SAIIER 2014:The Learning Community
 Transition School |
 |
 Deepanam School |
| The Learning Community | ||
Entity::The Learning Community has completed its fifth year of operation. This year we worked with 23 children.
Learning Spaces
This past year has embraced a significant change for the learning community as we moved into the old pre-crèche campus and established our ‘Base Camp’. Much energy has been invested in creating a space in keeping with our outlook and approach to education, using limited funds, but amazing energy and resourcefulness from involved children and adults.
We have created a new space for next year to house the academic materials to be used in classes. In addition to the communities of Fertile and Evergreen, which have always hosted TLC’s activities, we have extended our community outreach to two new community projects –Solitude where the children have been very involved in the farm and related projects, and Pitchandikulam where they have been facilitated in forest-related activities.
Following is an overview of the activities in the 4 communities:
Fertile
Fertile is one of Auroville's oldest forest communities. It's founder, Johnny, has been a patriarchal figure in TLC since the beginning. Johnny facilitates the children in individual sessions, teaches small groups of children geometry, project work, theatre, among others, and opens the space to a larger group of children once a week for a morning of free exploration. Fertile is a rambling plethora of carpentry tools, makeshift furniture, chests of miscellaneous treasures, chickens, homemade toys and Johnny at the forefront and background of it all, enabling the children through his unique and somewhat eccentric approach to education, a space where they can follow their own directions, materialize the focus of their imaginations, facilitated, but not led, allowing maximum freedom wherever possible.
Evergreen
Evergreen is one of Auroville's communities which offers a space for lots of TLC activities. it is a forest community which also hosts a horse project, a bakery and a guest house for the young volunteers. During the 5 years since TLC’s establishment, the children have spent a lot of time in evergreen, making it a kind of 'second home' for many. It's young forest and varied activities provide many opportunities for the children to get involved in different learning processes, according to their interests. Currently, several of the children participate in a weekly horse class (riding and horse care) under the 'Evergreen Horses' project, others attend a class called 'Baking English' (where the children learn English through the medium of baking) and several are facilitated in smaller groups through forest explorations and 'unstructured' time in the community and forest.
Solitude
Solitude Farm is a very dynamic farm of Auroville located near the Visitors Center. During the last academic year Krishna and his volunteers have welcomed the learning community twice a week. almost all TLC children have gardening on their schedule. The activities are: i. being involved in farming tasks like transplanting rice or harvesting tomatoes ii. creating our own permaculture garden with vegetables and herbs. Taking care of it, observing the evolution and enjoying our harvest.
Pitchandikulam
Pitchandikulam is a natural tropical dry evergreen forest near Kuilapalayam. It's a research center for forestry and traditional plant medicine. During the past academic year the children have been coming here twice a week. Once a week they experience the space in a largely unstructured framework. They explore the forest and are exposed to small workshops in crafts and learn about the benefits of plants
Building a Classroom with Johnny
After moving into the old pre-crèche compound, we realized that the campus serves us well as a base, but the buildings were not able to provide a classroom set-up for the children. We decided to approach SAIIER to fund a new classroom. At the same time we wanted to fund ourselves for the coming school year.
We held a fundraising dinner in February, which involved over 100 people. In order to make the event educational, we worked together with children and parents from the planning stages, to post dinner clean-up. All worked together smoothly and with a great enthusiasm and there was much support from the wider community, from food to performances. As a result we raised a substantial amount and there was very positive feedback from community. Children and parents recall the evening as a wonderful bonding time and a special occasion in which we shared TLC spirit with the wider community.
With money from the dinner, we decided to build a capsule which could keep our materials safe and provide a better classroom set-up. With much help from Johnny and Fertile community, both in workforce and finances, we built an approximately 4mx4m de-mountable capsule. The process of building became an educational process, which offered a rare opportunity to children to understand a building process and to learn practical skills - for example carpentry work, mud wall fixing and etc.
