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A Living History of APV |
| Prior to 2003, SBMA had been running a school on its Anjanisain campus that was widely respected by the community. Yet, within that year, the SBMA school experienced shortages in funding which dramatically affected the quality of education being delivered by the teachers. Cyril Raphael, SBMA Secretary, Mohan Panwar Singh, a long time SBMA worker, and Marc Alongi, a Service Corp Fellow from the American Indian Foundation, grew frustrated by the situation in the school and decided to take initiative in bringing about change. The three traveled to Dehradun to talk with Anand Dwivedi, an educationalist and former SBMA employee, about the possibilities of actualizing some of his educational ideals. Anand ji had worked for SBMA publishing a handful of books about alternative teaching methods but had since left to pursue other interests. After many in-depth discussions, Anand ji became impressed by the seriousness, honesty, and dedication that he saw in Mohan and Marc's desire to revolutionize the education system. Anand ji agreed to come to Anjanisain for a ten day consultancy. |
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Weeding the Field and Sowing the Seeds When Anand ji returned to Anjanisain, he found that the SBMA school was overgrown with many of the same weeds that plague most mainstream schools: apathetic teachers, militaristic standing assemblies, rigid student/teacher relationships, uncreative curriculum and delivery, enforced uniforms, etc. Anand ji, Mohan, and Marc were given grades 1 through 4 to teach, while the standard teachers kept the remainder. The three went to work at agitating the status quo in the school by introducing their holistic pedagogy, utilizing creative outlets, such as song, dance, and art, and lastly, stressing a full brain approach to learning. The eyes of the other teachers, SBMA staff, parents and even the children themselves blazed down upon them like the intense midday sun scrutinizing their every move. But they, nevertheless, endeavored in their objectives celebrating the small successes. It became apparent to Anand ji that he would have to stay for a longer period to enact any substantial, long term change. But despite the many challenges, Anand ji felt optimistic about the initial foundation set by himself and colleagues. He committed for another 6 months. |
Blooming At the end of summer 2004, funding for the school dried up entirely and all of the SBMA teachers were transferred. Cyril ji then gave full responsibility of the school to Anand ji and Mohan as long as they could find their own funding and staff. They took the challenge, finding a teaching corps of young individuals who were inexperienced in the field of teaching yet dedicated and interested in bringing new ideas and energy into the outdated norms of education. From this new freedom, Anand's educational philosophy and ideas of conscious communities, expressed in his literature, started blossoming quite organically. |
In the beginning, the teachers had a disjointed living situation, being scattered about the SBMA campus. It was decided by the teachers that they needed a shared living space where all could focus their energies towards their student's education and their own inward path of self discovery. Although not entirely planned by Anandji, this shared space soon evolved to become what he envisioned in his writings as a 'mindful community,' where the community as a whole functions as a single, collective organism towards a common goal while maintaining individual eccentricities of those who make up the community. Soon all of the teachers became involved with the processes of maintaining the school and their own living environment, whether it be cutting vegetables, sweeping the grounds, or scrubbing the toilets. In their time off from teaching or preparing for school, the teachers strived to beautify their surroundings, erecting walls, terracing the hills around the school into land which are now used for organic subsistence farming for the ashram, and creating play structures for the students. The grass play field in the front of the school is another important testament of the teacher's hard work. Previously there had been many attempts to plant grass on the field but all had failed, leaving a dirt field as the children's only playspace. The dirt was a large problem; everyday children would kick it up during recess and track it into the classroom, covering everything with thick layers of dust. Despite the dissuasions of other SBMA staff and no assurance in future success, the APV team set out in correcting this problem, spending much time and effort nurturing the field. Their dedication and constant supervision finally paid off, bearing a beautiful grass field that, to this day, is used daily for play and instruction. |
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The lifestyle was (and still is) demanding of the teachers, requiring them to devote all of their attentions to the education of their students and to the community with little in return in the form of monetary compensation. What has kept these teachers motivated has not just been a dedication to the children and each other but also a dedication to living mindfully; not excessively dwelling on the past or future, but rather experiencing every moment fully, in its truest form (for further explanation, see APV Philosophy). The teachers start and end their days with mindfulness exercises and strive to allow this state of mind to permeate through all activities that the day may bring. It is this mindfulness that has been most intrinsic to the school's development guiding it towards the many successes it has achieved. |
