Issue 18 | 20 January, 2024 | 10 minutes reading time
Shantanu’s Note: Heyo, Multitude readers. Hope 2024’s started kindly for you. Continuing where we left off last time, here’s the second instalment of Kartika Menon’s series on her year of teaching at an alternative school in Bangalore. In part 1, she spoke about how her school’s kitchen became a space of pedagogy, community building, and growth. Today, she lays bare the blurred lines she and the school navigated while trying to define what it really meant to be ‘alternative’.
When I stepped into school two years ago, I had vague ideas of what it meant to be an ‘alternative’ educator. All I had with me were certain buzzwords: embodied pedagogy, hands-on learning, flipped classrooms. I wasn’t sure how it all would translate into real day-to-day teaching.
As I soon discovered, the school was figuring it out as well. It was trying, just like me, to figure out how its philosophy would be realised. As it expanded, it was forced to reckon with the changes that come with larger numbers, higher classes, and the need to prepare students for the world.
Nowhere was this more evident than with standardised testing. The school had, for so long, stayed away from typical assessment, thinking of it as a generator of ugly competition, intense anxiety, and hurried memorising. Learning was meant to happen more slowly, with deeper engagement.
While I remember biology class as learning the parts of a flower by rote, these children had spent a whole term observing a flower grow and keeping a detailed record. Yet, with a batch of students now ready to take a board examination, the school had to reconcile its ideas of learning with the reality of integration. The students were not used to writing for long stretches, they had not thought in terms of marks being awarded per point, they were not even used to sticking to a single textbook for a whole year.
It was clear that our model of learning had to adapt to our changing circumstances. As we started introducing more ‘structure’ and ‘routine’, we received mixed responses. While some members of the community felt like we were betraying our principles with these changes, others thought we needed to be even more practical, more stringent.
While there was no neat resolution to these questions, through several discussions we arrived at a clearer conclusion for what our future would look like. ‘Alternative’, we argued, did not mean a lack of structure. In fact, assessments in themselves were not scary. It was the general approach to them that needed to be reframed. By having avoided exams altogether, we had done a disservice to the students. We had forced our high school into suddenly up-ending their learning methods, and operating under extreme pressure just so they could be ready in time. Instead of this sudden switch after eight years of ‘alternative’ learning, we could strike the right kind of balance across ages by introducing skills like long-form writing and time management at appropriate times.
The same conflict between ‘alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ arose in our approach to discipline. One of the central tenets of our schooling, we felt, should be an atmosphere devoid of fear. Teachers recalled their own childhood experiences, where strict hierarchies, rigid regulations, and arbitrary punishments were used to uphold discipline. Fear was a weapon wielded not just by teachers, but by students as well. Power flowed from principal to class teacher to prefect, and the result was often a suffocating, anxiety-filled experience of education. Here, we attempted to eliminate these structures.
This elimination, however, did not come easy. As we navigated through many a mishap, we’ve wondered if we were compromising on the safety and security of our students. We’ve had prospective parents promptly walk out of school after seeing one student pretend to suffocate another with a plastic bag as a prank. It was a funny story when it was retold, but it could just as easily have turned into something disastrous. Time and again, we were faced with the dilemma of how to keep the children safe but not sequestered.
The challenge lay not just in protecting the children from the world outside, but also in creating a safe environment within the school. With any kind of misbehaviour, for instance, the lack of standard policies meant that we were judging each case on its own. The stakes were unimaginably high, and it was easy, then, to wonder if it was because children took the school for granted that such transgressions were occurring.
In so many of these cases, fear and deterrence could have provided us with a quick and seemingly efficient way of resolving conflict. Build the fortress, hire the guards, mete out the punishment.
We knew, however, treating these instances simply as a violation of policy and doling out suspensions would do little to address the root cause of these behaviours. These became our chances to practise ‘restorative justice’. We had to recognise that our duty was to all the students – not just the ones who are harmed. Through open dialogue, targeted lessons, and opportunities for students to take accountability for their actions, we hoped to instil in students a sense of responsible autonomy. By understanding the natural consequences of their behaviour, and acknowledging the harm that they were causing, the students, we hoped, would be more reflexive and deliberate.
The school’s constant give and take was mirrored in my personal experiences as a teacher. Since the boundaries between students and teachers were not as concrete, several of my interactions with children posed unique problems. On one hand, my closeness with my students often made me a better teacher. Knowing what my students were going through back at home, and sensing their tensions closely was in many ways useful for me. I discovered their worries and joys shaping my sessions in a way that they never could had we been a class of hundred.
On the other hand, I was often charting choppy waters and trying to ensure I was friendly and approachable without being too close for comfort. I was okay with my students accidentally calling me bro, or the little ones coming in for a hug. When they wanted to visit my home or follow me on social media, though, I was quick to decline. It’s a question of inquisitiveness versus intrusiveness, I’d say.
It was a hard conversation to have. We are not friends, I’d remind them, because I have power over you, I have been given authority, I tell you what to do. It is an unequal relationship, and that’s not what friendship is. At the same time, I was aware of the honour it was to be let into my student’s lives. I tried not to shroud myself in mystery and maintain a cold distance. I brought my friends and family to school, I talked of my experiences at college, and I asked them for advice. I was vulnerable, as they were – just in ways that I could control. What resulted was a rewarding kind of relationship, built on mutual trust and compassion instead of control and dominance.
Through all this, school allowed me to reimagine everything I had believed about learning. So much of what I’d been taught to fear from my childhood – locked gates, exams, teachers– here, I discovered, that they needn’t be injected with the same meanings. I remember this one time when I didn’t have a pen of any colour but red, and hesitated to use it. When a child asked me why, I said I didn’t want it to be intimidating. He looked confused - the association of red ink with fear had never been made in his head. It turns out I was protecting him from a feeling he’d never had.
Moments like these revealed to me what I’d been too skeptical to believe earlier: That when we remove our hierarchies and our fear-based systems and our rigid regulations, we are not left with senseless chaos. Instead, if we look at the alternatives we have, we would find an abundance. We have so many motivators: love, hope, compassion, joy, curiosity, responsibility. These may move at a different pace, but their merit is understood only when we shift the end-goal of teaching, away from mindless obedience and cog-in-the-machine reproduction.
It all sounds utopian, but none of what I’m describing is perfect and unattainable. The school’s functioning has been messy and flawed, often swinging between loose and tight extremes. Our days are filled with difficult, impossible decisions. Most teachers, like me, having come from ‘conventional’ schools themselves have no formative experiences to draw on for what would work - just strong feelings about what wouldn’t. When at a loss, we turn to one another to draw comfort and inspiration.
Our parents help us by allowing space for their children to handle their own problems at school. Instead of barging into the office and demanding another child’s expulsion for hurting their child, they choose to believe in the long-term result of our efforts at reconciliation. Our students, time and again, handle themselves with grace and dignity that adults wouldn’t be able to muster. So while not all our leaps of faith have landed, we continue to move forward with the resolve we gather from one another.
It takes a village, after all.
Kartika’s Recommendation: If you want to see more of little kids taking responsibility, watch ‘Old Enough’ on Netflix. A Japanese reality show, it features toddlers doing their ‘first chore’ or running their first errand after detailed instructions from their parents. Picture cute three year olds in pigtails walking to a grocery store to get bread - it’s a wholesome, wonderful watch.
Shantanu’s note (again): Hope you enjoyed this issue; feel free to share it with someone who might find it interesting using the button above. The last issue of Kartika’s series will be out in a few weeks. If you haven’t already, subscribe below to get it straight in your inbox.
Till next time,
Shantanu