Celebrating “integrated learning” this term. This term celebrating “Integrated learning” means adding value in what we already doing – At Aarohi no process or no curriculum is fixed, it evolves from the life we live at the campus.
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A child baking a cake finds it “waste of time” to read about history of baking or understanding the various process of baking.
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A child wanting to make Bamboo chair just want to start with making a chair, and finds it unnecessary to get into the dimensions (circle and diameter) of the Bamboo stool
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One who was doing Decoupage read with a bit a reluctance about the origin and various techniques of decoupage
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One who is part of Maths club finds it “Extra” to watch a movie on “the story of one”.
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For one creative writing does not look at all connected with making soup with unknown/ new ingredients
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A child working with mud is questioned by parents, “its okay to work with mud, but did you learn maths today?”
And many more such experiences. Not only parents, kids too have apprehensions “how is this going to help me”? Our minds are conditioned. A child learning maths in maths club doesn’t ask “how is maths going to help me building my career”? But the same child will ask “how is cooking going to help me in building my career?” The child knows, that knowing maths have a tangible known path of reaching out to some outcome (class, exams, and degree) but the child is less exposed to the intangible path of process of learning. A child learning crochet stitches can easily be questioned ” how is crochet going to help you in the future (job, career). A child who works with mud is questioned ” are you going to become a mason? And obviously the career of mason does not look very promising. But Pause, and think “is the child really learning crochet or construction or the child is learning how to learn what I want to learn”?
We are so used to of tangible learning (grades, certificate, marks, subjects) that intangible learning becomes insignificant. And since we are also not used to of recognizing intangible learning, the self-doubts keep popping up.
We cannot change our attitude about learning until we first change how we think about work: what it is, what value it had, and what role it plays in one’s life.
Often learning is limited to “skill development”. Maths is learned as maths and science as science but can maths, science, geography, history, language, emotions, economics can be learned all through the same skill development? Such learning sometimes is intangible but worth exploring. The synonyms of “Integrate’ include words like combining, assimilation, unification, harmony, fusing, blending, mixing, and so on.
At Aarohi we give emphasis on doing real-life projects – the projects come out of our living needs. Setting up DC speakers, Extending AC lights to new structures, Setting up the router (we need internet in our kitchen also, as the kitchen is a major learning space for us), need stools for carpentry workshop, make chutney podi, make a garden patch and so on. The advantage of projects coming out of our living needs is that it gets immediate feedback – Internet not working, Speaker not connecting, water leaking, spice more in chutney podi, stool too small or big….and also appreciation comes naturally – Gratitude for DC speakers because now we do not depend in UPS, Chutney podi adds value in our meals, Green gram harvested and so on.
While the facilitators are bringing integration in doing, kids are sometimes not able to see value in integration, maybe some are conditioned to looking at learning in fragmentation. The celebration means bringing the concept alive in the community. We bring learning in many different forms in the community and many times its important to know why one is doing what one is doing.