When Kamlesh Atwal from Uttarakhand’s Milak Nazeer village realised that the scholars of his village lacked consciousness about the right way to pursue their training and select the correct careers, he needed to assist them by making a protected area the place they might study important life expertise.
So in 2012, he determined to open a faculty in Nanakmatta village, whereas he was nonetheless pursuing his PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru College in Delhi. “My purpose was to create an surroundings the place college students and lecturers collaborate to each study and un-learn, striving for a greater future,” he says.
From 2012 to 2014, Kamlesh would go to Nanakmatta on holidays or by taking go away to work for the college. However when he accomplished his PhD in 2015, he got here to the village for good to nurture his dream of being a trainer and re-design the college in a brand new manner.
“Immediately, I’m not only a trainer, but in addition a fellow learner alongside these college students,” he says.
College students main training and group initiatives in rural Uttarakhand
The scholars of the Nanakmatta Public College in Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand have arrange greater than 20 group centres in several areas of Nanakmatta, with a concentrate on offering a studying area to college students who can’t afford training.
At these centres, college students organise e-book and science festivals, and study by educating and managing engagements by video games, music, movies and books. There are greater than 1,000 college students within the college. Kamlesh informs that principally senior college students — Courses 9 to 12 — are concerned in these initiatives.
“We intention to offer holistic training to rural and semi-rural kids within the context of rural Uttarakhand. It is a ‘student-led’ college the place the scholars study from one another by a plethora of actions — from making documentaries to operating their very own magazines and group centres. The varsity’s versatile curriculum and freedom appeal to college students from numerous villages and semi-rural areas who take pleasure in spending time right here,” says Kamlesh who’s the co-founder and tutorial coordinator at NPS.
Ayesha, a Class 10 scholar, is presently operating a group library in Dhyanpur village, the place she works with round 30 to 40 kids each night.
“We interact in numerous actions, reminiscent of taking part in video games like hide-and-seek and pakdam-pakdai. Moreover, from 4 to six pm every day, we learn and study collectively. Throughout this time, we concentrate on enhancing our storytelling expertise by written phrases and revel in book-related video games,” she says.
“Moreover, we interact in role-play video games to raised grasp the tales throughout the books. Other than these actions, we additionally rejoice festivals like Holi and Raksha Bandhan, the place we change sweets and benefit from the festivities,” she provides.
Kamlesh notes, “Ayesha is an energetic employee on the group centre. This has helped rework her personal confidence and zeal to study in her classroom. She is now in a position to share what’s in her thoughts with confidence. That is the affect of working with the group by this venture.”
Ayesha is among the many 50 college students who’ve been in a position to construct constructive management by such obligations. These are learnings, notes 37-year-old Kamlesh, that conventional school rooms could not train you. His college students actively take part in day by day conferences, formulate plans to run their centres, talk about the challenges and learnings of those obligations, and replicate upon their experiences.
Studying past the classroom
Kamlesh shares that the concept of the group centre was proposed by training activist and educating mentor Mahesh Chandra Punetha from Pithoragarh district. Initially, the main focus was simply to offer books, however this later developed into an area the place kids of the group may study from one another.
NPS additionally supplies college students with an area to make movies by finishing up area analysis. To this point, the college has helped college students launch two documentaries on their YouTube channel. The primary is about Uttarakhand’s Gujjar group, who migrate from one place to a different for livelihood. The opposite is in regards to the lives of fishermen in Nanakmatta. To make such movies, the scholars spend a month with these communities to study extra about their on a regular basis lives.
“The classroom is all about rote studying with many summary concepts. It doesn’t present an area the place we are able to implement our concepts into motion,” says Mahesh, including that by documentary filmmaking, college students are higher related with their group.
The scholars additionally banded to make a movie membership within the college to display movies utilizing a projector in one of many college’s frequent rooms for college kids from totally different lessons each week. This was achieved with the intention of providing totally different alternate options to audio-visual platforms and studying lecturers extra successfully by watching movies.