The building itself is environment-friendly and perfectly fits our campus. We have learnt that the process of building a capsule was a unique and creative educational experience.
Field Trips
Field trips and wilderness experiences play an important part of TLC's educational framework. We believe that wilderness experiences embody the values of tenacity, responsibility, judgment, self-discipline, and compassion. These experiences strengthen self-confidence, improve relationships and encourage good judgment, thus building “maturity and character”.
The ability to work as part of a team, to take orders and respond accordingly and to eventually to lead others, requires among other attributes: -good communication and listening skills, effective interpersonal skills, to overcome challenges, and to utilise initiative, drive and motivation not only in themselves but in others. Wilderness experiences can be an effective way of developing these qualities within individuals.
Within such environments, individuals can learn to appreciate nature and its resources, understand the importance of conservation and sustainability, and to be aware of the finely balanced relationship between humanity and the sensitive eco-system that exists on our planet. Wilderness environments allow young people unique opportunities to operate, test out, discover and take on board elements that they feel they need in order to view themselves as a unique human being who whilst may be a small cog in a large wheel, they are nonetheless essential and an important component part if that wheel is to continue to rotate.
This last year we split up the group for the main outing of the year – half going to Kavunji nature camp in Kodaikanal and the other half to Varanashi organic farm in Karnataka.
Trip to Kavunji
Fourteen children (ages 6 – 9) and six adults went on a one-week trip to Kavunji. The learning for the adults began with the planning for the trip; for the children, it began as we left AV in a bus at 4.30 am on a cool October morning.
Through all the convenience of having one’s own transport and the fun of travelling with friends in a moving vehicle all day, the actual drive up and down was an exercise in patience (through a 11-hour drive ; “When will we be there?”), tolerance (towards others in a small space with lots of people and all their things) and self-control (some children chose to not eat most of the way because of travelling sickness).
While we were there, the children and adults were involved in these sorts of activities:
- Hauling our things from the bus to the camp and back,
- Food preparation and associated activities (including setting up the oven and making and eating fresh hot pizza on a cold night and a barbecue night),
- Sitting around the fire, talking and sorting out misunderstandings,
- Performing songs, skits, magic shows etc,
- Walking to Kavunji village and back,
- Exploring the camp area,
- Waking up at 5.30 in the morning to go watch bisons,
- Walking to the lake and back down a steep terraced-field slope with an amazing sense of crawling down the slope through this spectacular scenery,
- Working on the camp itself (painting the bathroom doors, reinforcing the sandbags behind the bathrooms, moving a huge pile of firewood),
- Bringing the stream below to life – by building dams and rafts and playing in it for hours.
It was an empowering experience for many of the children to manage themselves, their belongings and their friends in the absence of their parents. The quiet, cool, clear air, the isolation, the spectacular view of these green terraced fields all around, and the need to generate each meal from scratch for the whole group – these factors came together to generate a comforting warmth and camaraderie among adults and children alike.
Special projects
Gardening at Solitude Farm
This year, TLC was invited by Krishna to experience Solitude farm and how our food is growing. We went to the farm 2 mornings a week and the children were divided in different mixed aged groups for each 1 hour slot (some bigger children had 2 hours). During the first term, the focus was on being involved in the farm work, following the rhythm of the growing seasons. We learned about crop rotation and local millets. Highlights were: transplanting ragi and rice, also ploughing the field with the bullock.
During the 2nd term, we were allotted a small area were we could create our own permaculture garden. Each group participated in the making of a big circle garden, step by step from clearing the area, digging trenches around the bed, preparing the soil, mulching, sowing and planting seedlings and watering. We observed the insects and small animals, which had settled down in our garden and the growth (or lack of growth) of the vegetables, fruits and herbs. We also spent some time in the nursery, filling up pots, sowing and transplanting. The last term was a great time for harvest and for tasting our produce, we made salads with the green leaves, tomato and cucumber. We also cooked tapioca. As some of the children expressed the wish to have their own small patch, we created some new gardens and the children in small groups of 2-3 took responsibility for the care of these patches. Highlight of the farming work was to harvest the rice from the field, as we did the ploughing.
