“I am Able – TRY, FRY, CRY and FLY! The journey often starts with TRYING, then action (FRY), And sometimes the challenges makes you CRY (sweating, pushing, failing, persisting), and once you cross that you FLY!
FLYING this week with TRYING at Aarohi
What better way to spend holidays – Do what I want – I decide – I do – I enjoy.
It was all about DECIDE what to do. For a change there was nobody but self to decide what to do, how to do, when todo, how much to do and self assess own work/day by reflection. Experiencing self-directed learning and living.
Before one could start the life at Aarohi, it was important to understand about the campus, possibilities and understanding of the nature around us. The safety training and a tour of campus was required on day one to enjoy independence rest of the week at the campus. Some had eagerness to start, but they needed to wait to understand the freedom. And then it was about TRYING without any boundaries of age, skills, failure and results. It was all about just DOING. There were no teachers, but we all learnt from each other, learnt with each other.
And then it was about FRYING (ACTION). The campus was buzzing with action, action an action! There were almost infinite choice of what to do – right from playing music to reading and writing literature to exploring nature, doing adventure, playing all kinds of games, doing drama or dance or making things from electronics to masonry to carpentry to making friends others or with pets or doing art or photography or bake cakes and breads or do barbecue or grow vegetables and work in the fields or gaze into skies into eternity … or simply do nothing
Imagine aarohi which does not need to make the learning interesting, since children work from their interest.
Imagine aarohi that is not a restaurant, rather a kitchen. We have no dish to offer. We do not serve our children any learning on a platter. We aren’t cooking to satisfy the children.
We’re like a kitchen: Raw material and tools (resources) of all kinds are available. Children are challenged to cook for themselves, to create own learning, to explore, experiment for own reasons, to satisfy own hunger.
What Aarohi offered is a space, an environment, a culture of open doing and learning. This typically led to not only exploring many things, but more importantly exploring, knowing and discovering oneself. Add to this the flavour of community living – which often is a transformative journey for many of us. Community coming together in various sessions – Planning, Safety training, Thought club, Campus care, Community sports, Theatre, Learning mela, singing together, reflecting together, Reflecting through games, cooking, playing in rain, and sleeping under sky and getting drenched, missing skywatch due to clouds and rain, playing games together in community, drawing about day with music, feelings, interaction. Rain brought an opportunity to work on land, making tree pits, tree ambulance to care for trees, etc.
A trip to nearby pond and soaking self in nature with climbing trees, rocks and soaking in a natural pond allowed many of us to break our own limitations, boundaries and live life.
And composing our week with reflection and documenting – what we did, how we did, what we liked / did not like, what we learned, did not learn, … Reflect about our strengths, abilities, habits of mind, emotions, etc. Reflect also about peers, who we work, sensitivity towards others, material and environment etc.
Imagine Aarohi which guarantees one definitive outcome – that learning will be self discovery with FLYING together