Rajasthan shuts for Holi, the Hindu celebration of colors, so I headed to Beawar to spend time with Yash and the Mangal family, our partners for our first school, Mangal Newton. During Holi, most of the children who stay at the hostel go home; however, two of the scholarship students at Mangal Newton, Rishab (from Chandighar) and Nikhil (from Jammu) are too far from home so they were welcomes into the Mangal family’s home for these auspicious days. In the midst of throwing colors and eating traditional dhal bhati, I asked each of them to give me 3 ideas for how we can improve Mangal Newton. I described our vision to bring the best to this school for them and Rishab quickly responded, with “Yash sir is not only trying to make this the best school in India but the best school in the world!”
Within 20 minutes, Rishab also had his frist idea: English coaching classes so that everyone can be a good public speaker and be an MC of one of Mangal Newton’s many public shows. 15 minutes later, “Maam, I have another idea…..”. In Hindi, he described how his science teacher is teaching a topic, like how iron turns to a magnet, it is hard to understand so we should give teacher iron so she can show the kids how it works. I am thinking – this is it! This is not an educator, not an academic, not a school management company speaking, this Rishab, in 6th grade saying that he wants and needs to see and do things. We must respond to this need and there are may organizations like Agastaya Foundation who are thinking specifically about how to create interactive science curriculum. Education Access for All looks forward to working with such organizations to bring such innovation into schools and also working with them to digitize such curriculum so it can spread across India at scale.
Tags: Agastya Foundation, innovation, Mangal Newton, Rajasthan
