Category: Blogs

Planning is important element in our learning process as self directed learners. We meet as community, we plan our day, we share our planning, we coordinate with others, we also know what all is happening and we bring clarity in our purpose and planning. Its not only planning and writing what will I do, getting…

Running campus democratically is no small business, we take it seriously and sincerely…..each week meet and review our working, reassign duties, give feedback to each others and our leaders. These weekly meetings and reviews helps us to pull ourselves, relook into our working and work on feedback. Each team has one mentor, one leader and…

Healing is a medium to connect with others. Healing session with Sunitha have been very therapeutic and connecting. This time she also introduced ‘gratitude stone’. Its nothing else but to keep reminding us to be grateful for what we have. What we are today is because of many things around us and we remember their…

ImagineAarohi where there are no tests and exams – because we believe that children can assess themselves, can reflect on this work on an ongoing basis. Also because children do not need to learn for some external objective (marks) but for their own love for learning. At Aarohi wereflecton our day/week and assess ourselves.Self Assessment…

Each celebration is unique because we all are unique. One of the child who worked on installing basketball stand for fine months, celebrated his b’day with cutting ribbon and inaugurating the basketball court at Aarohi. The whole community came together to celebrate and the party happened in the court itself.

‘Rock climbing’ name was itself enough to evoke various emotions and reactions at Aarohi – some were scared, some felt inadequate, some want to do it, some felt excited. Demo session with Koushik and knowing basic nitty-gritty of rock climbing helped in settling various emotions. All wanted to give it a try. Some began with…

19 people from the age of 8yrs to 45 yrs spent three hours to see just one pair of endangered vulture (small things became joy like how they were cleaning their wings, how they took flight, where they were perching and so on) spent nine hours in being with rock climbing – while we waited…

As a 19th climber in rock climbing session ‘wait’ helped me to climb. During the time I was waiting I was either observing others or imagining or explaining about rappling (my motivation to climb so I can rapple down). This exercise of WAIT helped me tremendously to climb. Often ‘wait’ is considered boring, frustrating or…

Blog by Ally and Spidey Two days before our outstation trip. all were busy working on KAA, We divided ourselves into 6 teams:Food, Safety, Travel & stay, accounts, resources, and communication. The food team was taking care of our food needs, the safety team was taking care of our safety, hygiene, and security, Travel Team…

Manthan, means churning. Each Manthan allows us to churn in different way. This Manthan, it was about FREEDOM. Is freedom understood? Is freedom taken for granted? What happens when freedom is misused? How do we work to create learning environment with freedom and responsibility? In life so in Aarohi, one gets both sides of the…

The journey for Basketball court started when a parent bought one stand for us as a surprise gift, One of the child, 10yrs old announced in planning ‘I am working on installing basketball stand’.When he announced neither he nor we knew where we were heading for. He started with reading stand manual, opening all the…

Foreigners means English…. How much we conclude by our own limited experience. Session with Gaston and Feder was informative to know aboutArgentina. Apart from the geographical location, flag, culture and land-forms we learnt that they hardly speak English. Most speak Spanish. They learn English to travel. As a traveler they carried country flag, t-shirt, some…

See the photos slide show, read the caption on each photo and you will get the idea of the action that happen over most of July, Aug and sep

Last year I started working on Aarohi accounts, this is something I had been postponing for last two years, Finally when I started i felt achieved and looking forward to learn more. I was postponing because I was feeling that it’s tough and I do not understand accounts. First day when Asawari (she has been…

Busy playing chess One of the way to learn is to teach…..session on scribbling art. Sharing learnings….Teaching others is learning doubled. Microscope in action….. making slides. Collected pond water and got some Like tadpoles in bonus…saw them under microscope to identify their legs and head and tail….still debating who are they? We are not washing…

None of us at campus knew how does dry toilet works. It began with a question led toOur firstUDDtoilet sponsored tree. This is how we many time learn and this is how we direct our own learning – researching, learning from people, asking question and TRYING. One questions – so we are collecting the fecal…

Kids sometime complain of upset stomach or go for irregular potty or pass a lot of gas …This needed some reflection at home on food, food habits and connection with body. Pondered- What is triggering – is it water? is it food? is it food habits? is it some specific food? is it body constitution?…

Searching for places to trek in surrounding areas – we got to know about Raikotai fort via some blogs written by some generous travellers. Here is what we did on this outdoor Ate an amazing breakfast at Rayakotai (iddlies, puries, dosas and bisi coffee) Trekked half way up (half hour) – fond a huge cave…

Some Children, specially in emotional state of mind, tend to sometimes use – what is considered by some as abusive language – words like Fuck, Asshole, this Sucks, Holyshit, what the heck, etc. The other children pick this as something fashionable – hence curse words like above are becoming more common. Well, its confusing. May…

Few interactions….. I was working and a word OPTION caught my attention.One of the child was talking to grand parents “You have three options, one is you can come and give my b’day gift here at campus, second is you can send by courier and third is you can give to my parents when they…

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results. John Dewey Pocket Money…the concept is brought in our homes to bring awareness about value of money. Many times this concept brings the feelings among kids ‘why should I control…

Keeping resource in place is one of the issue resource team faces :). After several announcements in planning, finally It came in ‘my voice’ as a concern ‘finding difficult to manage resources , need community to work with consciousness. While it was raised as a concern, and expressed to get community participation, there was no…

At Aarohi music jam is part of every evening…music, songs, singing, dancing, jamming, prayers, chants, musical games, instruments and live music. Prashanth sharing….It’s interesting how music gets created by everyday objects…. I was surprisingly not aware of it before Aarohi We try to do a Music Jam every now and then these days when we…

Each week, few kids take part in conducting various sessions… Dhrupad, 11yrs old in daily diet…bringing different puzzles including visual. Keeping interest alive with discussing in planning and thought club. Pratyaksh, 11yrs old conducting thought club sessions on REthinking – should we have coaching or not, how to rethink on what we already think.Brought different…

Session on Levers… Many of us know what is lever….but the trick lies in using them in day to day life to be able to kick football better or cut vegetables. This was the premise of lever session, started with a ruler and something to balance. One Ratnesh is equal to 11 Ratnesh – how?…

Little joy in life….nothing big, just a celebration of our existence here makes us feel joyful and sharing that joy with others in the community.

Often when one is showing interest in any skill, we rush for coaching, Coaching is great way to learn but only when one is ready for it. Kids at campus are showing lot of interest in football, they have made teams, they play, they practice, they play matches….we started pondering “what next?” DO we need…

When learning is defined by living, anything comes on my way is worth leaning. Stay at campus requires us to work on our own safety – each week we spend on campus training…..safety training (alternate week). While we have basic safety codes to start with….we continue to work on different aspect and get deeper in…

What you do when someone is ill? Thought club on illness and how can I take care of others when they are ill…..the group came up with many thoughts…take care, give medicines, be with the person, do something to make feel nice, listen, accompany, build our immunity (so we do not get ill), So when…

All meals at Aaorhi are served common, menu team ensures different taste buds are taken care. But snacks timings are different – some gets ‘personal snacks’. Just when some of us started getting comfortable with the thought of personal snacks, instead of working on community need,s started working on self needs, instead of looking for…