Children Know Best

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.

I want to be Ayushi!!

Blogging has been a harder task than expected and my excuses are endless but now that we have started our “Rajasthan Roadshow” – a two week trip in an attempt to understand the challenges facing schools in small towns (population 250K – 500K) and define the market for e-Tutor — it feels as though we must share what we are understanding and experiencing across schools in Rajasthan.

“I don’t care about becoming Mukesh Ambani, I want to be Ayusha”, clamored a young ten year girl, named Ayushi at Bhartiya Public School. She had a determination in her pose and in her eyes as she addressed our team and her own principal and director. She explained her frustration: “I don’t have the freedom to create my own path” and advised us that in addition to working with schools, we should be focused on parents.

Another student, Puja, in the 12^th standard, wanted to become a dancer but only after receiving her IIT degree and recommended that the school create a career counseling program. She explained, “In Delhi, my cousins know what options are available – they know they can be journalists, artists, or DJs but in Sikar we don’t know whats out there…we just keep hearing about being doctors or engineers…”

Our team was impressed to see such fearlessness in the students at Bhartiya Public School in Sikar, a small town on the eastern edge of Rajasthan with a population of about 200,000. Education Access of All’s goal is to work with such schools and communities to bring the innovation in education that exists in urban areas across India and globally to support their students. As some of you already know, currently we have two initiatives: Newton Management Company, which works with local schools to bring best practices such as career counseling to their schools and e-Tutor, an interactive software based on CBSE curriculum that bring individualized and interactive learning to students. We are continuing to refine our strategy as we meet with schools as well as leaders in the education space. We are early in our growth and look forward to developing the best options to help fulfill the aspiration and the schools in towns like Sikar.