Other classes like creative writing, Tamil and French took also place in Solitude as Krishna has allocated us use a small roofed area. The content and creativity of these classes was highlighted and enriched by the context of being in a living, growing environment. Gardening and farming in Solitude has been a great experience, we are looking forward to continuing next school year, experimenting with a slightly different approach, aiming to enhance a deeper understanding about the connection between us, the food we grow and our impact on the environment.
Map project
Five children (age 9-10) were engaged in a project on maps for one term. The aim of the class was to introduce the children not just to maps themselves, but to gain an understanding of the motivations behind map-making and mapping techniques, to read maps as texts with a context. To gain a most comprehensive understanding of the subject, the project aimed to be as interdisciplinary as possible. The project extended historically to ancient and old maps, and highlighted European exploration, trade and colonialism, and the problems faced by map-makers. In terms of maths and science, we made sextants, compasses and learned about angles and degrees, as well as planetary constellations. Art and craft had its place in the children’s individual map collages, the joint map of our Pondicherry experience, and the paper globes. The trip into Pondicherry also enabled children to engage with the subject in a personal, concrete, sensual and more holistic way, which allowed for an experiential understanding, very different from merely studying in the classroom.
To begin with the focus was on how maps as we know them are an extension of the mental mapping that gives a person the sense of his/ her surrounding and his/her place within it. We further investigated the power of maps and those who make them, the implication of naming places, and how maps always have a purpose, though not always an explicit one. The second part centred on the ongoing dilemma of how to project a spherical earth onto a flat, rectangular paper, and the children explored this practically by cutting up oranges and making paper models. We discussed the various advantages and disadvantages of different projections, and their political motivations. Continuing from there, the children learnt about the importance of longitude and latitude, the connection to time zones, and how to read maps in terms of their scale and key. The third component explored how one would use a map to find ones’ way, i.e. navigation on land and at sea. In a geographical treasure hunt in Pondicherry, the children experienced the importance of the cardinal directions, how to use a map, but also how the map is not the territory, since the reality far exceeds the mere spatial dimensions represented on the map. The difficulties of navigating at sea start with establishing your own position before you can decide which direction leads to your destination. We made our own sextants to establish our latitude by measuring the elevation of the North Star. Understanding how a chronometer was used to determine ones’ longitude, we next made compasses which are the third instrument needed for navigation, to establish the direction of travel. As a counter balance to this kind of mapping and navigation, which stems from a European, scientific tradition, we briefly glimpsed other ways in which space has been and is imagined. Way- finding, as practiced by the Polynesians, and the Australian Aborigines’ song- lines, showed us very different ways of looking at ones’ surroundings and reaching ones’ destination. Non-human ways of reaching a location, added yet another dimension; echo location, sensing the earth’s magnetic field, as well as the sense of smell and sound is used by a number of animals as they navigate their way around daily or for migration. Finally, we brought the project back to the kids themselves, the ‘TLC tangle’ shows the trajectories for each child and their parents on a world map.
Baking English
The Baking English programme, which began two years ago, uses baking as a medium for developing skills related to English language development. This year 11 of the older children participated in the classes. The classes took on an additional angle this year, and included the element of photography. Giorgio kindly donated a camera to the project and he attended the classes and instructed the children on its use. Each class had one designated photographer, who would document the baking process.
Toward the end of the year the children sat with Giorgio and he showed them how to combine their selected photographs with the recipe texts to create the pages of the baking English recipe book.
It has become a tradition that the baking English students provide the refreshments for TLC’s annual open house. This year Tamar was out of station at the time and therefore not able to facilitate the process, but the children decided to go ahead with the task notwithstanding. Sowmya kindly offered her presiding presence at the baking sessions prior to the open house, and the children managed with minimal assistance to produce an array of patisserie that was enjoyed by all at the open house!
