Eklavya Innovations

I promised earlier to talk in detail about some of the innovations that Eklavya is involved with. I have tried to compile the list and apologize in advance if I missed something:

Eklavya School Innovations:

1. No TV day:

The school observes a No TV day on Thursday and to ensure that it is effective, the children are asked to bring art and handicraft items that are displayed in the assembly. This is a very novel idea and is an initiative from the school to ensure that the children who are the most susceptible to fall prey to the highly intoxicating digital media are kept away from it at least for one day. Further, the usage of incentives for children ensures that they do it for the joy rather than being arm twisted into this. And, this was reflected in the quality of the projects that they were able to come up with.

2. No Tuitions:

The school follows a policy that there would be no tuitions by the children or by the teachers. This again takes care of the extreme stress that some of the students are put to these days by their overly ambitious parents.

3. Low Profile Chief Guests:

This school has a distinct way of celebrating any special day in the school. Instead of calling up some VIP (politician or bureaucrat) to the school, the senior citizens of India are called to the school as chief guests. This serves as two purposes:

1. Ensures that children see real life role models.

2. The senior citizens, who are increasingly seen as the burden on the society, get their due position as the wise of the society.

4. Human Resource Development Program:

This was the first time that I came across the concepts of organizational learning or teacher development within a school environment. I have to be honest that the program was far more effective than all the professional organizations that I have worked at (RealNetworks, Wipro, drugstore and Expedia). Teacher learning had a strong emphasis; there were HRD programs for the bus driver and conductors as well. The programs were implemented both in word and spirit.

5. Research Wing and Taleem:

Eklavya has a professionally managed research wing within the school itself that does research on teaching methodologies, curriculum preparation and teaching aide development. Taleem is an initiative in that direction – the teaching aides, which are developed in Taleem, successfully reflect our cultural ethos, are engaging and above all are successful in teaching children through the medium of aides.

6. Lavya – the counseling Wing:

A group of teachers have formulated a counseling wing amongst themselves. The broad objective of Lavya is to provide counseling support to all the parents. This way the parents and teachers form an inclusive program to take care of the psychological needs of the children of today.

7. Open Libraries:

Eklavya has a concept of open libraries, where the books are not kept inside the closet rather children are enticed to books and encouraged to interact with them.

Obviously, there are many more innovations that Eklavya has succeeded in implementing; however, my three day exposure was able to give me these insights only. One learning for many of Delhi based schools could be that not many of these things are extremely expensive to imitate. So, I would just urge the schools of today to step out of the darkness of ignorance and come forward to be the light of beacon to homogenize our society before its too late.

And on a personal end, the trip was very successful as I have found a living role model in Professor Sunil Handa, who is the founder of the Eklavya foundation.