We strongly believe that, family and the school together create a wonderful learning environment with plethora of opportunities that initiates a young and growing child into the journey of self-discovery. That is a life long journey: The journey of realizing ones infinite potential. The environment thus created is full of joy, stokes inquisitiveness, and provides spaces for the child to explore, experiment, experience, introspect, imbibe, apply and thrive in life.

For us, child (LEARNER) is at the centre. Everything else exists for her learning, joy and growth. PARENTs, CURRICULUM and MENTOR actively collaborate to work in sync to facilitate the learner evolve.

“Real world does not have any syllabus”  – Curriculum is not limited to books and school. It is beyond – every sensorial encounter for the child is part of her curriculum. We need to facilitate the child evolve to explore and learn from every interface and interaction, that may be structured or unstructured.

Mallika and Family

As a family, we have made it a point to explore the world with Mallika, ever since she was born. It has been a rebirth of sort for Indira and me.

The first eight years of Mallika has been filled with joyful learning. She is hooked on to books. She lives, eats and breaths books. Indira has contributed immensely. Books have helped us stoke her Imagination and creativity, as much as hone her language skills.  Her imagination takes shape of an art and craftwork, a poem or a skit that is very spontaneous and free flowing. Once, she gets an idea she jumps headlong converting it into a reality. She is very focused on any work at hand.
 
 

 
 
Visit the Mallikamaginations stream on Flickr
 
 

Mallika takes immense interest in music and dance too. She has the ability to grasp the nuances of music, rhythm and beats. This year, she has been initiated into learning carnatic classical music and Bharatanatyam. She has been a regular to SPIC MACAY national convention for the last three years and has participated in intensives in painting, odissi and Koodiyattam under eminent gurus.

Mallika and her cousin, Anandita, who will be nine soon, get along like house-on-fire. They together use all their creative instincts to create skits and dance dramas and enact in front of family audience of four to six of us. Mallika is physically active too – loves swimming and football.

Thanks to her parents’ love for travel – long four-wheel drives and adventures – she has been exposed to harshest of the environments and to her credit she takes everything in her stride like a seasoned campaigner. These travels help her explore the socio-cultural-economic dimensions of the places (over 10 states have been covered by road and a couple of countries). She has explored paddy fields and rice mills, pomegranate and coconut farms, mango and apple orchards; coffee and tea plantations; She has sat with weavers, kalamkari artists, toy makers in their homes and tried her hands. She has accompanied us to many out-bounds and experienced rappling, rafting, river crossing etc.

Though Mallika enjoys watching television, her choices are mythological cartoons or shows like back-yard-science, MAD and a couple of other such shows. She loves creating the contraptions or applying the concepts that she comes across in these shows.

Her mentors in the school describe Mallika as –

• Having high level of independent working skills
• A very well behaved child and that she always acts in a sensible manner
• Very creative and individual thinker
• An excellent performer

Mallika, now entering class III, is moving into the phase of Jigyasa (age of eight to fourteen) – need to stoke inquisitiveness is very high. Yes, her initial eight years have been full of joy, curiosity and exploration, and it is time to take her to the next level. It is time to build on these basics – to help her to get into purposeful hands-on experimentation, focused observation, introspection and learning; to develop a healthy and all-round personality. To enable her to push her boundaries, enjoy and learn from failures as much as from successes.

The School needs to be –

We would like the school to be one that our value system matches with. It is the most important criterion for us. The school need to facilitate students to be humble, friendly, collaborative yet competitive, to explore avenues beyond the books and classroom, to develop scientific temper and analytical frame of mind that will be life-oriented through many activities they involve in, to be healthy and develop oneself to be an independent, thinking and all-round person.

• Indira, having been involved with Bookaroo, ITIHAAS, SPIC MACAY, Jodogyan has seen over a hundred, so called ‘good’ Delhi schools. She has gathered a lot of insights during interactions children and mentors. Indira and I have discussed many a times about the probable school that we would like Mallika to be in.

• Being in Education space for over a decade and half, we have had opportunities to interact with people of eminence who have been associated with the schools over the years. They always shared a great deal about a  couple of schools that they felt,  “Would be a wonderful place for Mallika and us, as parents.”

We as parents, contribute to Mallika’s school in every possible way that the school encourages us to, in contributing to every child, parent and mentor in discovering ones infinite potential.

Thanks.

Sreenivasan                                                Indira Ganesh

sreeni@iwsb.in                                         indira_ganesh@yahoo.com