'Teaching' at Auroville

I have been asked, what I do in Auroville. I work at a couple of schools Udavi and Isai Ambalam. In the mornings I work in Udavi with kids in grades 7th through 10th. In the afternoons I work in Isai Ambalam with younger children preschool-7th in Isai Ambalam school.

The closest description of what I do at the schools is that I make children and teachers think. In the little time that is permitted we look at things differently.

At Udavi, in the first week the French teacher was not back from vacation and I took a bagful of puzzles and games every day and worked with 7th to 10th graders. In the time I did not have classes I audited math classes and took a few minutes in the end to 'connect the dots' or give puzzles.

Along the journey of solving puzzles I talked to the children about Math and found consistently across classes two areas algebra and practical geometry that they were uncomfortable with. Algebra, because it is abstract. Practical geometry, due the the nature of writing what needs to be in certain terminology.

One of the interesting experiments was to talk about an algebra equation as a 'mystery' story. We started small, most children were comfortable with short stories 
I have 11 books, I bought some more and now I have 19, how many books did I buy?
11+x=19.

I mixed it up a bit and we built up to: A man has three sons, to his eldest he gave half his cows. Of the rest he donated two and split the remaining between his other two sons. If the youngest got 4 cows, how many cows did he originally have:
(x/2-2)/2 =4

The focus was on getting stories and not getting lost in trying to solve them. It got interesting with equation with a second power :) and then higher powers.

One interesting thing that happened in class was when one kid while solving linear equations looked back and asked me if there was a story for that too.

Here is the story I told them...
Two brothers (Ram - elder and Shyam) were carrying sticks. Shyam says, brother if you gave me one of your sticks we would both be carrying the same number of sticks. Ram smiles and says if you give me one of yours I will be carrying twice the number of sticks that you carry.

I was connecting the dots in class with what they do in algebra of solving linear equations is equivalent of solving for the intersection of two straight lines on a plane.

Its been fun and I have received some interesting feedback - some kids think its great that they are starting to understand that what they study has some use in the world. At the same time a small minority were happy just substituting values in formula and are getting all confused when asked to look at it graphically ;). Ah well...

At Isai Ambalam I have been meeting the teachers in the evening to provide an opportunity to share about their day and speak in English. Starting this week, I'm auditing the classes here too.

I also have an electronics class with the 10th grade kids for an entire year and I'm quite excited about what we can do with consistent work over the year.

I also learnt that I'm trying too hard and try to cram too many concepts in a short time...so time to slow down and be careful about what I want to convey.

At Auroville

We moved to Isai Ambalam School in Auroville in Jun (2013) just before the school reopened (from summer holidays). 

I first visited the Isai Ambalam School in 2002 while I was volunteering for Asha NYCNJ. We were exploring partnering with the school to help promote the many techniques being experimented at the school. We did this through supporting a couple of guest rooms where men and women teachers could stay for a week or so and observe the learn the methods directly.


Since the rooms were built over 300 sets of teachers were trained in Pondicherry and TN in Glenn Domain, Rishi Valley (which has now become the default due to ABL in TN and Pondy) and introduced to methods like Phonics, Audio tape. Over the last couple of yrs these  have been limited to day visits and the school is also focussing on introspection and focusing on current learning difficulties and overcoming them through formative assessment and the more recently available media like computers and internet.

They have made the rooms available for us to live and explore Auroville and work at the school. With some work on the rooms we have made it a home complete with a kitchen, a  fenced area for Shifu, a sand pit for Arham and Shifu and a covered roof.

Here are some pics:

A canopy for Arham, a canopy for Shifu

After Arham drinks his milk, we try to get him to stay on his back for sometime before letting him flip on his tummy, so he doesn't bring out the milk. In order to get him to voluntarily stay on his back, we put him under a canopy, the canopy being a dupatta, sari or any cloth with a nice print. He loves it and stays under the canopy sometimes for as long as half an hour, talking to the prints and cooing at them, sometimes screaming as well. Shifu hangs around Arham for a good part of the time that he is awake. Yesterday, when he was asleep in his crib, she went and slept under the canopy. Today, Arham and Shifu got a canopy each. And Shifu slept under hers all day.

Shifu (dhamma dog) early story

In the early days Shifu displayed much interest in holding on to things:
Early friends

Nice Pants

I've been working with Timbaktu to set up a Support A Child program for the residential children of Timbaktu Badi. A little more about Timbaktu Collective and the children at Timbaktu Badi.
Timbaktu Collective is a rural development organization working in the three mandals - Chennekotha Palli (C.K.Palli), Ramgiri and Roddam of India's second most drought prone district, Ananthapur in Andhra Pradesh. For over 20 years they have been working on issues of rural development through Eco-restoration, Child rights, Youth development, Disability rights, Alternative banking with women, Organic farming and producer owned business enterprise development. 

During the course of their work they came across children from difficult family circumstances, orphans, and neglected children from poor households. Timbaktu Badi a residential alternative school was established for these children in 1994. The school enables them to enjoy childhood and blossom in a free, joyful and open environment of learning in nature's lap.

Timbaktu Badi provides free food, all round education and caters to health needs of these 65 children. The children explore the world through the use of all their faculties. Arts and crafts, dance, drama are not considered extra-curricular, but are an imperitive part of the learning process.
Asha has been partnering with Timbaktu Collective since 1995 through various initiatives including school infrastructure and support, children's rights programs, even organic farming. Asha-Bangalore also supports the children's outreach program - Children's Resource Center (CRC) run in C.K.Palli village that allows village children access to library, computers, arts and crafts (screen printing, woodwork, etc), science labs, etc.
Till April 2011, Timbaktu Badi program ran up to the 7th grade after which the children continued to stay in Timbaktu, but study in Prakruti Badi (in C.K.Palli village). Starting this academic year, Prakruti Badi has been merged with the Timbaktu Badi and will be run as a single school at Timbaktu with classes running till grade 10.
The SAC program meets all living expenses of the residential children at Timbaktu Badi. Learn more about Timbaktu Badi.