At Vidyadhara we envisage a curriculum which is closely coupled with children's lives. We involve children

in kitchen garden work, art and craft, producing artifacts which have utilitarian value while ensuring that

academic skills and subjects are learnt through these activities in context.

Over the last 6 years of practice,  this has proved to be effective not just in terms of academic achievement but also in terms of how well children could ask questions that matter,  the depth of the content, the links between different strands of learning as well as their presence in our lives, the amount of local knowledge that is brought to the classroom, the co-operation among children etc.

About the founders:

Ms Sirisha Kandukuri

She is a computer science graduate with a decade of corporate experience. She has a masters in elementary education from TISS Mumbai. Her interest in school education has driven her to quit her career in IT and take up developing alternative ways of learning for school children. She has designed and created many activities which can be used in Early Childhood Education and Primary levels. 

She has worked with Rishi Valley and was involved in designing and developing a self-paced in-service teacher training program (ODL) for state governments. She has also worked with RV Educational Consortium, where she evaluated the outcomes of a three-year action research project to improve students' learning levels in BBMP (Bangalore local body) Schools. She takes care of the day-to-day running of the school.

Prof A R Papi Reddy holds a PhD from IIM Bangalore in Production and Operations Management and is currently a faculty member at IIM Nagpur. He is currently in an advisory role with the school.

Vidyādhāra’s learning practices constantly engage with the following questions.

·         What’s worth learning?

·         How may this learning be imparted in joyful and meaningful ways to keep children connected with life around them, such that learning is complete, holistic, and relevant to their reality?

·         Why and what should be tested and how?

Learning Practices

Our learning practices aim to

·         keep a child free from within

·         make a child aware of the self as well as the world outside

·         make a child adept in areas that can become their fields of work or interest.

·         make the child ask questions that matter

·         develop the diverse perspectives on the world both as a continuously evolving on certain aspects and perpetuity of certain other aspects

Our pedagogic practices include 

·         Socratic Method that employs inquiry as a way of discovery and understanding.

·         Innovative and engaging methods that concentrate on the construction of knowledge within the learner.

·         Montessori methods that make learning happen through a child’s interaction with multi-sensory inputs.

·         Art and craft to create some things of real (financial or pragmatic) value with the application of their academic learning,   
persistence and maturity of processes.

·         Field trip/ studies, interaction with the community around

·         Discussions and debates

Assessments

While we agree that large-scale screening tests and board examinations serve some purpose, assessments at school should not be shaped according to them. Otherwise, the curriculum would be shaped by screening tests (curricular backwash).

Assessment at school should reflect the current status of competencies and should feedback to both teacher and student. The teacher should understand how effective the practices have been concerning the student's needs, and the student should realise where (s)he is with respect to what needs to be achieved. The aim should be to check how far the learning objectives have been achieved and should give an insight into the next course of action for the teachers and students. We follow the following methods to give us an idea of the overall competence of the child. (Not an exhaustive list).

·         Portfolio method

·         Collaborative testing

·         Evaluation rubrics for each type of work

·         Solving open-ended problems

·         Framing problems

The environment in school is designed to make learning possible through activities that involve children in productive work. To make this possible, we need to educate the parents too so that they can appreciate and support us in this endeavor. 

Similarly to scale up this initiative, an alternate ecosystem ( Comprising of teachers trained in these methods, parent communities exposed to alternative ways of learning, TLMs applicable in diverse contexts) must be developed. We are involved the following allied activities that help us build the alternative ecosystem.

• Developing pedagogic methods and material which can be used with larger groups of students

• Outreach activities aimed at sensitization of community to the alternative learning practices

• Develop remedial methods for students with learning gaps

• Teacher training 

Roles & Responsibilities

Academic

·         Take ownership of one or more subjects

·         Prepare lesson plans, design activities and assessments and use them in imparting learning

·         Implement lesson plans, engage children in learning activities and evaluate assessments

·         Explore arts and crafts like clay work, carpentry, weaving on a loom, crocheting, dyeing, paper craft etc. as socially useful productive work (SUPW) as well as interweaving subject content into it.

·         Engaging learners between the ages 6 and 12 in academic and vocational activities.

Administration

·         Tracking progress on design and delivery of academic activities

·         Sharing school admin responsibilities like marking attendance, writing progress reports and notes to discuss with the parents

·         Maintaining school library

·         Maintaining school material

·         And any other admin responsibilities the management may deem necessary for smooth running of school

Research & Development

·         Study the realities of children in this part of Andhra Pradesh as well as urban regions by engaging in discussions with parents, observing the socio-economic activities of the regions.

·         Design learning activities that connect children to the various realities

·         Participate in discussions around education

·         Participate in trainings organized by the institution

Outreach

·         Design and deliver outreach programs

o   for parents

o   for children 

·         Design and deliver programs for bridging learning gaps (remedial learning) in school children.

·         Take part in administration of such centers of remedial learning

·         Design and deliver programs for children that show gifted talents (enrichment)

·         Take part in administration of such centers of enriched learning