When Kamlesh Atwal from Uttarakhand’s Milak Nazeer village realised that the scholars of his village lacked consciousness about pursue their schooling and make a choice the appropriate careers, he sought after to lend a hand them through making a protected house the place they might study very important lifestyles abilities.
So in 2012, he made up our minds to open a college in Nanakmatta village, whilst he was once nonetheless pursuing his PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru College in Delhi. “My function was once to create an atmosphere the place scholars and lecturers collaborate to each study and un-learn, striving for a greater long term,” he says.
From 2012 to 2014, Kamlesh would consult with Nanakmatta on vacations or through taking go away to paintings for the varsity. But if he finished his PhD in 2015, he got here to the village for just right to nurture his dream of being a trainer and re-design the varsity in a brand new method.
“As of late, I’m now not only a trainer, but additionally a fellow learner along those scholars,” he says.
Scholars main schooling and group tasks in rural Uttarakhand
The scholars of the Nanakmatta Public Faculty in Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand have arrange greater than 20 group centres in numerous spaces of Nanakmatta, with a focal point on offering a finding out house to scholars who can not come up with the money for schooling.
At those centres, scholars organise ebook and science gala’s, and study through instructing and managing engagements thru video games, track, movies and books. There are greater than 1,000 scholars within the college. Kamlesh informs that most commonly senior scholars — Categories 9 to twelve — are excited about those initiatives.
“We intention to supply holistic schooling to rural and semi-rural kids within the context of rural Uttarakhand. It is a ‘student-led’ college the place the scholars study from each and every different thru a plethora of actions — from making documentaries to operating their very own magazines and group centres. The varsity’s versatile curriculum and freedom draw in scholars from quite a lot of villages and semi-rural spaces who experience spending time right here,” says Kamlesh who’s the co-founder and educational coordinator at NPS.
Ayesha, a Elegance 10 pupil, is lately operating a group library in Dhyanpur village, the place she works with round 30 to 40 kids each and every night time.
“We interact in quite a lot of actions, equivalent to taking part in video games like hide-and-seek and pakdam-pakdai. Moreover, from 4 to six pm every day, we learn and study in combination. Right through this time, we center of attention on improving our storytelling abilities thru written phrases and experience book-related video games,” she says.
“Moreover, we interact in role-play video games to raised seize the tales inside the books. With the exception of those actions, we additionally have a good time fairs like Holi and Raksha Bandhan, the place we trade candies and benefit from the festivities,” she provides.
Kamlesh notes, “Ayesha is an lively employee on the group centre. This has helped become her personal self belief and zeal to be told in her school room. She is now in a position to percentage what’s in her thoughts with self belief. That is the affect of running with the group thru this venture.”
Ayesha is one of the 50 scholars who’ve been in a position to construct certain management thru such obligations. Those are learnings, notes 37-year-old Kamlesh, that conventional school rooms won’t educate you. His scholars actively take part in day-to-day conferences, formulate plans to run their centres, talk about the demanding situations and learnings of those obligations, and replicate upon their stories.
Studying past the school room
Kamlesh stocks that the speculation of the group centre was once proposed through schooling activist and instructing mentor Mahesh Chandra Punetha from Pithoragarh district. First of all, the focal point was once simply to supply books, however this later evolved into an area the place kids of the group may just study from each and every different.
NPS additionally supplies scholars with an area to make movies through wearing out box analysis. To this point, the varsity has helped scholars unlock two documentaries on their YouTube channel. The primary is ready Uttarakhand’s Gujjar group, who migrate from one position to some other for livelihood. The opposite is concerning the lives of fishermen in Nanakmatta. To make such movies, the scholars spend a month with those communities to be told extra about their on a regular basis lives.
“The school room is all about rote finding out with many summary concepts. It doesn’t supply an area the place we will put in force our concepts into motion,” says Mahesh, including that thru documentary filmmaking, scholars are higher attached with their group.
The scholars additionally banded to make a movie membership within the college to display movies the usage of a projector in probably the most college’s not unusual rooms for college kids from other categories each and every week. This was once performed with the purpose of providing other possible choices to audio-visual platforms and finding out lecturers extra successfully thru gazing movies.
