1. What is alternative education for you? Why is it important to you?

I came across the term alternative education when I was working with Eklavya people, and some of my friends talked about the whole different world of alternate education. From all the readings, interaction with people working in alternate education, and visits to alternate schools, I have been able to make this understanding about alternate education-

alternate education is a way of education that is alternate in one or many ways from the traditional method of education system that is prevalent in our country, which is mostly expecting learners to follow some specific curriculum and reciprocate the concepts taught by teachers and textbooks, which also measures their so called ’learning’ through standardized examinations.

Alternate education for me is a way where there are almost no boundaries for learning, where there are co-learners and no teachers, where there is a space where learning can happen from their surroundings and the whole world, a space where facilitators and children learn together, with genuine friendship, a space which considers a child not less than teacher and child has freedom to choose what to learn, a space which support child’s learning from all aspects, and each child has different learning style and needs that can be taken care of. Alternate education is also not only connected to learning, but it gives a perspective of living itself. There are certain learnings and values that can’t be measured also, and the need of measuring success also may not be there also. The learning that happens with co learners can be culminated by either reflections or any other observations.

This kind of education is important to me because it also gives me a space and opportunity to explore freely and learn together, and understand more deeply about people, learning and life together.

2. What assets/skills/interests/knowledge would you bring to the position?

• Designing inquiry based science projects and doing nature based projects
• Knowledge of tools for learning primary mathematics and language learning (whole language approach)
• Ability to design projects according to children’s need and interests, also keeping in mind that the child gets to understand diverse perspectives
• Interested in farming, collecting seeds, understanding food from different perspectives like nutrition, social justice, etc
• Interested in different crafts like painting, embroidery and pottery
• Interested learning conflict management from last few months

3. What are your personal positives and negatives?

My positives:

• I’am a very good listener, empathetic person, and open to understand different perspectives
• i like to go deep into any task and understand it fully
• i’m curious to learn new things
• i like to collaborate with people

My negatives:

• I feel emotionally overwhelmed sometimes if I do multiple tasks at a time
• I take time to start implementing any new idea , as I take some more time to read and understand about it in detail, I want to change this depending on situations, I want to try to start implementing a little earlier.

4. What makes you a strong candidate for the position?

I am open to understanding this process of learning and understanding how people learn and how we can live together, I have no fixed notion yet and want to experiment my ideas and understand people’s ideas and can evolve my understanding and offer a genuine relation to children and other members in the community.