Agastya’s mission is to reinvent education and change the way children learn. We hope to create curiosity, invoke creativity and inspire confidence in the future citizens. But to influence students, we would first have to look at their teachers.
Teachers are change agents in society and act as a force multiplier. One can impact thousands of students through teachers, the ones we can’t reach ourselves. Hence Agastya started the Acharya Initiative as a dedicated program in addition to other Agastya programs in 2013–14. Initially, it was designed as a very brief workshop that was properly started in 2015. The framework of this program aimed to introduce the constructivist approach to education. This was in accordance with the National Curriculum for Teacher Education, 2005.
What does constructivism mean? Constructivism shifts the role of a teacher from a mere instructor imparting information to a guide that helps children build on their own knowledge. The teacher does not see the child as a passive vessel to fill in. but as an active constructor of knowledge. This was a radical shift in approach. It fits in with Agastya’s mission, as stated above.
Many teachers already knew the theory of constructivism as part of their BeD (Bachelor of Education) curriculum but did not have the resources to apply it in practice. They were also not sufficiently exposed to the implementation of it. Thus the aim of the program shifted to executing constructivist methods in the classroom rather than merely educating the teachers about it.
Currently, the Acharya Initiative is designed as a 4-day workshop. Teachers from now 11 states visit Agastya’s Campus Creativity Lab in Kuppam to attend this workshop. The sessions help teachers experience constructivism in practice and reflect on it. They also learn how to implement it in the classroom. Experience, Reflection, and Implementation are the three cornerstones of the Acharya Initiative experience. They are designed to be interactive and hands-on, involving the teachers to the maximum extent possible.
However, the next challenge faced by teachers was procuring resources for the implementation of the constructive method. Constructivism is a resource-oriented approach, and these teachers are often from rural or government schools where it’s hard to get the needed materials.
When Agastya received this feedback from teachers, we added another element to the Acharya Initiative. Called Make Your Own Lab (MYOL), the program is another 3–5 days workshop that can be either residential or anywhere all the teachers in the district can attend. MYOL is a purely practical workshop where teachers create the models and manipulatives needed with raw materials bought by Agastya. At the end of MYOL, the teachers have their individual kits with around 30–35 models that they can take back to their school. These kits help the teachers practice constructivist, experiential learning in their classrooms.
The idea is that instead of demonstrating with a single model, teachers can provide children with their own models to make and observe, engaging them in the learning process more effectively. It increases interaction and knowledge retention. The students can hence construct knowledge.
Moreover, this approach places more emphasis on the process rather than the end product. It thus instils the scientific method of inferring and analysing data (observation, hypothesis, experimentation and inference). Hence children learn how to critically approach and investigate any problems they encounter and have confidence in their knowledge of procuring the required information. It makes the rest of their learning more accessible.
Around 3000 teachers from 11 states undergo the Acharya workshop every year at the Creativity Campus in Kuppam. The aim is to spread it to the maximum number of teachers and the maximum number of students through them. After all, as aptly put by Henry B Adams, “A teacher affects eternity; he [or she] can never tell where his influence stops.”
