Hunar Ghar brochure
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English translation
Hunar Ghar [ This means something like 'Skills Home'. It is not a good translation; the meaning of those words is much deeper and suggests to represent capacity, deep skill and understanding and something that is intergral and set deep within the heart]
Bakhel, Kotra, Udaipur, Rajasthan [our location]
Contents
Our Vision
Our activities
A comparison of Govt School & Hunar Ghar
A progress report
Some commitments
Our Vision; Academic Learning
Over time we envisage that Hunar Ghar will provide education up to 12th Standard.
Most importantly, we hope that this education is of a high quality so that it is relevant and useful.
Every child will cover a syllabus that includes the government’s minimum level of learning.
Minimum levels of learning up to 5th Standard include competency in Hindi speaking, reading and writing, Mathematical numeracy and some Environmental Science.
Our Vision; Skills
We envisage that over time children will develop a mastery of skills that interest them. These skills are useful for many reasons:
Practical skills are an important part of generating local livelihood.
People learn by doing, and the incorporation of practical elements into learning makes the academic knowledge more relevant and useful.
Village development requires highly skilled people such as mechanics, engineers, masons, carpenters and electricians. Hunar Ghar's vision is that these people can be from your own village, and so bring about the change you want.
Our Vision; Kshamata
Academic and practical skills provide opportunities, but without confidence, inquiry and happiness these opportunities will be missed.
Without confidence people are afraid to use the knowledge and skills they have.
Without inquiry people can not solve problems for themselves. They will always be dependent on the help of others.
The encouragement of happiness supports confidence, inquiry, learning and healthy living and is a fundamental part of any good education that makes children into adults who can make the most of their opportunities.
Our Vision : Academic learning, skills and kshamata
At Hunar Ghar our vision is to combine knowledge, skills and kshamata at Hunar Ghar, creating an education that is:
Relevant to the needs of the children and community.
Holistic, encouraging balanced academic, social, economic, emotional and moral development of the children.
High quality, providing children with the opportunity to fulfil their potentials and desires.
Our Activities
Our activities demonstrate how we're turning that vision into reality and have already made a lot of progress.
Common Timetable
Prayer, yoga, games and lunch are a common part of every day at Hunar Ghar:
Every morning all the children meet for prayer and yoga time in the field. This helps bring children together and make a good start to the day. We encourage children to come on time and clean, it is the responsibility of parents to ensure this also.
After prayer, the children and teachers play sports and games together. Games are important:
After morning classes, the children get a nutritious lunch, crucial for their health and physical development. Since starting at Hunar Ghar, health the physical condition of children has improved dramatically. The children are given a mix of daals, grains and fresh vegetables, we encourage a similar mix of foods at home for everyone.
Class Division
Our children are divided into 3 age groups for morning and afternoon activities:
Each of these groups of children have different learning needs as they are at different stage of their physical, emotional and cognitive development. Our activities are designed to cater to these differences.
Balwadi
Balwadi is a time to prepare children for deeper learning in the future. With these children we aim to:
For this reason you will see us:
Phase 2 & 3
Phase 2 children are equivalent of Class 1-3. By the end of this phase we hope that children can:
Phase 3 children are equivalent of Class 4-6. They will:
Daily, the Phase 2 & 3 children have projects in the morning and in the afternoon have more formal teaching which revises the government's minimum level of learning.
Projects are holistic, meaning children go through a task from beginning to end and they weave together a wide range of skills and knowledge, just like real life. A single project may incorporate sewing, several different maths skills, painting, creative writing, reading, observation, research, learning new knowledge, discussion, drawing graphs and physical work, to name just a few.
Project based learning is good because it integrates many ways of learning:
- Experience
- observation
- reading
- being taught
- discussion
- teaching someone else
- sharing ideas and knowledge
- asking questions
- discovery
All these ways of learning are important and using them together makes learning more relevant which makes learning and use of previously learned skills easier. Project based learning is how we combining academics, practical skills and kshamta.
For example, in some schools children learn about crops in the classroom. At Hunar Ghar classroom teaching is combined with learning in the fields and related discussion, so children can more clearly understand, remember and apply knowledge.
This integration of skills helps with academic learning. For example sewing helps develop the fine skills necessary to be able to write.
The development of skills through project work also acts as vocational training. e.g. Toy making will be useful for carpentry in the future.
The role of the teachers & team
It is the role of the teachers and team to facilitate the children as they learn. This is done in three ways:
teaching - The teachers teach children new knowledge and skills.
encouraging child-child learning - many times children learn by watching their friends and copying them or being taught by them. It is the role of the teachers to create an environment in which this opportunity is used fully. We have grouped older and younger children to encourage this process.
encourage child-led learning - Child-led learning develops confidence and inquiry which makes children very strong learners. Without confidence and inquiry we cannot learn as much, and will never be able to excel in what we do. Teachers encourage children to learn for themselves, by allowing them to make and express decisions and opinions.
