferred in that one year. And they would say that - I have taught the child.
There is a difference, right? What you teach, that's teacher's job. It does not mean that
the student learns. That's the responsibility of the student, right? A student learns what
they want to learn, and if we look at our lives, we have learnt what we wanted to learn, and
not what was put down our throats. Sometimes we learn, we are forced to educate ourselves.
We probably wanted to become artist or a Hindi teacher or a dancer, but we were told to become
engineer or scientist and we become that. The spirit inside us was killed or subsided.
We became what was asked of us to become. We did not want the same thing to happen to
our daughter.
So we decided that we will get involved in the school and see what is it that we could
do. When we went in, both our teacher-our overworked teachers and students really welcomed
us. It was a pleasure to be there. We started by looking at the books. I could not find
them interesting, I am sorry. These were not the books that I was in any way inclined to
teach from. So we said, what is it that we could do.
We started by telling stories. You know, a kid has to learn, for example, that Bachendri
Pal is the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest. Aw! That would be a difficult name
to remember if I have to work only on the name. But if you told the story of Bachendri
Pal, how she is a mountain girl, she has passion for Himalayas, she loved to climb and that's
what she did. And she is trying to save it. Once you tell the story, and the student,
the learner develops a relationship, they are interested in remembering this name, and
because they have developed a relationship, they will remember it. So, that is what the
stories did for us.
The other thing a very quickly we noticed that, we had read in newspapers that our 5th
graders read at the level of 2nd grade, which we found to be true. And Sarit, my husband,
had been collecting books, especially children's books for last 10-12 years now, maybe more.
We have an excellent collection of Hindi children's literature, as well as in English. We decided,
this is what we will share with our kids. Because we have to help them read, so that
they can find out what is happening in somebody else's mind. Because that's what books give
- what's going on in someone else's imagination, what's happening around our world. There are
very different interesting ways to learn. Reading, it will not come only from that bag,
it can come from anywhere. So that's what we did. We took books, we shared with them.
Kids loved it! Everyday we would take books. Either we would read to them or they would
read and we would listen. And we found out, they are interested in learning, it's just
that they are not getting the right material. They were interested in learning to read.
So we kept doing that.in fact, there was one girl that Sarit really worked with. She was
a 4th grader. Did not even know her ABCDs yet. She was having trouble right there. He
worked with her continuously one-on-one for that year. We still work with her. She started
reading books. They were very basic books, but she started reading. It's was our winning
moment, we felt that we are making a difference. One thing we realised, if we spend time one-on-one 58 00:00:07:06,100 --> 00:07:12,100 with our learners, what happens is they feel valued, they feel that someone cares, that
they need to learn or that they are interested. The books were interesting to them, so that
made a difference.
Another thing that we did was - I love mathematics... I just love playing with math, playing with
numbers.... so it was very easy to do this for us. If you tell a child what is 3 times
6, that means you have to memorize that table of 3, 4, 5, 6 or whatever you need. 3 times
6 they would be able to tell you directly. But if you told them, I have to buy candies
for you and I want to give you 3 candies each, and there are 6 of you, how many candies do
I need to buy. Suddenly, this is useful to them. They need their candies right? So they will add 3+3+3... And they would
add it 6 times and say it is 18. And you could tell them, you know you could have done it
quicker, 3 times 6 is 18 because you are adding 3 six times. Suddenly, multiplication is very relevant.
It's useful for them because they can calculate their candies faster. So once they know the
relevance, they want to learn. Another major hit was Sudoku. We all must
have tried it.Sudoku comes in all newspapers now. It started probably a few years ago,
I think. It's a 9 by 9 matrix in which each space has to be uniquely filled following
some rules. It's a lot about logic and numbers. So we decided, this is what we are going to
try. So, for our young learners this matrix also comes in 4 by 4, 6 by 6, 8 by 8 and 9
by 9. We started with a 4 by 4 matrix. We would print it out a A3 size paper one-fourth
of it. We would take it to school. We just left it there. The kids would pick it up and
they wanted to fill it. We would tell them the rules and they started filling it. Initially
it was difficult, if they fell in trouble they would ask us. Once they became good at
4 by 4, they would ask for 6 by 6, then 9 by 9. It was an achievement, because now they
could show it off to their parents. It comes in newspapers, right. Once one kid learnt,
then other kids would also want to know. It did not matter what age you were, because
numbers are numbers, whoever is better at logic will solve it faster. A 4th grader might
be teaching a 5th grader or a 3rd grader. Here learning was happening, but it was happening
with peers. We were not teaching, they were learning on their own. Each child uniquely
looks at logic and would solve it in different ways. And if he had solved it in one way,
somebody else will say try it this way, this might work. So the learning was happening with the peers.
