Curriculum Development
Why write our own curriculum?
The vision of writing our own curriculum for the EFA program is to create a high quality curriculum that uses the latest developments on research regarding how children learn and what really is true education, contextualizing to rural India, accessible even to the poorest of poor. We want to make something that is accessible to a city school as well as a school under a tree!
Here are images of our children using our own curriculum:
Holistic
It is a holistic curriculum that seeks to engages with all the child’s senses. It takes into account that different children learn in different ways and we have tried to create activities that deal with all the multiple intelligences such as music, art, nature, physical movement, language, numbers, etc.
Learning must be fun!
The most important thing is that learning must be fun. We want these children to want to come to school. We want them to be excited about learning. Once you set the foundation of learning and get them internally motivated to learn, giving them tools to be able to learn at any stage irrespective of the environment they are in, you will have set them up for a lifestyle of learning.
Wisdom Principle
Another key component of each lesson is something known as a ‘wisdom principle’. We believe that education is not just about learning to read and write and comprehend wonderful up-in-the-air concepts, but true education is about learning to be better human beings, to make right decisions and to respect all persons and care for the environment. We want our children to learn values about God, living in community and caring for the world we live in, through every single lesson. So besides the regular learning outcome, we also have another take away from the lesson where children learn a ‘wisdom principle’.
Our goal is to create an entire curriculum from preschool to year 2, and then create material that can work alongside their current regional board upto year 10. This involves making visual aids, teachers manuals and student books. Each lesson uses art, games, science experiences, nature, outdoor activities, etc. to reinforce the learning outcome.
We want to make the curriculum ‘open source’ i.e. accessible to anyone and everyone at no cost. So once our curriculum is ready, we will open it out to anyone who wants to take education to any part of India. This will truly fulfil our vision of ‘Education for All’.
Training Videos
In order to reach the vast numbers in the North, we are producing videos for teaching each lesson in the new curriculum that can be circulated.