The scholars additionally paintings on ‘The Explorer’ — {a magazine} that they curate thru their editorial workforce. They acquire written items from scholars around the college and edit, proofread, and unlock the paintings on their very own. The mag is composed of pupil concepts, written paintings, cartoons, and extra.
The scholars additionally paintings on other variations of the mag. For example, with the ‘Wall Mag’, they devise a base of cardboard and paste their writings, drawings, and poems on it. They then show this mag at the meeting wall in order that increasingly scholars can learn it. Additionally they unlock virtual magazines to percentage with folks, lecturers, and their mentors.
“The initiative of magazines in faculties and school rooms is development a writing tradition amongst scholars. Writing is among the maximum important practices each and every pupil must be conversant in. After you have inspiration from senior scholars, junior categories additionally launched their wall magazines with the assistance of their lecturers. On this initiative, scholars don’t seem to be handiest development their writing abilities however finding out from each and every different’s writing,” says Kamlesh.
NPS’s tasks paintings to inspire scholars to contextualise finding out of their native atmosphere. Kamlesh notes that the varsity known that kids are steadily oblivious to the issues going down round them and that learning handiest inside school room settings with out context or reference makes finding out extra summary.
This is among the key the reason why they paintings on documenting tales of the folks round them, focussing on their conventional artwork and craft, demanding situations, social problems, and customs.
NPS collaborates with the Folks’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) to show scholars reporting, information analysing, and flooring analysis.
“This venture helps scholars to understand extra concerning the tales round them and study from the bizarre other people of daily lifestyles. It is helping senior scholars to get examples from their atmosphere about what they’re finding out in the school room. In the end, it’s strengthening educational finding out and serving to to attach bookish ideas with the tales to get a greater viewpoint of the actual subject,” says Gurpreet Kaur (16), a Elegance 12 pupil.
Shaping assured newcomers for a greater long term
“Most of these actions are a part of the varsity curriculum, and scholars are marked as in line with the growth in their paintings. Those initiatives’ affect is extra visual than conventional college finding out a few of the scholars. Thru those initiatives within the college gadget, scholars are extra assured to percentage their perspectives and evaluations,” stocks Chandra Sekhar Atwal, the foremost of the varsity who could also be Kamlesh’s more youthful brother.
The scholars are inspired to percentage their learnings on platforms equivalent to Educate for India, Children Training Revolution, and extra.
For Kamlesh, offering scholars with alternatives to connect to others running within the box of schooling is vital. He says, “It is very important collaborate with various organisations and like-minded peoples to get a brand new viewpoint and a imaginative and prescient to have a look at the type of schooling in quite a lot of techniques. It is helping to form our figuring out of the arena round us. Additionally they supply some mirrored image about how we will make our establishment more practical and student-centric.”
For example, Mahesh mentors the scholars, specifically in language, grammar, and writing; cinema activist Sanjay Joshi supplies new insights and concepts on movie and cinema; and Ashutosh Upadhyay, an schooling activist running at Bal Vigyan Khojshala, Haldwani, organises workshops on science. In the meantime, documentary filmmaker Fathima Nizaruddin advises scholars on their very own concepts relating filmmaking.
Kamlesh says, “Colleges are steadily a part of a social construction and order, and it’s easy to run a gadget with a monopoly of lecturers. However choice finding out wishes a large number of educated lecturers, who truly need to paintings with scholars. As of late’s conventional schooling curriculum doesn’t permit scholars to be excited about actions now not associated with route books.”
He additionally says that it’s now not simply that he’s instructing scholars — he’s additionally finding out from them. He says, “I’m finding out to be a pupil who’s open to new alternatives, values wondering to search out solutions thru instructing, and features treasured insights from running with scholars, enabling me to raised perceive their finding out wishes.”
A number of scholars from NPS have long gone directly to get entry to the likes of Ashoka College, FLAME, Delhi College, Azim Premji College, and extra.
Kamlesh says, “I don’t know what’s going to be the location of scholars from NPS sooner or later, however I do know they’ll by no means dominate marginalised communities and all the time lend a hand the ones in want.”
Authored through: Prakash Chand, a Elegance 12 Humanities pupil from Nanakmatta Public Faculty, Uttarakhand.
(Edited through Pranita Bhat; All photos courtesy: Nanakmatta Public Faculty Management)