The scholars additionally work on ‘The Explorer’ — {a magazine} that they curate by their editorial group. They gather written items from college students throughout the college and edit, proofread, and launch the work on their very own. The journal consists of scholar concepts, written work, cartoons, and extra.
The scholars additionally work on totally different variations of the journal. As an illustration, with the ‘Wall Journal’, they create a base of cardboard and paste their writings, drawings, and poems on it. They then show this journal on the meeting wall in order that an increasing number of college students can learn it. Additionally they launch digital magazines to share with mother and father, lecturers, and their mentors.
“The initiative of magazines in faculties and school rooms is constructing a writing tradition amongst college students. Writing is without doubt one of the most important practices each scholar ought to be accustomed to. After getting inspiration from senior college students, junior lessons additionally launched their wall magazines with the assistance of their lecturers. On this initiative, college students are usually not solely constructing their writing expertise however studying from one another’s writing,” says Kamlesh.
NPS’s initiatives work to encourage college students to contextualise studying of their native environment. Kamlesh notes that the college recognized that kids are sometimes oblivious to the issues occurring round them and that learning solely inside classroom settings with out context or reference makes studying extra summary.
This is without doubt one of the key the explanation why they work on documenting tales of the individuals round them, focussing on their conventional artwork and craft, challenges, social points, and customs.
NPS collaborates with the Folks’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) to show college students reporting, information analysing, and floor analysis.
“This venture helps college students to know extra in regards to the tales round them and study from the abnormal individuals of day-to-day life. It helps senior college students to get examples from their environment about what they’re studying within the classroom. In the end, it’s strengthening tutorial studying and serving to to attach bookish ideas with the tales to get a greater perspective of the actual matter,” says Gurpreet Kaur (16), a Class 12 scholar.
Shaping assured learners for a greater future
“All these actions are a part of the college curriculum, and college students are marked as per the progress of their work. These initiatives’ affect is extra seen than conventional college studying among the many college students. Via these initiatives within the college system, college students are extra assured to share their views and opinions,” shares Chandra Sekhar Atwal, the principal of the college who can also be Kamlesh’s youthful brother.
The scholars are inspired to share their learnings on platforms reminiscent of Train for India, Children Training Revolution, and extra.
For Kamlesh, offering college students with alternatives to attach with others working within the area of training is essential. He says, “It is very important collaborate with numerous organisations and like-minded peoples to get a brand new perspective and a imaginative and prescient to have a look at the mannequin of training in numerous methods. It helps to form our understanding of the world round us. Additionally they present some reflection about how we are able to make our establishment simpler and student-centric.”
As an illustration, Mahesh mentors the scholars, significantly in language, grammar, and writing; cinema activist Sanjay Joshi supplies new insights and concepts on movie and cinema; and Ashutosh Upadhyay, an training activist working at Bal Vigyan Khojshala, Haldwani, organises workshops on science. In the meantime, documentary filmmaker Fathima Nizaruddin advises college students on their very own concepts pertaining to filmmaking.
Kamlesh says, “Faculties are sometimes a part of a social construction and order, and it’s easy to run a system with a monopoly of lecturers. However various studying wants a whole lot of educated lecturers, who actually wish to work with college students. Immediately’s conventional training curriculum doesn’t permit college students to be concerned in actions not associated to course books.”
He additionally says that it’s not simply that he’s educating college students — he’s additionally studying from them. He says, “I’m studying to be a scholar who’s open to new alternatives, values questioning to search out solutions by educating, and good points precious insights from working with college students, enabling me to raised perceive their studying wants.”
A number of college students from NPS have gone on to get entry to the likes of Ashoka College, FLAME, Delhi College, Azim Premji College, and extra.
Kamlesh says, “I don’t know what would be the place of scholars from NPS sooner or later, however I do know they are going to by no means dominate marginalised communities and at all times assist these in want.”
Authored by: Prakash Chand, a Class 12 Humanities scholar from Nanakmatta Public College, Uttarakhand.
(Edited by Pranita Bhat; All photos courtesy: Nanakmatta Public College Administration)