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With this rigorous lifestyle and centrality of mindfulness, the school and teachers began an impressive metamorphosis. The militaristic standing assembly was transformed into a sitting one where students, teachers, and administration all collected together on the same floor. The assemblies began with children and students participating in mindfulness activities and soon evolved to include music and singing. Anand ji and Dheeraj ji, the APV Principal, wrote songs about APV philosophy and performed them with the children during the assembly, playing harmonium and tabla, respectively. The songs became very popular and the kids began to demand more (to date, APV has written over thirty songs, see APV Music). The teachers worked hard to deconstruct their student's ingrained perspectives of educators and to create meaningful relationships with their students. Fortunately, past learning conditions faded fast and soon a learning partnership and friendship was formed. Standard rote-memorization based learning was abandoned for a more experiential model, linking concepts to familiar local materials and sensibilities. Children were able to choose the subjects that they wanted to learn at which time while the teachers connected all these subjects via interdisciplinary teaching methods. This was all done while covering concepts from governmental syllabuses so that children could still pass the exams. With the hard work of both parties involved, the immediate benefits of the pedagogy surfaced quickly: children and teachers were happily engaged in their studies and learning more daily about themselves in relation to the world around them; and so were the teachers. |
The Spreading of Seeds APV is slowly changing the minds of those that doubted the pedagogy from the beginning. Recently, SBMA staff has accepted that the APV pedagogy is the right direction for education in Uttarakhand and has fully supported APV in working with government schools to bring about change. The community has also started to embrace the school, and with the money coming to the school by way of teacher's trainings and consultancies, APV has started a community fund in order to support the families of the students who are in need and to bring the community into their children's education. Recently, the government has also expressed encouragement for the APV school and philosophy: Pandey ji, the Director of Education, the highest governmental post in Uttarakhand's education system, has visited the APV school and voiced his excitement in the program and future support. |
As this is being written, APV is working with 26 government schools through teacher and student workshops. Through APV's previous workshops, it was discovered that many government teachers do not competently know many of the concepts that they are suppose to teach their children and they conveyed that they are not entirely willing or have the energy to learn. In addition to this, there is typically one or two teachers for 40 + students, a ratio that makes it virtually impossible to give adequate time to the children. Thus, APV's approach to the workshop is to empower the older children, who contain boundless energy and interest, to aid in educating the younger students, a concept that has been enacted in the APV school. This student/student teaching scheme has been embraced by student and teacher alike and hopefully, will set the foundation for true change in the overarching educational system. |
The aforementioned workshops are primarily run by APV students, a promising direction for the APV school, seeing that the future of APV's ideas lie in the hands of the students. The educator's role is to merely nurture the child's development, bringing out their true potential, much like how a gardener or farmer would tend to their field. To make use of APV team's aforementioned experience with the grass field as an metaphor, we should view the current social order as a large dirt field and its people as grass. There is potential for a lush green field, but in reality, the vast majority of the field lays barren, maybe with a few vibrant disjointed patches of grass. There have been many groundskeepers who have tried a plethora of techniques to create a great field, but all have fallen short. To bring about a lush field, the seeds must be continually tended to and given the right amount of nourishment; soil, water and sunlight (or for the child, community, love, and mindfulness); so that the seed can develop and flourish on its own. With time for growth and maturation, they will spread their seeds and soon the field will organically develop into a lush field. Likewise, as APV students grow and mature, it is APV's intention that they will spread these ideas with their actions and interactions with others, influencing their families and communities to live more intelligent lifestyles. |
APV, c/o SBMA, Anjanisain, Tehri Garhwal,
Uttarakhand 249121, India
apvschool@sancharnet.in
Ph. (91) 01376247648
