SAIIER Annual Report 2014-2015: Teachers' Center

Stewardship for New Emergence		"The Dream"
Teachers' Center

Introduction

The Entity::Teachers' Center aims to encourage the development and implementation of Integral Education in Auroville through collaboration, networking, research, and innovation. It is a new activity that aims to grow into the roles of: providing teacher training, advisory services, and a teachers’ resource center; researching and developing didactic materials; and offering skills, tools, knowledge and sharing towards understanding and manifesting Integral Education.

Description of project

The Teachers Center opened officially in September 2014. In its first year of functioning the Teachers’ Center worked on the different areas defined in the aims and objectives:

Teacher training Teacher training under the umbrella of the Teachers’ Center happened regularly. Most of the Teachers’ Center members had been engaged already in training teachers in different Auroville schools, including The Learning Community, Deepanam School, Transition School, Future School, Oli School, Nandanam Kindergarten, Aikiyam School, and New Era Secondary School. According the the needs, the teachers’ trainings took different forms: workshops, meetings in the schools or in the Teachers’ Center, consultation with teachers, advisory services, class observation with feedback, and other teacher guidance and support.

Networking Networking happened through the weekly “Conversations on Integral Education” held in the Teachers’ Center, to which teachers from all Auroville schools were invited.

A “Special Needs Consortium” of teachers was coordinated by the Teachers’ Center, bringing together professionals in the field with representatives from different schools. Meetings were held monthly.

The first in a series of gatherings called “The Manifestation of the Dream” was organized, on the topic of physical education.

Reference material The current agenda of meetings and workshops is displayed on the accessible bulletin board outside the Teachers’ Center. The Center has a growing collection of reports and photographs which record different activities of the schools, as well as a growing library with books on professional development. The team, with help of Auroville volunteers, has begun creating educational materials that can be borrowed by teachers to use in a variety of projects. This is an ongoing process.

Pedagogy A Peace Education project was started which will be proposed and introduced in the various schools.

Outcomes

The Teachers’ Center brought more exchanges between the different schools and their teachers. As it is a space dedicated to all teachers and not located in a particular school, it brought more unity between the teachers and gave a sense of working all together for the education in Auroville. We found that bringing our ideas and experience together, as well as our needs and difficulties, creates positive energy that enables us to find a way to progress.

Reflections

We followed an organic way of developing our activities, trying to keep harmony between the different projects undertaken, balancing our own availability with our objectives. Our activities were steadily increased especially during the Winter season, when we received invaluable help from professional volunteers. Along the way new opportunities opened such as the Peace Education Project. We are also grateful for the young Auroville volunteers who helped make educational materials throughout the year.

We have taken the attitude of respecting the freedom of each member to link to the Center in the way he or she deems best.

Future direction

We would like the Teachers Center to be open daily and to have a secretary who can receive people, give information, check out library books and materials, and do filing and other secretarial work such as accounting. We did find such person and will apply for a maintenance in our next budget. We also intend that people from outside Auroville will have ways to contribute to the Teachers’ Center.

We will continue our work on educational project boxes for lending to the schools, and make more educational material with the help of volunteers. We are working on a Teachers’ Center website that will feature a newsletter, information about our activities, and opportunities for sharing.

Some of our goals for next year are:

to increase our collection of books for professional development;
to link educational books for children to to the project boxes;
to offer an interesting collection of topics for our weekly “Conversations on Integral Education” that closely follows the needs of the teachers;
to organize a variety of workshops that can help teachers progress in their daily work, such as by inviting guest teachers-trainers, or asking teachers to share their success stories;
to create a visual database with photo material and videos on all the Auroville schools and their activities, as well as posters for display and leaflets to disseminate;
to help organize teacher training for Special Needs requests;
to continue research towards the Peace Education project;
to continue the series “The Manifestation of the Dream”, bringing teachers together around the ideals of Integral Education.

Stewardship for New Emergence

"The Dream"