A significant learning experience!
Reading the news letter of SIDH, I am prompted to write me reflections on my first encounter with the organization as a participant of the SIDH theater workshop held from May 7 – 14. 2008.

Coming from a small town Tumkur in Karnataka( South India), I like living in quite places. So the remoteness of the SIDH campus was very welcome. Though a teacher by profession I had come with an open mind of subjecting myself to the “ conditioning “ of being a learner and mentally prepared for a disciplined schedule.
Thankfully it was one such kind inclusive of eating and sleeping schedules ( both qualitative and quantitative) ! Any free time in-between two schedules was used for personal chores and or catering to my passion of bird watching and spending quality time with individuals who graciously obliged to share their thoughts.

Very apprehensive was I about the nature of the workshop I was to participate in. But as if by magic I was thoroughly uninhibited from day one . Thanks to the suitable ambience the facilitators created to the already existing natural serenity around. So true I had to be to my self, no excuses would validate being otherwise.

At every session the nuances of play was unfolded not by imitation but by encouraging and demanding originality or least by improvisation. The passion of the facilitators towards the art form was very visible and contagious too! This helped us all to bring out our best at that given moment.

That the facilitators exhibited traits the modern educationists demand of teachers in class rooms was very revealing . Well, I learnt that they both had been trained in the traditional guru shishya parampara and if they were trying to emulate their gurus so be it! This goes to show that the traditional way of transference of skills or any learning could have been child centric and child specific! Mind you the group was heterogeneous and the facilitators had no clue about the interests or background of the participants! But yet every body felt that they were respected and guided as the need be and hence the learning that took place in these seven days was very significant!

That our schools do not meet the objective it sets for its students is because the context and the mode of transference of skills and the assessment of learning is at fault. The facilitators did not fear demanding accountability of each participant which if done in today’s schools is termed as stress and being insensitive ( that which has to be reexamined). The stress is because the child is clueless about what and why the demands are made. In turn the teachers are most of the time penalized for the child being not accountable! In the work shop everybody was valued for what he/ she sincerely attemped to do and not on what he/ she could not! Why can’t our classrooms ambience be like this? It is possible, if we start valuing an individual for what he/ she possess( all faculties inclusive) and guide him/her to grow as a responsible individual. That is giving all their self worthiness . Such an individual shall be sensitive to inadequacies around him/ her and energizes to work towards becoming a Human and creating a humane world!
Isn’t that the main aim of education??
Thank you SIDH for the wonderful experience . Thank you too, Father Anand and
Sri. Vivekanand Brahmachari, the two efficient facilitators of the theater workshop.