SAIIER 2021:Auroville, Our Home

Transition School		Deepanam School
Auroville, Our Home a project of Entity::Transition School by Author::Mary and Transition team members

“Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.”

~ The Mother

This quote expresses an underlying theme in the development of the program of study for Transition School students, “Auroville, Our Home”. The activities and the research that we do with the children are tools to help us understand our unique town, Auroville.

This is the third year that the members of the Transition Team have worked together to develop and expand a project-based program to help our children learn more about Auroville: the unique vision that it is based on, the history and the present day opportunities and realities in Auroville. Learning about Auroville is important for the children because it helps them to become aware of the philosophy, goals and values of Auroville. It will help them to become more active, involved members of the Auroville community. Additionally, they will become more aware about what it is that makes Auroville a ‘special’ place, different from other places and also it is important for children everywhere to understand their hometown — know about where they live.

Outings to visit workplaces and areas in Auroville and opportunities to meet the Aurovilians have been favorite activities. This year the opportunities to go places and meet people were very limited because of the Covid 19 virus and the restrictions that it put on all.

Teachers and children of all groups worked more on activities that involved research on topics of interest to the children. This was followed by discussion and other forms of expression such as poetry, artwork and writing.

Description of project:

We are continuing to work towards a project-based program in which the students and the teachers are able to add onto what we have learned and experienced through active inquiry and research. As this is the third year that many of these children have spent some time on “Auroville, Our Home”, they had background knowledge from the earlier years. The major areas of study in this project are: the Vision and the History of Auroville, the present organization of Auroville, and the People – the Aurovilians and their work, their activities and their dreams.

The younger children (grades 1-5) started the time with open discussions about what they remembered and what they would like to know more about. They enthusiastically remembered a lot. The teachers and the children spoke about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Dream of Auroville. In order to help these young children understand this vision, many of the teachers read the book “Tell me, my friend, what is this Auroville?” This is a book written for children by an Aurovilian and aims to help the young children better understand Auroville.

The children were asked to reflect and think about what Auroville meant for them and they wrote beautiful texts, which they illustrated with colorful drawings and put up in our classroom. They expressed these using different types of writing, ranging from simple sentences to more complex paragraph writing. The children illustrated many of their ideas and their dreams for Auroville. One major project by the grade 4 class was that they made a big poster of the Master Plan with many details. It was encouraging to see their enthusiasm. The children also visited the Matrimandir in small groups. This was a great highlight in the project!

The Middle School children looked at the beginning of a timeline that an earlier class had started. They added many new dates to this timeline. In the seventh-grade class the children looked at the Auroville timeline and were interested in the many events that were on the timeline. This led to lively discussion and generated a lot of interest, enthusiasm and many questions. We decided to try to add events to the timeline and were quite successful. We will keep adding events present and past to this timeline.

With this age group it is interesting to define and talk about what is meant by the vision of Auroville. They read “A Dream”, The Charter of Auroville, and “To Be a True Aurovilian” and were asked to try to interpret the meaning of each one. It led to an interesting conversation and some debate.

Poetry was also a great favorite for the students. We ended our work together with a poetry writing session with Auroville as the theme. In reading these poems written by young adolescents you will see a deep understanding and love for Auroville.

“Auroville”
by Ishana

A flower that is Auroville

A small little bud that has blossomed into a town of creativity and growth

fostering generations of people, giving them homes where they can run around barefoot, climb trees and soak in the sun.

Every day you are growing into being a beautiful flower where butterflies and bees can come and collect pollen.

Soon there will be a meadow of light, beauty, and creativity.

Outcomes:

Although our activities were limited, the project stayed alive, and the children continued their exploration of Auroville. We do hope to be able to continue our physical exploration next year. It is a great learning experience to meet our fellow Aurovilians in the workplace or at home and additionally to learn from all of the innovative and exciting work that is happening in Auroville.

Reflections and conclusion:

This is a very rewarding project for all: the teachers, the students and the Aurovilians we all interacted with. The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and Auroville’s aspiration for Human Unity became much more tangible for the children of all ages. Here we have outlined just some of the activities and projects that happened this year. We now plan to make a program in which “Auroville, Our Home”, is an underlying theme in a field of study for the children of Transition School.