As I said, we had started sharing books, books that they could checkout. That is how our
first library started. We have done several libraries since then in different schools
and we are continuing this on. We would checkout books. The books would go home. They would
ad, their siblings would read. Some of them were first generation learners. And if their
parents could, they would read. And they would tell the stories to their grandparents. So,
learning was happening. They were reading out to their parents, their grandparents or
their siblings. They started asking for more books, and this is how this library began.
We have done thousands of checkouts since then.
The one thing we really had trouble with was art. We did those Sudokus and the backside,
the page was blank. So we said, there are crayons, there are pencils. You can color,
you can draw whatever you want. You know, initially there were two things - one was
the Indian flag on those three steps drawn in perfect rectangle, as if the wind was blowing
at 100 miles per hour. And the other thing they would draw was a heart with an arrow going through it.
You know, this was the first thing we got strict on. We actually banned it.
These are the two things you cannot draw. And suddenly all the pencils stopped. I realised
that in our education system, we had somehow created a space in which they did not feel
safe to draw. Where they felt there was a risk at drawing - because you could fail.
Because if you draw, somebody could laughter or could say this is not how a tree looks
like. We had to make them realize that you could draw your tree anyway you want. You
could colour it purple if you want, because it is your tree, your imagination.
Art is an expression of our imagination, and not somebody else's imagination.
A teacher will not tell you that you can draw a peacock with your hand, and make a face on it.
That is one way to draw a peacock. Everybody's imagination about a peacock is different.
We had to make them realize that this is the space, you are safe to draw, you can take risk and fail.
It's okay to fail, because from failure at this stage would come learning.
At any stage,from failure comes learning. And somehow we haven't given our kids a chance to fail, and neither ourselves.
And that is why, we a making our lives and their lives so stressful, and we have to take them out of it.
And we did a lot with building, making puzzles, building blocks, we did lot of experiments with science.
We are continuously improving this process. We can teach a kid what is a magnet.
We can say it has a north pole, a south pole. Magnet would attract some things.
If you put two magnets, opposites attract. But this is all bookish knowledge. It does not really help.
If you give them a magnet, this what we did. We give them a magnet and ask them to explore.
Touch the wall with the magnet, touch the window, touch the ceiling, touch the nails, touch it on everything.
Comeback and tell us what happens. Put two magnets together, flip one around, tell us what happens.
Because this would be their learning, they would come back and tell us. You know, a magnet doesn't tell you it's is my north and this is my south.
A magnet doesn't care if we call it north or south, we can call it Seema or Reema. You could call it anything.
These are just names. The learning comes from, what the magnet actually does.
They came back and told - you know, it works on nails and it works on, whatever they could find, like latches.
Then we would ask what it was made of. That's how they would tell. They said....
it was their learning that it attracts iron and nothing else. They put two magnets together and they said..
One one side they stick to each other while on the other side, whatever I do, they don't.
Now you can explain all this and you have shared your learning with them, but this is what they need to know.
You can give them a convex glass, this is what we did. You give them a convex glass...
Lens, we call it a lens, right. We said, just go explore. They came back and said...
I could burn paper with it, you could burn dry leaves. This is magical.
Then we said flat glass or window, that doesn't burn anything inside the house. Then what is this lens doing?
We don't have to teach them that...
Oh! There is a focal point where all he sun rays converge at one point, that is the focal point and where it burns.
Who cares, they will learn all that later. But first, what is the magic of the convex lens.
So these are the things we did.and these are the things that we want to do.
and this is how our learning space and environment are working. So the message I want to give -
let's not focus on teaching. Teaching is important, I am not saying that.
Teaching is important. Let's focus on learning. The learner chooses what they want to learn.
Let's present it in a way, that the learner wants to learn. They would choose. They may choose art, they may choose science.
Let them choose. We have to help them facilitate the process.
We are not teacher, we cannot shove it down their throat. If they don't want to, it's all effort wasted.
These are kids of Sambhaavnaa. They are not enrolled here. They come on their own will.
We don't ask them to come, they want to come.and we all invite you to this space.
So come and learn with us, have fun, be challenged.
This is a space where you can fail, and learn, and learn again.
Thank you so much for your time.