Welcome to Navrachana...

The highlight of my trip was spending a week in Vadodara at Navrachana School, Sama Road.  The week was amazing from beginning to end, and the welcome dinner the night we arrived and the welcome assembly the next morning set the stage.

Navrachana School is a CBSE school, which means that the school's curriculum is determined by the Central Board (CB).  It is a private, unaided school and one of the best schools in Vadodara.  The principal Ms. Bijoya Baksi is clearly a visionary educational leader, and education staff are equally impressive.

On our first morning, we were welcomed with a garland of flowers and red paste and rice on our foreheads.  Then the whole school welcomed us.

This is the main courtyard where all school assemblies are held.  Most mornings, the morning assembly is divided between the primary grades and the secondary grades, but this was a special occasion.  The event was emceed by two students,

 

 

 

and included a welcome from Principal Baksi as well as a presention of music and dance from the students.  Each of the visitors were also asked to speak.  It is a little daunting to speak to 2000 students, but Carla, Ashley, and I all managed it.

 

  



We were also presented with student artwork as a welcome gift. 

This is Kalamkari art, created by a Standard IX student at Narachana School.

After the assembly, we were given a tour of the campus by the president of the student body and the head boy.  The classrooms are in two main buildings, each with three stories.  The buildings surround two large courtyards.  Behind one courtyard is additional space for vollyball and basketball courts, all outside.  The buildings around the first courtyard are for the primary students, and this courtyard includes the stage that can be seen in the pictures above.  The second courtyard, around which the secondary classes are grouped, does not have a stage.  A separate building houses the instrumental and vocal classes and some of the art classes.  The arts are clearly emphasized as we saw throughout our visit.  Like at Blossom School, the students remain in their classroom, and the teachers move from class to class.  Each of the departments has a lab where students can go to work on projects.  The school also has computer labs that teachers can use with their classes.

 

The second courtyard.

Library

Another view of the second courtyard.

Social Studies lab



Display in the Fashion classroom.

One of the science labs.

A computer lab.

 We got to sit in on a lesson this first day too.  The lesson took place in one of the technology classrooms, because the teacher was showing video clips and then used the interactive whiteboard for taking notes.  The teacher Ms. Esther Ravikumar was introducing a new unit on Nazism and the Holocaust.  In the discussion after the class, she indicated that the students had selected this topic for an in-depth study.  Their choices were decided based on the CBSE curriculum, but Esther had given the students some voice in their studies.  The unit was going to take a couple of months and at the end of the unit the students were going to put Adolf Hitler on trial for the Holocaust.  Several things stood out to me in this lesson.  Esther has excellent questioning skills.  She involved all of the students and she asked for them to think critically as well as to recall information.  While Esther was teaching, a technology staff member was dealing with all of the technology, playing the video and managing the notes from the interactive white board.  Esther's time was freed up to do what she does best, teach.  And lastly, I would love to be able to spend a couple of months on one topic.  In all the classrooms that I visited, including Blossom School, I never saw a textbook that was more than an inch thick.  Our textbooks could be considered weapons because they are so large and so heavy.  I certainly think it's criminal that anyone can think that we can get through that amount of material in 180 days and be able to go into any kind of depth.  I would loved to have seen more of Esther's unit, to see what she was able to do in those two months.

Our last session of the day was with one of the art teachers Mr. Sarang Fadnis.  We spent a wonderful hour and a half learning about and then trying Worli and Rangoli art.

 

 

The above video shows how we prepared the paper.

 

This is my unfinished Worli painting.

 

The Rangoli was a group project, which began by selecting colors of powders and sifting the powders onto our 'doorway.'

The second step was to add designs to the powder with our fingers, but these designs had no connection to the patterns of color that we had just applied.

 The final steps were to place small plates of glass of various shapes and sizes on top of the powder.  And lastly, placing faux gems around the design as well.

Our first day at school ended with the first of several wonderful lunches in the conference room.  During our tour, the students had raved about the school lunches, and we found that they were not wrong.  Each day we ate in the school conference room with Principal Baksi and our host teachers Mamta and Archana.  It was a great opportunity to talk about what we had done that day and for us to ask any questions while they were still fresh in our minds.