Teachers' reflections

Introduction by Heidi Watts

In this collection of teacher’s reflections on their teaching in Auroville we are privileged to hear in their own voices the many and varied ways in which the teachers look back upon their teaching experiences. Whether they start from the perspective of a young mother in search of some basic schooling for her children, or from that of a recent newcomer discovering the joys of teaching, they have a compelling freshness. And happily, this is not the end of the reflections. We look forward to further reflections, from other voices, representatives from other schools, and other perspectives on the joys and challenges of teaching.

Four themes stand out for me from this chorus of voices. The first is the wide diversity of accents, experience, and years of experience, age, and focus. Some reflections begin with today, some with the first schools in Aspiration in 1972. Some focus on a few memorable incidents, some paint with a broad brush. Some are from people who have been teaching consistently for thirty years, some for five or ten. We have here teachers who have worked in many schools, even some who have grown up with the same school over thirty years. Some teach the same group of children over a year or more, some move from school to school teaching Sanskrit or movement, music or math. There are representatives from almost every Auroville and outreach school; in their very diversity they also represent the extraordinary diversity, which is actually ordinary in daily life for the City of Unity.

The second theme is the way in which these recollections from individuals become a triptych, a slowly unfolding picture of the evolution of schooling in Auroville from three children and a teacher/mother on a mattress in Aspiration, to team members from 13 schools serving hundreds of children. The initial impetus for creating a school often came originally from a parent or a group of parents, but sometimes from the children themselves, demanding some more formal and organized help with the kinds of skills and information usually learned in schools. While farmers were greening the dusty plain with young saplings, parents and others were slowly forming clusters of children in schools, growing their own versions of schooling. In these reflections we have first-person accounts on how, out of a community, an aspiration, and a need the schools of Auroville grew and flourished.

As these schools evolved, so did the teachers and their ways of thinking about teaching. The third theme is the wonderful glimpses we get into what teaching is for these teachers, of the way in which the experience of teaching can change one’s understanding of teaching. Teachers learned about teaching and about themselves through an honest and candid look into the mistakes from which we grow, or from the children themselves. We say that the best teachers are always learning and that is apparent in these voices as they describe how they learned from the children, and from the experience itself.

The fourth and last theme is what blends this chorus, in which some sing high and some sing lower, but all sing from the same intention, spirit and aspiration: to realize the yoga of integral education as Mother and Sri Aurobindo envisioned it.

Heidi Watts
March 2016

	Astha: Reflections on Working with Small Children I’ve been working for 25 years with young children in Auroville...		Sanjeev: Reflections On My Work In The Schools Of Auroville Sri Aurobindo and Mother did their work within an immense framework of knowledge...
	Aloka: Reflections on Awareness Through the Body It has been 24 years since ATB (Awareness Through the Body) was born...		Miriam: Reflections on My Work in Auroville as a Teacher Having grown up and been educated in Auroville, I started working at the Kindergarten in the mid-eighties...
	Davaselvy: Reflection on my work in Auroville as a Teacher In 1990, when I started teaching, I thought that I would become a good teacher...		Mary: Harmony between Individuals and the Collective The students and teachers at Transition School come from many different countries...
	Jivatman: My Experience as a Teacher in Auroville I came to Auroville more than 30 years ago (1984, to be precise)...		Varadharajan: Reflections In the Charter of Auroville it is stated that, among other things, Auroville will be a place of unending education...
	Joy: Teaching Sanskrit songs and writing plays for children I used to teach singing in the Sanskrit language...		Sudhir: My Experience as a Teacher It was on April 24th, 2002 that I arrived at Udavi School...
	Odile: My experience at the Kindergarten I came to the Kindergarten in 1987...		Shraddhavan: Memories of Aspiration School The Mother accepted me for Auroville on November 19, 1970...

See also

• Reflections by Francoise
• Reflections by Lisbeth
• "Gardening with children at Matrimandir Nursery" by Narad
• Reflections by Sanjeev R.