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.

Eklavya Day I

Every part of my Eklavya experience was extremely professional and innovative -- right from pick up at the Core House to the Roshin Apartments to the bus timings. It seemed as if I was picked up from a civilian world to the military world, where discipline and punctuality have an important role to play. Anyways, I checked into the Roshin apartments at around 8.30 pm and the next thing was to get something to eat. I was fortunate to find a dhaba very close to my apartment and got a chance to eat some really spicy food (the amount of spice in bhaaji was a clear indicator of why Gujaratis put so much sugar in all the dishes they eat ;)).

After getting some grub I got a chance to visit the Tata Sky Mall – my god! These malls were exactly similar to the Safeway stores of the US. Probably, the only difference was that they had jalebi instead of donuts or croissant. Well, the government may have been thinking of stopping FDI in retail, however, I am not sure if they plan to do anything with the domestic conglomerates. BTW, I am also not sure if there needs to be a blanket opposition to the FDI in retail – well, it’s a Pandora box with lots of economic analysis involved so I shall keep that for a different post.

Happy Republic Day

It's after almost four years that I got a chance to celebrate the Republic Day in India (i.e after I r2i'ed). It was a great feeling and especially in a very innovative educational institution like Eklavya, the satisfaction quadrupled.

The chief guests for a change were the grand parents of the school students and not your usual run of the mill politicians or powerful people. Well in some sense it was good as the skit prepared by the senior school students would not have gone well with the politicians.

Anyways, as I have already shared with the school authorities about my experience of Eklavya. I thought I must talk about it very briefly on the blog -- it was phenomenal. All the things that a school needs to provide: experiential learning, physical activities, spiritual learning, civic responsibility is happening here. If someone wants to provide holistic education, you just need to buy a ticket to Ahmedabad and you will say what is the practical definition of that. And, mind you the school has processes in place that ensure that the children are not stressed out at all.

Well, if I continue to talk about Eklavya, I would require 2-3 more posts and I will do that once I get back to Delhi. In the meantime, I wish everyone a very Happy Republic Day.

off to Ahmedabad

My posts would be again irregular, as I am flying off to Ahmedabad to find more about Eklavya foundation. I have heard a lot from fellow education entrepreneurs like Aakar and Fountainhead on how much they have learned from Eklavya. I am very thankful to Eklavya authorities for giving me this chance to visit their campus and witness the innovation.

Eklavya Foundation

The more research that I have been doing on the primary education system in India, the better my experience is becoming. There are several issues with the primary education system in India, however, like any other thing in India, there are several good initiatives that are taking place in the field of education.

Eklavya institute is one such initiative. This institutions goals are very similar to the goals of buildingBlocksTM probably with only difference in the speed of implementation.

Eklavya's philosophy:
Eklavya believes that education is an infrastructure, atleast, as important as nation's roads, electricity and telecom. It plays a fundamental role in determining the prosperity and well-being of its citizens. Progressive nations have strategically invested heavily in education on a long term basis.

I guess the Non profit status of this organization may have resulted in the gradual implementation of the programs.