Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Secluded in the serenity of Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang district rests the Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community (JGCC) sheltering about 90 children, form all K2-levels. These kids are either orphaned or have confronted abuse, violence, and neglect.

A noble soul, Lobsang Phuntsok, is the father of JGCC. He’s a Buddhist monk, who has had a tough childhood as well. A former Teach for India  fellow, Nidhi Iyer, who spent two years with the community shares, “He (Phuntsok) had one teacher who believed in him, and that is what changed him. He started the community so that these children would not have to go through the same hardships as he did.” Nidhi had been rooting to work for children, right from when she began pursuing her degree in Political Science and Psychology. She believes that to understand these kids, teaching is the most fundamental form.

Jhamtse gatsal is in Tibetan language and translates to ‘a garden of love and compassion’. People here work to empower every child in whatever choices they make with love and compassion underlying the outcome.

The statistics on child abuse paints a gruesome picture very hard to look at. Apparently, in the year 2014, number of cases registered under the POSCO Act for child abuse were 8,904, which increased to 14,913 in a year. In fact, according to Save the Children India, 94.8% child (boy/girl) rapists are someone known to them. Of these 10% are their direct family members and 35.8% neighbors.

This insight tells us enough to understand a hint of the trauma these children must be going through. To lighten the burden of this trauma from as many children as possible, this community functions. Nidhi reflects,“Being a kindergarten teacher, I noticed that some of these kids found it hard to articulate their trauma or tell me what they were feeling. I’ve had instances where a kid just cried for two hours on my shoulder.”

Prioritizing emotional capacity-building for her children above all else, Nidhi always took the approach of love and compassion in every interaction, given that most of her students are trauma survivors.

Nidhi focus was set at making sure that the children learned “to channelise their negative emotions in productive ways, resolve conflicts and be mindful of other people’s spaces.”

Nidhi, describing her role at JGCC, explained, “being teachers, drivers, kitchen staff, or Ama-las (house mothers) are all secondary. Our first responsibility is to be a community member.” Being an active recycler, Nidhi taught the kids to take part in this cultur as well. In fact, on Christmas, she encouraged the community members to use waste-paper from previous years’ notebooks to construct a six-foot tall tree.

The JGCC school imparts education much similar to unschooling. “Of their methods of unstructured education”, Nidhi says, “I very strongly believe that children learn the most when they are left to learn through their own devices. You give them all the resources you can, you model it, and you sit back and let them do it.”

Wonderful enough, one of her students, Tsering, learned the whole alphabet without ever been formally taught so. She just used to observe Nidhi teaching the older kids while herself being in pre-KG. Because Nidhi had decorated the class with mats and charts with alphabet on it, Tsering got hold of them and by the end of the year, she learnt it all by herself. Later, Nidhi helped her with whatever mistakes she would make.

Being a little critical of CBSE, Nidhi says, “These kids are far greater and much more capable than the education system expects them to be in terms of skills and emotional well-being. I was teaching things that could be Googled and learned. I would much rather spend time teaching them other skills that can be practically applied in Political Science.”

She continues saying, “I know that my kids are going to be kind and compassionate human beings, no matter how well-versed they are in their academics. They may not be exhibiting these values a hundred percent of the time, but I think they do a remarkable job of translating them into actions, and I have learnt a lot from their sense of authenticity.”

Nidhi, while teaching at the community, also learned that, “more learning in teaching and more receiving in giving.” The fellow spent two years working there and simultaneously experienced spiritual engineering to become more of a wonderful being that the initially was.

Teach for India provides many fellowships like this one. It works to eradicate the inequity spread everywhere through the layers of our educational institution. They expose their fellows to the grassroot realities of India’s education system and then, the fellows begin to cultivate the knowledge, skills, and mindsets necessary to attain positions of leadership in education and begin to cultivate the knowledge, skills and mindsets necessary to attain positions of leadership in education and identify their role in building a wider movement of educational equity in the country.

READ: Unschooling – The Unconventional Schooling

READ: 360° revolution in learning at KVS: Gamification, e-learning and more in syllabus

By Rupal