For the children to develop the inquiry and confidence needed to be good learners, it is important for the teachers to create a fear free environment. Playing, responding to children's interests and treating them with respect are important parts of creating such a rapport.
As well as this children learn through:
village involvement - Everyone in Bakhel learned to grow crops from their family and community. With involvement from the community the children can learn many more things from Hunar Ghar. As Hunar Ghar exists for the benefit of Bakhel, involvement of the people of Bakhel at Hunar Ghar is vital for its success.
outside support and visits - Meeting with new people provides new experience and skills to learn, as well as the opportunity to share the skills and knowledge we have.
Government schools and Hunar Ghar
Hunar Ghar is different from government schools in many ways:
At Hunar Ghar the children get a much more nutritious lunch, which helps them develop a strong and healthily mind and body.
At Hunar Ghar the teachers come every day, so the children can learn at Hunar Ghar every day.
At Hunar Ghar we do constant training so the quality of and relevance of the education is constantly improving.
At Hunar Ghar there are less children per teacher, so the children have more attention and can learn more.
At Hunar Ghar the children are encouraged to try things and are not punished if they do it wrong. This means they are more likely to try - and so learn - again.
At Hunar Ghar the children talk to one another, share and move around. This means instead of learning only from the teacher and book (like at a government school) the children can learn from one other and their environment too.
Progress report
Hunar Ghar started two years ago with 80 children, 4 teachers and 4 classrooms. We now have 110 children, 8 teachers, 6 classrooms with another two being built, a kitchen, composting toilets, rainwater harvesting system, and are starting to develop our own vegetable production.
We have transitioned from a destructive formal way of learning to a constructive informal way of learning.
The children's health has vastly improved. Children at Hunar Ghar do not have infectious diseases or nutrition deficiencies.
The children at Hunar Ghar are becoming more creative and imaginative and work together very well. They are more helpful and respectful and well behaved, and they are like this without punishment. They have new skills in sewing, working with plywood, painting, making jewellery and have good competencies in Hindi, reading, writing and maths.
The teachers have also made much positive progress to understand a difficult system and work well with the children.
The last year has seen a lot of outside interest in Hunar Ghar, with many people for NGOs and government inspired by the innovative methods used here.
Some commitments
New children and teachers
Each year Hunar Ghar will accept 30 new balwadi children and two new teachers.
New buildings and infrastructure
We will build new rooms each year to hold the new children, and infrastructure as necessary for a growing number of children at the school.
Hunar Ghar learning course
We will provide a complete learning syllabus in August 2010.
Weekly and monthly training will be ongoing for the teachers.
Certificates
Hunar Ghar will provide three levels of government recognised certification:
Communication
We will improve communication of changes and progress at Hunar Ghar to the village. We will share a 6 monthly assessment of each child to the parents, which will include parents meeting at this time with the child's teacher.
Hunar Ghar information will be displayed through community boards around the village. This will include information about:
In August 2009 Ash, Deepak and Ed put together a brochure to hand out to the parents of the children that attend our school, Hunar Ghar, and also to distribute around the rest of the village, a little to surrounding villages, and to other interested parties who can read Hindi. The language is somewhat basic as it had to be meaningful for someone with no previous understanding of any of our concepts, and it had to be as unambiguous as possible to save confusion. It is written in Hindi, the most widely spoken language of the area. Not everyone in our village can read or understand Hindi, but we felt that enough do that could read it and share it with the others that don't.
It was really important to create a booklet for for a number of reasons:
- First, we felt it was really important to clarify what we had achieved so far. When day to day life bumbles along it can be quite difficult to notice changes. By pointing them out people can feel more secure that progress is happening.
- Secondly, we didn't feel that we had been clear enough with the community in what they can expect from us. By setting it out in the booklet it settled a lot of uncertainty and set solid common goals and commitments for us with the community to work towards. Just as importantly, this would make it clear what the community could not expect from us.
- Very importantly, it enabled us to set out clearly why informal education is good for their children. It is not uncommon for us to hear complaints that the children aren't learning, how can they possibly learn by playing?! We laid out clearly just how well their children have been learning and why it is good for children to learn in a fear-free and supportive, creative environment. This is really critical to our success; on it's own it matters not if what we do is incredible or disasterous, it only becomes meaningful when what happens is supported by the community.
- We also needed to reassure people that children where getting as good an education with us as with the government. Again, it is actually far better but because it is different, and to them appears unproved, it was necessary to reassert that we are at least equally valuable as a government education. Some people have feared that we are just 'city folk' 'experimenting' on the 'poor tribal children'. Such is the distrust that exists between different communities this is quite feasible, so we need people to understand that we respect them and take their children's education very seriously.
Copyleft 2005 - 2010; which is to say, feel free to use as you like - share and share a-like. Licenced under the Creative Commons.
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