Why Life School

Aarohi .... Evolving Learning .... Evolving Skills .... Evolving Myself

The LIFE school - Experience the way world exist. And learn to learn from experiences.
Experience how a carpenter work by working with him. Know what you need to become a scientist by working like a real scientist on real life research project. Learn about gardening, social skills, botany, natures and its balances, motor skills, analysis and evaluation, patience and perseverance, and so on ... by working on creating a garden (with a gardener).
Work, and attendant joy becomes the source as well as the reason for learning. This virtuous cycle is further enriched by inputs from peers as well as sensitive facilitators.

The EXPERIENTIAL school Experience triggers learning, makes it meaningful  and helps in discovering and understanding the underlying concepts - so that the same can be applied elsewhere. For example: Kids experience what is "Buoyancy", ask questions about it, explore it and figure out the concept behind it. All this happen when they are designing their own "boat".

The REAL school matches itself with how the outside world is. The child will never get all the people around him of same age, skills, and thinking. At Aarohi the child get kids of different age and skills in one class - working together leads to exploring each other strengths, learning from each other and accepting each other. The child hence automatically learns to work in in groups. The child is encouraged and trained (by the very approach) to be dependent on, independent of and interdependent with peers, facilitators, parents, etc.

The HOLISTIC school - What I am today is more imp than what I will be tomorrow - ACCEPT the child's choice, strengths and RESPECT him whatever is he. At Aarohi there are no preset requirements that all the children should excel in ALL the areas. We expose children to ALL the skills - how, when and where child picks the learning is completely led by the child. No child is pushed to reach the level of OUR desires. We believe all kids LOVE to learn - they may not learn the way we want to teach them.

The FREE and FEAR less school - At Aarohi we all are equal - there is no authority. All are free to express and all are respected.

The PARENTS school - The parents are integral to the school. They are not the customers of the school, who would receive the periodic progress report of the child. Rather parents are the key facilitators of growth and development of the children. Parents here invest their time, effort and mind space in understanding their child. They then use this understanding to offer the child the kind of relationship that will help the child to grow.
Hence, parents too, constantly work on themselves. Parent's involvement in the school is mental (resources), physical (time) and emotional (support) (apart from financial :-)

Is this alternate education
We need to step back and ask ourselves why are we looking for an alternate education system. Our opinion is that it is not because the methods of the current system are faulty, more because we think our objectives from education itself are different.

One view is that Education is something which would help children grow naturally into empowered beings who can think, lead and enjoy their own life. If we have to make "thinkers" then why are we running behind knowing - knowing right answers, knowing formulas, definitions, etc? These and other skills will come anyway when children are learning to learn. We believe that a child is a natural LEARNER - and the child proves this by learning atleast one language, host of abilities, and set of LIFE skills by herself by the age of three (before we put them in school). They learn to eat, talk, think, understand and so on ---------

Since the child is a SELF learner then why are we pushing them to learn by teaching and meet some artificial benchmarks - which anyway have little relevance in our rest of the life!

Hence, the Aarohi is not all about some "project based learning or Module design" or about any other method. It is "child based learning". If the emphasis is on any method then the whole purpose is lost. If we are going to think and discuss at length Projects, Modules, Exams, assessment etc. then we are putting the child from one system to another system - we are still not understanding the goals deeply.

The projects and module could be two of the many tools - which will make learning meaningful to the child, to make it come from the child. But they're not a means to make the child learn what we want him to learn or to turn the child into somebody successful by what is perceived by the current system or to make the child join a particular college or profession.

So Aarohi is not a way, or a method or a apprach.

Aarohi is a space, an environment, an acceptance, a belief, a soil for the child to grow into the beautiful and unique being he or she is destined to be.